Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Donate cash NOT "stuff" following Sandy

I hear that a certain GOP candidate that touts himself as a management expert is holding a rally where people are supposed to "donate items" to disaster relief for those affected by Hurricane Sandy.

As any person who actually works in disaster relief will tell you, this is a BAD idea: people tend to donate broken, torn or unusable items, it takes a great deal of time and effort to go through all the donated items to find what is actually usable, it takes a lot of time and money to store and transport the items, and it's extremely difficult to distribute the items to people who might need them - especially as many people are displaced and are hard to find, never mind how hard it is for them to have any way to store such items. Often, all of the items end up being thrown away.

I would expect any person that wants to be PRESIDENT would know that it's money that's needed most, so that relief agencies can purchase and transport what's needed MOST.

Here is more about the realities of donating things instead of cash (and why it's a bad idea regarding disaster response). 

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