The disaster giving trap
Rees Calder · 20 April 2026 · 5 min read
The morning after a major disaster, donation platforms see spikes. After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the American Red Cross reported over $400 million in donations within weeks. After the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake, GoFundMe and JustGiving saw coordinated donation surges. After every major televised catastrophe, the pattern repeats.
The pattern is also, on cost-per-life-saved terms, one of the worst ways to give money.
Here is why the instinct is so strong, why it's mostly wrong, and what to do instead.
Disaster giving is a response to attention, not to need
The largest driver of disaster donation volume is media coverage, not underlying severity. This is the CNN effect, documented across decades of humanitarian economics.
Research by Thomas Eisensee and David Strömberg (Journal of Public Economics, 2007) found that US disaster relief is heavily predicted by media coverage, and that coverage varies wildly with factors unrelated to suffering (Olympics on TV that week, holiday schedules, competing political news). The 2023 Libya floods killed an estimated 11,300+ people. Media coverage, and donations, were a fraction of those following a 2023 European flood event with far lower casualties.
The unsettling implication. If you donate in response to what's on television, you are donating to a news cycle, not to the worst need.
The returns on disaster giving are low
Three reasons disaster-tied donations are typically less cost-effective than routine, evidence-based giving.
One: saturation. Acute disasters receive disproportionate funding relative to need. OCHA Financial Tracking Service data shows that the best-televised disasters frequently reach 150-300% of UN appeal targets, while slower-burn humanitarian emergencies routinely land at 30-50%. Marginal dollars to over-funded disasters pay for logistics overhead, not additional lives saved.
Two: cost of speed. Moving goods into a disaster zone in 72 hours is expensive, often 5-10x the cost of moving the same goods through normal supply chains. Emergency response is necessary work, but a dollar spent in the first 72 hours saves fewer lives, on average, than a dollar spent before the disaster (preparedness) or during stable recovery operations (6-24 months out).
Three: misallocation to the visible. Disaster giving overwhelmingly goes to the visible stages (rubble clearing, tented camps) rather than the invisible but higher-leverage stages (vaccination campaigns, rebuilt water systems, cash transfers at scale). GiveDirectly's Large Transfer studies show cash transfers to disaster-affected households outperform in-kind aid on household welfare, but they never make the televised appeal.
The counter-evidence, kept honestly
The case above is not watertight. Two counters.
Disaster giving brings new donors in. People who first give after a disaster sometimes stay as donors. Charity Navigator's 2023 retention data shows disaster-acquired donors retain at lower rates than general-acquired monthly donors, but the first-time-donation rate is real and non-zero. So disaster giving has a pipeline effect that cost-effectiveness-per-life numbers don't capture.
Some disaster responses are genuinely underfunded. The neglected disasters (slow-onset droughts, prolonged refugee crises, non-English-speaking country events) are often underfunded by conventional metrics and can absorb marginal dollars well. Directing disaster giving to these rather than to the televised ones partially solves the attention-allocation problem.
The steelman view. If your disaster giving is your first giving, fine. If your disaster giving is directed at neglected events, fine. If your disaster giving is reactive, televised, and displaces your routine giving, you are plausibly burning dollars.
A better policy
Four rules that make disaster giving defensible.
One: protect your baseline. Whatever you give annually to high-quality routine causes (GiveWell top charities, evidence-based organisations you already trust) should not be displaced by a disaster impulse. Disaster giving comes on top, not in place of.
Two: direct to unrestricted funds, not earmarked. Large reputable disaster responders (MSF, UNICEF, Red Cross/Crescent) all publish the difference between earmarked and unrestricted donations. Earmarked donations to a specific crisis frequently can't be fully deployed because of saturation. Unrestricted donations go where they are most needed, including the crises nobody is covering this week. Tick the unrestricted box.
Three: delay by 30-60 days. First-week donations are the most crowded, most expensive, and least marginal. Donations 30-60 days in, when the news cycle has moved on and the appeal is underfunded, buy more. Setting a calendar reminder six weeks after a disaster hits the news is a small piece of friction that beats the emotional timing of the week-one appeal.
Four: consider pre-positioned response over post-event response. Organisations like Start Network and the Centre for Disaster Philanthropy run pre-positioned funds that let responders move on day one with money already in country. A £1 pre-positioned saves several times what the same £1 donated in week two of a crisis saves. Less emotionally satisfying. Much better on life-per-dollar.
What not to do
Three things to actively avoid.
Avoid GoFundMe-style individual campaigns for disasters unless you have direct context. Individual campaigns during disasters are statistically more likely to be fraudulent or duplicative (FTC data, 2023). If you are not connected to the campaign creator, you are gambling.
Avoid "matching" promotions for disasters. "Donate $50, we match $50" campaigns during disasters are frequently accounting tricks where the matched funds would have been raised anyway. They are marketing, not multiplication.
Avoid sending physical goods. Shipping used clothing to disaster zones has been repeatedly documented to clog ports, require costly disposal, and displace local suppliers. Disaster responders have been asking the public to stop doing this for 30 years (USAID Center for International Disaster Information, ongoing). They are still asking.
A quiet summary
The disaster-giving trap is the gap between what feels urgent and what is useful. The feeling of urgency is real. The usefulness is distributed more widely than the news cycle implies. Give anyway. Give mostly elsewhere. And if you give to disasters, give slowly, unrestricted, and to the ones that aren't on the news.
Sources used: Eisensee & Strömberg, News Droughts, News Floods, and US Disaster Relief, Journal of Public Economics (2007), UN OCHA Financial Tracking Service data (2023), GiveDirectly Large Transfer Study results (2022-2024), Charity Navigator Disaster Donor Retention analysis (2023), Centre for Disaster Philanthropy Annual Disaster Giving Report (2023), USAID Center for International Disaster Information guidance, Start Network anticipatory action case studies (2024). Full links in the planning doc.