Want to donate to Texas hurricane relief (but not to the Red Cross)?

I should have thought of this earlier, but it took a neighbor to put it in my head.

She stopped me on the street yesterday and asked if I knew of any local relief organizations in Texas she and her mother could donate to. They didn’t want to send money to the ubiquitous Red Cross because of its high administrative costs. The Salvation Army was a possibility but not what she’d prefer. Did I have any better ideas?

Well, of course the best idea was to ask Commentariat member, Texan, and shelter volunteer Larry Arnold. He responded:

My church is providing cleanup buckets and Early Response Team trained cleanup crews to the coast through our RioTexas conference, at the conference disaster warehouse here. Donations can be mailed to First United Methodist Church, 321 Thompson Dr, Kerrville, TX 78028 or donated directly to the Conference’s Harvey effort at https://riotexas.org/harvey.

The Texas Baptist Men disaster relief also has a good program, assisting in several ways. For instance, they have chainsaw teams who can tackle areas where downed trees are a problem. They’re at http://texasbaptistmen.org/Ministries/Disaster-Relief.

Donation buttons at both links.

Regular readers know Larry and know what a great (and sensible) guy he is. If he endorses these efforts, you know your donations won’t be wasted. Cleanup is definitely the big emphasis now — and will be for a long time to come. So if you’ve got a few extra shekels and want to send them for hurricane relief, there you go.

Other local possibilities include: the Houston Food Bank (100 rating from Charity Navigator); the Houston Humane Society (89.34 rating); and the Houston SPCA (96.82 rating). All three of those links lead to Charity Navigator and include a donation button.

If you want to join the crowd donating to the Red Cross, look around a bit and you might be able to stretch that money past those notorious admin costs. Have a Discover card, for instance? Use your card to send money to the RC and Discover will match your donation.

Larry adds:

I’ll also take the opportunity to point out that more and more communities are getting involved in disaster preparation, instead of the “wait for FEMA” response. Long-term, it’s a good idea to find your local organizations, like volunteer fire departments, faith-based efforts, and other groups, and support them with hours or dollars.

I’m fortunate enough to live in a community and a neighborhood that already think like this. I hope you do, too, and that you’re involved with community preps.