Where to Click in a Crisis

Washington, D.C--Giving money to Afghan refugees or helping recent volcano victims in the Congo should become a little easier, with the launch of Relief Interactive, an online referral service intended to makes online donations more efficient.

Called React for short, the Relief Interactive site is a consolidated list of links to nongovernmental organizations that accept donations and offer information on crises calling for humanitarian intervention. Global in scope, React tracks aid efforts for everything from earthquake and famine victims to war-displaced refugees. Since every organization listed belongs to InterAction, the largest alliance of U.S.-based humanitarian and relief groups, prospective donors' fears of giving to fraudulent donation sites should be assuaged, says Brady Brown, React's founder. In 1998, Brown, a New York technology consultant, was inspired to develop the referral service and site when he read that Hurricane Mitch had ripped through parts of Central America. Wanting to donate to the relief effort, Brown sifted through Web sites for more than 20 minutes before finding a suitable one.

"This should be a lot easier," he thought at the time, and the idea of Relief Interactive was born.

Referrals Made Easy

Brown's brainstorm was to link online news articles about disasters to React's site. When a crisis breaks, React creates an information page for that event, featuring lists of and links to relief organizations where people can send donations. React then sends an e-mail message containing a link to the crisis page to media organizations, encouraging them to place the link in their articles about the crisis.

This way, the potential donor can click on a single link instead of on several, shortening the process of finding appropriate charities. The idea is to carve a more direct virtual path between Internet users and relief efforts, with the help of media sites, Brown says.

In Brown's plan, the funds' legitimacy is supported by drawing the list of charities from InterAction's rolls, and the links provide an implied endorsement of validity. While clicking to donate may be easy, surfers are sometimes uncertain about how to verify the legitimacy of the pitches. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, for example, some online scammers tried to take advantage of the outpouring of donations. Still, the Internet has proved an effective means of raising funds in short order.

Slow Start

Convincing media sites to do their part in React's plan might be difficult, however. Vernon Keenan, an industry analyst at Keenan Vision, says that unless these links appear at front-runners sites like CNN and AOL, many people won't see them. Keenan says he is unsure whether media companies will bother to embed the links when React asks them to, because placing links in or after a story carries a small but visible cost for news sites. "Just convincing busy professionals [who run the sites] to change how they work is a costly request," Keenan says.

So-called content hubs, Web sites like React whose sole purpose is to link to other sites, have not fared well in the past, Keenan notes. Web logs, which are communities of people who post common concerns, may be a better target for React's links, he suggests.

Several nonprofit sites, notably Helping.org and JustGive.org, provide not only links to charities, but also databases of information on how to volunteer. React differs by focusing on emergencies.

Brown says that while many news sites already link to relief sites on their own, React will make the process more efficient. Many in the aid community, including Red Cross spokesperson Darren Irby and InterAction communications director Sid Balman, Jr., say React is a welcome addition to fund-raising efforts.

"Anything that draws more attention to disasters...will only do more for what we're already doing," Irby says.