Thomas Scovell

For the first week of my new charity programme I’m giving money to Oxfam NZ’s Haiti Appeal. I’m always a little uncomfortable with the gross disparity between the coverage of crisis-causes and the many ongoing situations of need around the world – but there is no denying Haiti need support right now.

I must have had 10 emails from the different charities I have given to over the years this last week – each imploring me to give to their particular Haiti appeal. Doing the research on who is spending the money most effectively is often time consuming and how to do that better is something I’d like to explore. In the meanwhile I find Oxfam generally sound and not overly opportunistic with such appeals.

Following on from my last post about doing the math on how much to donate – it was relatively easy with Buxfer. Viewing transactions for a set period is easy and then seeing the totals by tag to sum them is trivial. A better advanced search that let me select multiple-tags would have helped me do the math quicker – but no major.

Oxfam NZ's Haiti Appeal

Oxfam use Blackbaud’s system for donations which isn’t particularly pretty or well integrated into their site. On the upside – it does let you create a login for speedier donations in the future and keeps a visible record of your donations for later reference. On completion the system presents a a form thank you letter from the organisation’s executive director with a little information on how the money will be used and promising a copy and receipt via email.

This turned up as promised so that’s Week 1 sorted.