Social Media Aid: The New Normal in Disasters?

Much has been said about how the mobile Internet and social media are helping to imbue our everyday lives with a restless sense of urgency, for better or worse -- what Twitter conference promoter Jeff Pulver calls "the State of Now." But this week, given Haiti's troubles, it's clear that there's one upside of this "nowism" that has become irrefutable: mass-mobile, location-aware micro-donations to people in need around the globe.

Indeed, never before have people donated money to disaster relief at the scale and speed and ease as they have in response to the Haiti earthquake, social media experts agree. This time around Twitter, texting and other social media networks led and created swarms of instant-givers.

And what a mobile outpouring it's been: according to the Mobile Giving Foundation, a nonprofit that works with wireless companies and charities to set standards for text-message donations, contributions made via mobile phones to Haiti rescue efforts during the first 36 hours after the quake had topped $7 million -- a mobile giving record for funds raised for a single cause that keeps swelling. Meanwhile, the American Red Cross -- despite the criticism it got during Hurricane Katrina for telling donors their money would be used in New Orleans, when it sometimes wasn't -- says it has raised $22 million so far for Haiti through hundreds of thousands of $10 "text" donations.

The Red Cross is coordinating its first-ever texting campaign with a mobile donations firm called mGive, and the outpouring is part of a larger surge of money flowing into international Red Cross coffers for the devastated nation: nearly half of Red Cross donations to Haiti since the quake have come in via texting. As of Thursday night, the international Red Cross -- the U.S. arm included -- was saying that it had raised some $35 million via mobile texts and social media websites like Twitter and Facebook appeals; the National Football League's promotion of text-message donations during its weekend playoff games produced "stunning results," The New York Times reported today, with money "coming in at the rate of $500,000 an hour." Roger Lowe, a Red Cross spokesman, told the Times: "I need a better word than 'unprecedented' or 'amazing' to describe what's happened with the text-message program." [Perspective check: Mobile donations for Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were just $250,000, says Jim Manis, chief executive of the Mobile Giving Foundation.]

And that's not all. The social media aid boom has led many companies to join the mobile aid party; speed-of-giving remains critical as thousands continue to die in Haiti by the hour.

But donor, beware: while SMS donations speed up donations, they don't necessarily hasten money to the cause. Normally, it can take up to 90 days for some text donations to make their way to those in need. "SMS makes it quick to give but longer to collect," Katrin Verclas of mobileactive.org told Public Radio International earlier this week. Verizon and some other mobile carriers are pledging to bypass some of their usual accounting procedures and forward some or most of the money donated right away, rather than wait until customers pay their bills. [Jeffrey Nelson of Verizon Wireless told The New York Times' Bits blog late last week that the change was not permanent and that Verizon would return to its regular accounting practices after the Haitian crisis had passed. Sprint, meanwhile, said it would speed 80 percent of amounts texted to Haiti and AT&T said it was still looking into speeding up donations but had not yet decided whether it would, according to Times reporter Matt Richtel.]

To be sure, mobile giving is reaching whole new legions of people, from many who may not have given anything before texting made it so easy. Text-donations are giving the "urgency" trend in the marketplace -- and donors, at least -- a whole new way to define "instant gratification."

But why can't business do more to support the trend?Is it "good business" to charge donors for charity texting -- or should firms get a tax break if they don't? Are social "good" policies needed in the business world as global problems and Internet technology evolve?

What do you think?