I'm a heartless bastard I know....

[MorganGrayson]

PD...no. Anyone who needs help is worthy of receiving it, no matter what their situation, no matter what anyone else feels they should or should not have done to prevent...yadda, yadda, yadda. Simply needing help is enough.

I donated money to an animal rescue cause once, immediately getting myself on every mailing list for every conservation/wildlife/whatever fund raising effort in the English speaking world. Now, oddly, many of these charities offered me "inducements" to donate. Some of them were Russ plush animals of the animal on the brink of extinction. If one has small children, or a lady that is a collector, one knows exactly how expensive a Russ plush animal is. I wondered how in the world they could afford to do this. I'm sure it came off their taxes somehow, but it raised questions as to how much of my donation was actually going to help "the cause."

Those questions have to be asked, and asked *before* you donate to anything. During Katrina, I was given the opportunity to donate to specific people, people I cherish, the "collection" run by someone I trust implicitly to make sure every penny got to where it was intended to go. I gave twice, without worrying that the money wasn't really needed or wouldn't go to where it was supposed to go.

I have a dear friend who spent a fortune assisting Katrina victims, with money and actually driving supplies into the area.

Now, with the mad fund raising going on, my question to the world is: why was that even necessary? Why wasn't FEMA, the Red Cross, etc., etc. on point? I found out through her and others that the ones doing the actual work in these areas were small groups of individuals: churches did great; the locals themselves did great; friends and family of those in the areas did great. Those individual people were the ones handing out food, water and assitance. (Somebody told me the Red Cross showed up for their photo op then vanished.)

Asking questions before you donate is just sensible. It doesn't mean that the two webmasters aren't deserving. They are. It only means that it would be very nice to know that one's donation will end up in their hands. With Anthony's post, it seems that a more effective donation would have been to Mike Sperber with the request that he use it to buy supplies and deliver them.

I hope somebody thought to bring Kre8tor a huge bottle of pain killers.