Carriers Delay Paying Japan's Texting Donations

Julie188 writes "As the fallout from the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown tragedy continues to unfold, Americans want to help. We learned from the Haiti disaster that the easiest thing to do is to text a donation to our favorite relief organization. But, unlike Haiti, Japan's text-to-give donations will take as long as three months to get to the relief agency. And the company handling these donations, mGive.com, has not waived the transaction fees it charges relief agencies."

Why would any true geek text a donation?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

the easiest thing to do is to text a donation to our favorite relief organization

Why would any true geek text a donation? We're geeks. We want what's most EFFECTIVE, not what's easiest.

Re:Immediate donation processing at philanthroper.

[DocSavage64109]

I like the typo in the link. That's exactly how profiteers work -- by praying on the unwary. By the way, you can also paypal donations to [e-mail]

Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan is a rich, technologically advanced, first-world country. I feel very bad for the people who have been affected by the recent events there, it's truly awful... but there are so many poor countries with horrible conditions, lack of food, basic human rights... who need money much more than Japan. ALL THE TIME.

If you really want to help Japan, go there and start digging through the mess and help them rebuild. If you want to donate money, donate to someone who actually needs money. Or donate in general to the Red Cross or other groups, without earmarking your money for Japan where it will sit for months or more, while thousands of people die of starvation in other parts of the world, maybe even in your own damn country.

Re:Surprised?

[characterZer0]

With the money having to take 3 steps to get from you to the charity, 30-90 days is still quick.

90 days was quick in the days of the Pony Express.

In the days of 500ms ping times around the world, 90 days in incredibly slow. I understand that the money is not there until you pay your wireless bill, but that is 45 days or less, so anything over 50 days is very slow.

Re:Surprised?

[GooberToo]

Exactly.

People are also suffering from massive ignorance about how things work here too. Firstly, texting DOES NOT donate money. Period. End of discussion. Texting actually PLEDGES to donate. Your carrier will never release uncollected funds based on a pledge, to which they legally could hope to recover transaction fees (which is far less than the pledge).

So, once you pledge, via texting, that's all you've done. You've not actually donated any money. When you pay your billing, at the end of the billing cycle in which you pledged money, you actually have the option to fulfill your pledge. After the money is collected, your carrier will likely pay their collections at the end of their billing cycle. So right there, you're very reasonably out 30-60-days out.

Once your carrier releases their funds, you're now looking at roughly another thirty days before that party actually gets organized, commits, and releases the funds to the cause.

Also, what appears to be part of the confusion is traditionally, when you donate to a cause, you are not actually donating to a cause. Traditionally, you are donating to an organization in the name of a cause; whereby, the organization is free to do what it likes with the money it receives. So long as they donate something to the cause, they have fulfilled their legal obligation. This is true even with major non-profits like Red Cross.

What also seems like a likely source of confusion is non-profit does not mean what most people believe it means. For whatever reason people tend to associate non-profit as being the preferred form of company for these types of things because all of their money goes toward the underlying cause. Realistically, nothing could be father from the truth. A non-profit only requires their profits to be re-invested into the corporation. That doesn't mean employees work cheaply or even for fair market prices. That doesn't mean executives are not paid huge salaries and receive massive bonuses and benefits. In fact, many non-profits donate exceptionally little to their causes, frequently as little as 10%-20% of their income. IIRC, with Red Cross, as much as 60-70% (I'm pretty fuzzy on that number but the point is, a good chunk does help others) of what is donated actually helps people outside of the Red Cross organization.

Really this article should be called, "Damn you Net-30!"