At first light Wednesday, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter evacuated four critically injured U.S. Embassy staff to the hospital on the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

i love how even though all of these helpless people in haiti are dying, the only people who can actually help themselves get top priority FFS i hate the US

Yeah, damn those critically wounded United States government officials for needing to be airlifted to a facility that can help keep them alive. Coast guard should have taken 4 Haitians instead, amirite?

your missing what im saying, im sure the staff workers WHERE critically injured theres no debate there, however im sure the US coast guard couldve taken more than just 4 of their "own." I guess i should have worded it differently but still its really pathetic to hear the only ones getting help right now are the ones that only have a "backround." i hope that makes sense, not trying to offend you.

+1

This is BBV

sick tragedy. If i had any FT funds left, id def ship.

good thing to try and help OP

Hope all help, international aid get there quick.

OP, when it comes time to make the donation, consider this piece of advice floating around on the interwebs today:

"Immediately after a disaster is prime fundraising time for NGOs. So they all rush in and put out immediate appeals before there’s any clear idea of what or how much they can actually help. Only fund those that already have an office established in country because of the amount of time and money it takes to get anything more than just search and rescue up and running. If you want to move into anything such as temporary shelters, food distribution, those with an already established presence will know the people and systems better and be able to work more quickly and less expensively."

A few suggestions, courtesy of aidwatchers.com:

http://aidwatchers.com/2010/01/haiti...saster-relief/

easy..

just imagine new york city on a normal business day at 2pm... ok by 2:10pm almost every building is a destroyed pile of concrete etc..

shipped


hope my cheese burgers help them in some way.

There wasn't any more room in the evac: it was all full of the dirt-cheap contraband verneer's bought with bbv charity booty.

Actually, this type of rundraising is so perfectly efficient it's brilliant.

From my experience with fundraising (which is significant, I will say) 95% of the battle is finding the easiest way possible for people to donate, and only 5% is researching the most efficient/reputable program to give that money too (and I have every confidence OP will find a good way to donate what he's collected anyways)

I imagine the number speaks for itself and validates the success of poker transfers as a means to collect - my gut tells me if left to our own, we would have already contributed significantly less than the total that OP has collected.

Well Done OP, keep it up.

In college I was involved with an organization that sent groups of students to NO after Hurricane Katrina and having an already established presence in the area makes a huge difference for groups like the Red Cross, for instance.

This is a great idea, and much appreciated. Shipped $41.92 on Stars just because I like to keep my account and even number whenever possible.

shipped 10, GL Haiti

How much you got so far verneer. I'll ship some $$$ tomorrow or Friday for sure, good idea.

Shipped a bit, Gebhardt80 on FTP. Thanks for doing this.

Update: 70 donations total for $1,782.78.

Will spend tonight reading up on the most effective charities as suggested ITT. Will also read up aidwatchers as suggested by WiredforAA.

Such a horrible event
Bless all who have sent
Haiti may not have the most gifted
But those who fell will be lifted
And for those who don't care
Don't fear
The end is near
2012
Is almost here.

You probably should have posted this in NVG. You would get more money. You're posting in the broke degen forum.

I saw viffer did this before xmas. He raised alot of money.

Gl though.

verneer, awesome of you to organize this. I was just thinking earlier how it'd be nice if sites (Full Tilt, PokerStars, etc) could work out a way to make direct transfer donations.

After a little research and seeing it mentioned on www.reddit.com I decided to donate to this organization:

Partners in Health
http://www.pih.org/

Here's an on going list of Haiti earthquake relief funds. All I'm sure are a great cause given the disaster over there.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...to_help_a.html

I agree with donating more direct to a group rather then going through Red Cross, etc.

we are all degenerate gamblers with no emotions. thats why congress is trying to ban online poker no?

i am saddened this thread hasn't been locked and the op edited to just have a link to red cross or some other legitimate charity.

read the replies and learn instead of being a stuck up arsehole

In that case, at least $50 less would've donated

Verneer is a standup guy who has previously made generous offers to members of the micro NL community. He is a trustworthy individual whose heart is definitely in the right place.

Donations < $10: 14 for a total of $74.95
Donations 10 < x < 20: 29 for a total of $343.75
Donations 20 < x < 30: 18 for a total of $396.83

This has added up, and I as people have admitted - I don't think many of these people would have gone out of their way to make these donations themselves. This is of course no reflection on them, but simply the nature of inertia. What I've tried to do is make it easy for someone to ship $5.75 or w/e and let me worry about the rest. Others have gone and donated through the Red Cross or other charity. Wonderful!

Also ... I will post a graph in typical BBV fashion of the results so far.

What I meant, was that I would not have donated, if a link to the red cross had been posted :-)

As I mentioned earlier, I believe it would best if you could find a local organization to donate the money to. An organization that doesnt spend 50% on paychecks and bonuses, and that single individuals probably wouldnt have been able to find or donate to otherwise.