Fundraisr.Org » Gulf of Mexico http://www.fundraisr.org Fundraising, Charity, Volunteering, CSR Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:53:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 The 13 Oil Spill Charities that are worth donating to http://www.fundraisr.org/oil-spill-charities-that-are-worth-donating-to http://www.fundraisr.org/oil-spill-charities-that-are-worth-donating-to#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 06:51:46 +0000 admin http://www.fundraisr.org/?p=59 Continue reading →]]> Disasters happen, and with the focus of the world, there comes the not-so-much-welcome focus of those, who want to take their tolls on people with true intention to help.

Scammers and fake charities are just as swift to react using the peaks of the public urge for giving, as real charities (if not faster), and while in times of difficulties it is always easy to find camouflage to their malevolent efforts, this cover is only there to distract people from their real goals of making money on the back of the less fortunate. Thus, it is extremely important to watch out for all the tiny details when you decide to give – especially when you do it in the middle of a bigger movement of volunteer and charity efforts.

As the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon accident spread the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, many charities and fakes have spread the online world asking for help. So have people willing to grant money to mitigate the environmental and human disaster that is to follow the accident. While there are numerous organizations that are really efficient and transparent in their disaster relief efforts, others are not so much.

Scammers aside, there are quite a few organizations for whom good will is not enough – due to their size, the lack of professional skills or experience, they can not act effectively enough to become worthwhile for your donations.

To help direct money to charities and organizations that are efficiently taking part of the disaster relief, and are really capable of making an impact – and to help donors avoid scams in the charity business -, the U.S. Better Business Bureau (BBB) have recently published a list of 13 nonprofits working in the Gulf of Mexico that meet the Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance’s Standards for Charity Accountability.

While BBB is not an ultimate “authority” to judge the efforts of the organizations in question, it seems fair and well-founded to conclude that the charities listed below are amongst the best choices to pick when you choose to donate to oil spill victims (below the names of the charities, we have also shown the section of the given organization’s website dedicated to their efforts in the Gulf of Mexico – where a section like that was available).

For the latest news and details of ABC’s Gulf of Mexico activities click here!

Visit the Latest from the Gulf section of Defenders of Wildlife’s homepage, or visit the organizations blog!

To donate or to get more info on the organization’s activities visit the Gulf Coast oil spill Action Center!

Visit EarthShare’s detailed Gulf Oil Spill page!

Visit EDF’s detailed chronicle of the BP oil disaster.

There are a huge amount of Oil Spill-related info on the Audubon homepage.

For the latest news and updates on the Oil Spill crisis (as seen from NWF’s perspective), click here!

At the moment the whole website of NRDC is all about the Oil Spill crisis.

Not much info and features but the ways you can help NC help in the Gulf Crisis are right here.

Previously on Fundraisr.org
]]> http://www.fundraisr.org/oil-spill-charities-that-are-worth-donating-to/feed 0 BP at bay over its CSR policies, and beyond http://www.fundraisr.org/bp-at-bay-over-its-csr-policies-and-beyond http://www.fundraisr.org/bp-at-bay-over-its-csr-policies-and-beyond#comments Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:16:12 +0000 admin http://www.fundraisr.org/?p=40 Continue reading →]]> Can British Petroleum, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, awash in cash and resources be knocked down by an event as blatant as a “simple” environmental disaster? The question may well have been unthinkable until very recently, but given the oil giant’s CSR communication that is found outrageously hypocritical by many, BP may now easily become a punching bag so popular that no organization can survive. The foolishness of the few, combined with the rage of the many might now bring an end to the story that is British Petroleum. Beyond petroleum, beyond preposterous – and beyond all expectations.

Beyond Petroleum

The first chapter of BP’s story has its roots in qualities as common and popular as hipocrisy, pretentiousness and greed. The global company triggered overwhelming anger towards its policies with its “Beyond Petroleum” branding campaign way before the Deep Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico sent some 1,000,000 barrels of oil into the sea in April, 2010.

According to the company, the slogan “Beyond Petroleum” refers to BP’s being the “global leader in producing the cleanest burning fossil fuel: Natural Gas,” says CorpWatch. While it’s obvious that natural gas is not petroleum, and, when burnt, it emits slightly less carbon-dioxide for the same amount of energy produced. Calculations on the other hand show that when fugitive emissions or leaks are counted, the difference is next to zero, if anything.

British Petroleum also claims to be “the largest producer of solar energy in the world”, but based on the fact that it became market leader by buying the Solarex solar energy corporation for $45 million in the same year when it invested $26.5 billion in ARCO, a company that will help BP to increase its production capacity for oil, the priority of clean energy within company values is highly questionable. In reference of other figures, the corporation will spend $5 billion over five years for oil exploration in Alaska alone – and according to an unknown, malvolent source, BP spent more on their new eco-friendly logo last year than on renewable energy.

After the conflict between the company’s actions and its new branding message emerged, BP ran into a second failure by treating the scandal more as a communication issue than a reality issue. True, the internet was flooded with spoofs of BP’s green ads, but the furious company only managed to get deeper into the crisis with trying to get hold of the situation. To illustrate BP’s epic fail in communication, it is suffice to say that when it complained to Twitter about one of the numerous parody feeds that mocked the company’s efforts to clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill the tweeter BPGlobalPR changed its bio to “We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 51 days.” How’s that for a result? And let us add that the BPGlobalPR feed has 164,000 followers as opposed to the 14,500 followers of BP’s official Twitter feed, BPAmerica. Much of the criticism has already moved to #BPrebrand, where suggestions for BP so far included Big Profits Botched PR, Beyond Pollution, Busted Pipeline and Bankruptcy Please!

The fate of British Petroleum, on the other hand is still not up to outraged environmentalists or pissed off Tweeters. The company is now dependent of politicians and investors. And as many argue, politicians’ hipocrisy of finding oil companies as scapegoats of environmental disasters, while still benefiting from and being dependent on low cost oil may mean life for BP this time.

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