My colleague Jonathan Jaffray has a new blog,
philanthropyadvisor.com (great name!), and is out of the starting blocks with an important insight - he notes
here that more than
100 domain names had been registered with the word "gustav" by September 1st. He rightly continues to note that donors should be wary of making donations through sites that they have not vetted.
His post made me realize that Jonathan had put his finger on a key new trend indicator for philanthropy - domain name registration. Here is how the indicator will be interesting:
- How many sites get put up containing the name of the disaster-du-jour (sorry if that is crass) and how quickly they go up;
- How many get used to fundraise - legitimately or otherwise;
- How many pre-existing, legitimate donation sites grab on to the disaster-name to improve their search results;
- How quickly Google sets up mini-sites for donations; and
- The pace of giving on Google checkout.
Of course, moving at the pace of technology, this indicator may already be out of date as donations speed on over to mobile phones and
text donations. Which means we will have to update the "domain name indicator" with the "
text message code indicator."
2 comments:
See a related post on how the Red Cross is getting the word out about fundraising and disaster relief and lessons learned from Katrina:
http://www.onlinefundraisingblog.com/2008/09/disaster-relief-learning-from-katrina-learning-from-the-red-cross/
I am the real Jonathan Jaffray. But this guy seems pretty cool as well.
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