Red Into Green

A Red Cross fundraising campaign for Haiti raised record amounts via text messages after a campaign on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. “A 48-hour-old fundraising campaign to help Haiti earthquake victims, done solely through text messages, was already stunning Red Cross officials on Thursday when it hit $3 million. By Friday morning, the tally had more than doubled. The campaign, made viral on networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, had raised $8 million by Friday, according to a Twitter message from the White House that was reposted on the Red Cross account. The campaign leads a spate of online efforts that have allowed people to help victims of the devastating quake. The Red Cross campaign’s tally would be double the $4 million that was donated to all charities by mobile texts in all of 2009, a spokeswoman said. Abi Weaver, spokeswoman for the Red Cross, confirmed that the mobile giving campaign hit the $7 million mark about 11 p.m. Thursday. ‘It’s shattered any record that we’ve seen with mobile giving before,’ Wendy Harman, social media manager for the Red Cross, said Thursday. Friday morning, ‘Red Cross’ was among the 10 most popular topics on Twitter.”