I Need Your Help: You Decide How Much I Donate to Storm Relief

by Gary Leff

I was supposed to be in New York this past weekend, and it was a pleasure trip, so I cancelled it (for obvious reasons).

I grew up on Long Island, and have family on Staten Island. My uncle there, a first-responder, has been a part of search and rescue efforts. My family is fortunate to all be ok and to have just property damaged.

The storm there is shocking in so many ways, and almost a week later they’ve only just scratched the surface of recovery.

Mommy Points came up with an idea of ‘Comments for Contributions.’ The original idea was something like ‘100 for $100’ where a blogger would donate $1 per comment, up to $100.

But bloggers can be a competitive bunch, and a collaborative bunch too, and we’ve challenged each other to do a bit more. The combined comments (in a designated thread) on each of six blogs:

…will determine how much is donated, up to 1800 comments in total for $1800 in contributions.

Living in DC I was only barely affected by the storm, sure the city shut down for a couple of days but I lost power for less than 18 hours. I’ve been lucky in so many ways.

So I’m glad that the group of six of us can both give to assist in relief efforts, and also help engage our readership in that effort as well.

More on how you can help decide how much I donate in a moment. First, a word on how you can make donations, while tapping into either matching contributions from travel providers or mileage-earning incentives (or both!) at the same time.

Mommy Points put together a list of mileage-earning opportunities for contributions and also mileage donation opportunities, along with help from Wandering Aramean who lives in Lower Manhattan.

Now, here’s how you can help right now and in this post.

I don’t usually like talking about my own charitable giving, I feel like charity shouldn’t be ‘showy’ and at least speaking purely personally I prefer to do it quietly.

But there’s this challenge on the table to help and the involvement device of a comment helps bring more attention to giving for others perhaps and generating some incremental social excitement could help spur involvement from others. So I’m willing to break my own rules or at least strong preferences here.

Leave a comment about the storm, either how you were affected, what you’re doing to help, or how it’s weighed on you.

The six of us will collectively donate $1 for every comment received in the relevant post on our blogs. Leave a comment here in this post by Noon Eastern on Thursday, November 8th. The goal is $1800 to charity to support relief from the storm.

In that way, you can help direct my charitable dollars and those of three other bloggers to hurricane relief.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  3. […] but here is one more Sandy post.  View from the Wing, along with other Boarding Area bloggers, is sponsoring a comment-based donation to the hurricane relief effort.  All you need to do is comment on their blog posts and they’ll donate to […]

Comments

  5. I only lost power for 12 hours, but our friends are still out, probably until the 1th. We have fed them, let them hang out here, and let them take showers. (They do not want to sleep here, even though we offered.)

  7. This is a great initiative, Gary!

    We just got rained on in Virginia, but most of our family in NY/NJ/CT was without power for days, and is still mostly without transportation due to the scarcity of fuel. Business with anybody in Hoboken or lower Manhattan is still very much on hold till further notice — though we have connected with all our colleagues by email and social media, and know they are at least riding it out safely.

  13. I have an idea. Why don’t you make another useless post and slap all your CC affiliate referral links into it. Then all the revenue that is generated from those applications/clicks you can put towards charity. You’d be well above $1800 in no time flat.

  14. I live in Christchurch, NZ, so the storm didn’t impact me, but I know full well the devastating impact a natural disaster can have on people’s lives. Good luck.

  15. I go to school in the Atlantic City area which was affected by the area and I have family in Northern NJ. Fortunately, my family is okay and there was no property damage.

    I plan on volunteering in the Atlantic City area at a rescue mission.

  17. Actually I kind of like my idea. How about “Applications for Contributions”. You put up your CC affiliate links on a certain day (or week), and we apply thru them and the proceeds go to charity. I would actually consider applying thru blogger CC application links again if you guys did something like this. In fact somebody else has already beat you to the punch on this, although he’s giving 50% of all CC affiliate link kickbacks AND 50% of all profit made from hotel bookings (and more?) made on his website for the rest of 2012:
    http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/19612942-post2.html

  18. I live in Washington, DC, and feel like we really dodged the bullet here. I lost power for about 30 seconds and was grumbling to myself sitting in the dark for half a minute. Then I talked to a friend from New York who spent 9 hours in a line to get 1/2 a tank of gas, and was amazed to hear from him that he feels lucky just to be alive, considering the destruction around his house. It really puts things in perspective! If I can help raise $1 more for 30 seconds of my time here then I’m all in.

  19. I donated to the Red Cross before the airline incentives were announced and again after the announcement.

  20. Priority club is accepting points donations. For every 5,000 points they will convert that to a $20 donation.

  21. I live in NYC, and was one of the people in lower Manhattan that was without power for 5 days. That said, I feel fortunate. There are so many people who continue to suffer severely from the effects of this storm. Some areas are like war zones.

    Your goodwill is very much appreciated.

  22. I plan on volunteering either in Brooklyn or Staten Island over Thanksgiving break when I am back visiting family.

  25. I live in Chelsea and had no heat/electricity/internet/cell phone service for 4 nights. And it was cold. VERY cold. Thanks to Gary and this blog, I had applied for the Chase/Hyatt credit card and managed to spend two nights at the Grand Hyatt, saving me $400/night + tax which would have put me out at close to $1,000. I spent one night in my cold apartment because there was no availability in any of the hotels and that experience taught me how quickly and easily we take things forgranted. I’ve never sat in coach since 2004 and could never fathom how anyone will fly economy. Well, I also never knew how fortunate I was for the past 8 years. This experience has been a walk down to memory lane – humility.

  27. I would donate if I could find a direct way to help. I don’t trust these big organizations to use the donations in a smart manner or even to use them for aid at all.

  29. I donated to the American Red Cross via United Airlines. Thanks for what you are doing on Boarding Area.

  30. I live in Ct on the coast where some parts of the state got hammered. For some reason we got lucky, the town to west and to the east of us both got hit hard but for some reason it wasn’t as bad here. Lots of power outages and trees down but not a lot of damage to homes like in the other towns. Nice to see you and the other bloggers being so generous.

  34. I flew in and out of SYR on Sunday and Monday, just as the storm hit NYC, and got rebooked five times as flights went down like dominoes. I’m grateful to have gotten my business done and gotten home without issue, and I’m going to donate as soon as I figure out how to optimize points… (charity is good — but mileage reflexes die hard!)

  35. Randy, et al should commit to donating any and all ‘proceeds’ from their lawsuit against US, et al.

  37. I hope the difficult conditions of people in the northeast will bring some awareness to how many billions of people in the world live without electricity and clean water daily.

  38. Go Gary Go!

    I live in CT and wasn’t affected much. I grew up in NJ and my folks still live there. They’re fine and well. I was concerned for a childhood friend living in southern Jersey, but after some communication I was relieved to hear that he fared well.

    I dig hobo13’s comment.

  39. Lost power at home for two days and at my office for four days. Otherwise we came out OK. Lots of people fairly near us were not so lucky. My wife and I were on the Board of the Red Cross for about 5 years. Trust me, Every little bit helps out. Thanks to Gary and the others.

  40. Grew up in Coney Island, Brooklyn which got hit pretty bad. Currently living in oceanfront South Florida condo which is supposed to get hit by hurricanes (not the Northeast). Been texting lots of donations to the Red Cross which has been an easy way to give.

  44. My parents were without power for six days after the storm. I’ve donated points through priority club which will turn into dollars for storm relief.

  45. Thanks to all of you bloggers for coming up with this idea. I live in northern NJ but was fortunate enough to come out of this ok.

  47. This is kind of bs. Why not just donate $1800. It would be one thing if the challenge encouraged people to interact with a relief orgs site of social media presence, but peopl interacting with you collective sites does no one any good…but the 5 of you. Donate your points and encourage others to do it…wanna help, simple as that.

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