Donating Online
Whenever disaster strikes, the American populace is often very willing to give its time and hard-earned money, and with the environmental disaster of hurricane Katrina in the Gulf coast, now is no exception. Thankfully, donation-giving is easier today than it ever has been in the past, thanks to ways to give directly online. Have an Amazon.com account? Head over to this page and you can make a donation to the Red Cross using the credit card information you already have on file (over $7,000,000 dollars collected as of the time of this blog entry). Have a PayPal account? You can make a donation to The United Way from this page.
Even if you don't have a credit card on file with Amazon.com or a PayPal account, you can still easily make a donation online directly from the Red Cross's website (or The United Way's website). (Of course, for those luddites out there - and, hey, what are you doing using the Internet! - you can always call the Red Cross's toll-free donation number (1-800-HELP-NOW) or even - gasp - donate via the US postal mail.)
I heard on the radio the other day that experts are estimating that the Katrina relief effort is costing $500 million dollars per day. Cripes, that's a lot of dollars, so every bit obviously helps.