The economy is strong enough that people are giving in a large way. |
The Internet definitely helped tsunami giving. It may make people more comfortable with online giving in the future. |
The outlook for 2006 is shakier, if the economy falters, |
The Red Cross is getting the lion's share of the money, |
The scale of this disaster is so big, that there is certainly going to be a lot of effort by the charities to call attention to long-term needs. So I would expect that giving will go in waves for quite a long period of time. |
The total amounts for Sept. 11 were over a billion dollars, but that took several months, ... To have more than $404 million [after nine days], it is astonishing. |
The total amounts for Sept. 11 were over a billion dollars, but that took several months. To have more than $404 million [after nine days], it is astonishing. |
These are people who otherwise don't get a lot of attention for their giving, or anything else, have a lot of money and are using it philanthropically. One of the challenges of compiling the list is that a lot of people don't want to talk about it. |
They get very engaged in grant proposals and a little geeky. They really read them, they care about them, they read the science journals, they will question the scientist and they probably know more about [the topic] than some of the experts in the field. |
This is a big giving time of the year when a lot of donors are making decisions about where their charitable donations will go, and now they might wonder whether their contributions were well-used. |
Usually these big bequests happen because people donate all their money when they die, and when they're alive, they give smaller amounts. |
Usually we have these kinds of donations in the later part of the year, so people feel it's going to be a very strong year. |
We really seem at a stage where growth is happening in a fairly spectacular way. |