One of the most heartening things we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks is the incredible and quick response of hundreds of people raising money online for Haiti disaster relief efforts.  Right in our own backyard, a group of students at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Somerville, MA have been spearheading a highly successful initiative to raise money online for Doctors Without Borders.  Check out their FirstGiving page to see the most recent results; at the time this post was published, they were quickly approaching the $12,000 mark.

Rahul Bhatnagar and Kit Barron were kind enough to chat with us about how they’ve helped mobilize their community for action.

FirstGiving: How did your idea to raise money for Doctors Without Borders develop and evolve?

Kit: About 24 hours after [the earthquake] happened, I got an email from Rahul.  There had already been a big outpouring of compassion and sharing of information at Fletcher about Haiti.   Our community had a delegation of 7 students and faculty in Port-au-Prince at the time [the earthquake happened] so that certainly created a lot of buzz; and we initially wanted to find out what had happened to our own.

FirstGiving: What was the purpose of the delegation?

Rahul: The Center for Emerging Market Enterprise at Fletcher sent five students and two professors to research the internal capacity of the Haiti economy.  They were trapped in Haiti for several days, so in that sense it was a little bit personal for us.  And I’m sorry to report but we actually learned yesterday that one of our alum, Jan Olaf Hausotter, was working for the UN, and we hadn’t heard from him, and he actually perished.

FirstGiving: I’m very sorry to hear that.

Rahul: And it was even more personal because we have two students who were working with Jan; he was their boss. So you hear all these things, and we felt we had to do something.  We got together and said “it will be a small drop in the ocean, but it will be our drop.  Let’s raise $1000 in 72 hours.”

FirstGiving: How did setting up a FirstGiving page help you to do that?

Kit: We thought that FirstGiving provided a wonderful conduit through which our community could donate. Fletcher is a highly involved community interested in international affairs, so we knew that a lot of people would probably be making individual donations, but there was no easy way of telling how much the community as a whole has made an impact.  Having a page on on FirstGiving connected to a well-vetted organization, coupled with a really easy way to donate enabled us to achieve a lot more through FirstGiving’s site than we would have just by passing out a link asking people to donate to various organizations. Also, to be able to see what your friends and other classmates are doing–it’s really encouraging.

Rahul: I had raised money for the Chicago Marathon using FirstGiving, so I said, hey, I know FirstGiving.  We looked at a couple of other sites with the same business model, but I have to say that what complements FirstGiving is how easy it is to set it up. And the fact that nonprofits like the American Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders trust it means a lot.

FirstGiving: How did you decide to raise money for Doctors Without Borders, as opposed to another organization?

Kit: Most of our decision was driven by talking to people who had worked with various organizations and looking at some of the criticism and praise different organizations had received in past crises.

Stay tuned for part 2 of our interview with Rahul and Kit!  And in the meantime, you can see how close they are to their goal by visiting their FirstGiving page.