Uneasy Rhetoric

Last night I got to thinking about the possibility of volunteering for a work crew going to New Orleans, Mississippi, or Alabama, if I could find one. I already know that volunteers should not self-deploy. Unless you’re already there with a work team, you’ll most likely just get in the way. Furthermore, realistically, I can’t afford the time or the loss of income this would entail, and I should be prepared to provide emotional and financial assistance to my friends who have been displaced by Katrina.

That being said, I’ll be making a donation to the Red Cross, and I encourage all six of my readers to do the same (or to your favorite domestic aid charity - they’re all going to be there). Whether you can give five dollars or five thousand, your money will find its way down south and help out someone in need.

BoingBoing has an excellent reader comment explaining how money can actually work better than volunteers or donations of stuff. It also gives good advice for what to do if you insist on volunteering. Here’s an excerpt, but anyone thinking about volunteering should read the whole thing:

The single best thing Joe Geek can do is give cash. Not stuff, cash. Cash is portable, fast, and useful. Everything else has problems — even if it is something they really and truly need, because it isn’t there, and people and resources are needed to get it there.

The canonical example: Bottled water. Something otherwise useless that is critical in this sort of emergency. So you give a few flats to the ARC. Well, you bought them at retail, and now, the ARC has to put them on a truck (which costs money) and ship them down there (which cost money, and time.)

Let’s say you give them $20 instead. The ARC notes that they need water. So, they call a bottler in a city close to, but not affected by, the storm. They get wholesale or cost prices, as opposed to retail. For the same amount of money, they get far more water, far closer to where they need to be. In six hours, you’re delivering your flats to the local ARC office. In six hours with cash, they’re handing water to people who desperately need it.

Furthermore, for the two or three of my readers who I suspect itemize their deductions, a donation to the Red Cross is tax deductible.