Posted by
If you’re watching the news and seeing all the flooding, devastation, stranded groups of people, and want to know how to help Texas recover from Hurricane Harvey, you’re not alone. We’ve seen some great compilations of charities and organizations to which you can donate, and have rounded up as many as we could find. Please chime in with your own suggestions in the comments!
P.S. Always do your own cross-vetting of any organization to which you plan to donate. Here’s a great primer for donating after a disaster.
Hurricane Harvey donations
The Red Cross
Heart to Heart International
Samaritan’s Purse
Americares (medicine and supplies to evacuees)
Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund via Global Giving
Team Rubicon (military veterans and first responders teams)
All Hands has staff on the ground in Texas
SPB USA
GoFundMe has a section for specific campaigns for help during Hurricane Harvey
Food Banks:
Galveston County Food Bank
Corpus Christi Food Bank
Houston Food Bank
Food Bank of the Golden Crescent (Victoria)
Southeast Texas Food Bank (Beaumont)
Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley (Pharr)
Brazos Valley Food Bank (Bryan)
Central Texas Food Bank (Austin)
San Antonio Food Bank
Helping children, homeless, and disabled of Hurricane Harvey:
Texas Diaper Bank
Coalition for the Homeless
Portlight, providing relief for people with disabilities
Covenant House, sheltering homeless youth
Helping the pets of Hurricane Harvey
Houston Humane Society
San Antonio Humane Society
Austin Pets Alive!
The SPCA in Texas is taking in pets from animal shelters, and takes donations online
If you’re nearby:
Airbnb hosts can offer your place to evacuees for free
Resources for those on the ground in Texas to find shelter, food, and/or volunteer opportunities
Donate blood at Carter BloodCare and the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center
National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) is coordinating local volunteers to help
P.S. Always do your own cross-vetting of any organization to which you plan to donate. Here’s a great primer for donating after a disaster.
About the Author: Catherine Clark
Catherine Clark loiters at her local library, makes art, watches movies en masse, plays video and tabletop games, poorly cooks healthy things, cuddles with her feline fur babies, and blogs at BijouxandBits.com.
I ran across this article this morning. It is food for thought and leads me to believe that donating to specialized local organizations might be the best way to get your money working on the ground. It is also worth reading the article to the end, where there is a shift in subject/point of view.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2017/08/don_t_give_money_to_the_red_cross_we_need_a_new_way.html
I’m not sure about these large scale disasters. But when my small town in Minnesota was hit by a tornado back in 1998, the Red Cross and Salvation Army were essential in the recovery. I have all sorts of religious and ethical issues with the Salvation Army, but they were there, every day, from the beginning to the end, providing meals to us as we were working on recovery. The van would pull up, they’d feed us, check on us, and be on their way. It was amazingly caring in a stressful time.
And the Red Cross was there almost immediately with bottled water and porta-toilets. And before they pulled their team out, they knocked on EVERY SINGLE door in town to make sure people didn’t need anything else.
I gained a ton of respect for both organizations in that situation.
Well, the article is not saying the the organization is ALL bad, but that the money they need for immediate intervention (water bottle, emergency kits, etc.), which is the bulk of what they do, is much less than what they usually actually receive for large scale disasters. It’s not that the work they do is not valuable, just that it has a limited scope.
My takeaway is that if you want donations to actually help people long term, which is what will be sorely needed here, it’s not the best choice. Chances are, the Red Cross already has more that enough money to do their work for people affected by Harvey and they do not cap the donations or forward them to other organizations. People are motivated to donate by the current state of emergency, but it’s also important to think long term because a lot of the misery stemming from a natural disaster actually occurs later that the initial 2 weeks or panic and media overload.
Also, the fact that to this day we don’t have any idea where a large part of the money donated for Haïti was actually spent is troubling. This is not the first time the Red Cross has been criticized for its lack of transparency.
My sister works for Keen (the outdoor apparel company) and they are matching donations up to $25k through this link: https://give.hands.org/campaign/hurricane-harvey-response-keen/c143197.
Also, if you can’t afford to donate cash, many local blood banks are asking for donations to send to fill the need of hospitals in Texas and the rest of the Gulf Coast.
Recently I hear and seeing this news. It so shocking. I will Donate food and arrange blood donation camp. And suggest to friends for doing help.
Thanks for this. We’re in Austin and we’ve signed up to Airbnb our place for free, but it’s great to have more ideas. I feel so useless being simultaneously close to and far from the areas that need help (we’re 170ish miles from Houston but all my family and friends are back in CA and are much more removed).
For any animal lovers, I wkll also suggest the Montgomery County Animal Shelter. I live in Montgomery County (I’m an evacuee and found out last night our house was looted) and I know they are always in need of help. We aren’t officially part of the disaster area yet, so FEMA is doing fuck-all. Camo Rescue is another local rescue that specificay works with small breed dogs. I got my cat from MCAS and am a foster failure through Camo, so I’m biased, but I’ve seen so many pups and kitties helped through these orgs.
I’m glad to see Team Rubicon on your list — I’ve followed them for years as they have helped recovery efforts across many disaster events, and I believe in the work they do — all the time, not just in times of urgent need.