Disaster aid

More than $500 million has been pledged toward Haitian relief efforts from world governments, private and public charities, international aid agencies and individual donations.

Donors freely choose which organizations, popular appeal or cause to support and where to direct their contributions of a few dollars to the $66 million raised by the Hope for Haiti disaster relief concert. The multiplicity of relief groups and organizations broadens opportunities to help and encourages a diversified response. But the system also tends to favor larger organizations with name recognition and organizational capabilities that enable them to respond swiftly. They also have more credibility since donors are familiar with their programs.

But the generally decentralized response in Haiti has revived talk of more cooperative efforts to pool disaster relief funds and distribute them among relief agencies based on where they are needed and who can best provide critical services.

Pooling resources has worked in a few other countries: Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy and Switzerland have established some form of pooling. But the practice has not caught on in the United States, where it meets with continued resistance despite talk of sharing resources that have followed other catastrophes, according to a New York Times report by Stephanie Strom.

Some pooling of relief funds has occurred. A Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation was set up after Hurricane Katrina and the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund distributed aid to various organizations. The Hope for Haiti concert is distributing aid through an advisory board to seven groups. The American Red Cross, which has raised $200 million for Haitian relief, has committed $30 million to the World Food Program in Haiti. They are limited efforts, though.

A Red Cross spokeswoman expressed reservations about a broader, more organized effort, citing another layer of bureaucracy to distribute the funds and causing delays in delivering aid. Control of the funds also means greater accountability to donors.

The fragmented response, though, can result in duplication or a concentration of desperately need resources in one region. With shared resources, Tony Pipa, a founder of the Louisiana foundation, told the Times, "Money is shared with different actors with different strengths and different experience on the ground in different places."

Smaller efforts in the United States could pave the way for more large-scale programs that make more effective use of relief funds.