The Red Cross is stunned by the amount of money digital fundraising has garnered in response to Haiti’s earthquake Wednesday. In just 48 hours, the text message campaign calling for donations went viral via Facebook and Twitter to raise over $9 million so far—a figure more than double the $4 million donated to all charities by mobile texts in 2009.
“It’s shattered any record that we’ve seen with mobile giving before,” the Red Cross’s social media manager told CNN.
These statistics don’t surprise me one bit—when breaking news happens, most people turn to the internet for answers. On Friday morning, “Red Cross” was among the 10 most popular topics on Twitter. Every minute, people have been posting more than 1,500 status updates on Facebook that contained the word “Haiti.” Social networking’s viral nature made it possible for answers, photos, prayers, and information to be quickly spread all over the globe; thus, the chain of donations and relief efforts rapidly initiated.
Here’s a list of noteworthy donations and efforts made possible by social media:
- GoDaddy, a leading internet domain registrar, donated $500,000 to relief efforts.
- Google announced on its blog that it is donating $1 million.
- Zynga, the social gaming company that owns Facebook’s popular FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Zynga Poker, has raised over $1.2 million for Haiti relief.
- Facebook started a Disaster Relief page meant to spotlight efforts to help respond to disasters around the globe. Randi Zuckerberg wrote on the Facebook blog yesterday that people have contributed “thousands of dollars through the Causes application on Facebook.” This post alone elicited 4,398 “likes” and 564 comments.
- Lance Armstrong (an active Twitter user with more than 2.4 million followers) announced that the Livestrong foundation would be donating $250,000 to humanitarian aid groups.
These are just a sampling of the amazing social media initiatives launched on the social web to benefit Haitian disaster relief.
What other impressive efforts have you seen? Who else should be on this list?
