ICAN has launched a fundraising campaign on behalf of the Irish Red Cross Society for the regions affected by the tsunami in south-east Asia. The digital media agency is making available a series of web advertisements pointing to the Irish Red Cross website (www.redcross.ie) where users can make online donations.
About 15 Irish websites and 10 international sites have already signed up for the campaign, which got under way earlier this week. Website administrators who are interested in joining the fundraising drive can collect suitable ad formats such as banners and skyscrapers from www.ican.ie/redcross. Several Irish sites are already running the ads, including Ireland.com, Rte.ie, Unison.ie and Eircom.net.
The Irish Red Cross pays nothing to ICAN for operating this campaign and none of the websites running the ads will receive payment for participating in the effort. Every cent of each donation made online will be collected by the charity and will go directly to helping the relief efforts.
Commenting on the campaign, ICAN managing director Shenda Loughnane said: “We greatly appreciate the support of the sites that have already placed the tsunami appeal adverts free of charge on their sites and would encourage other sites to join in the campaign.”
George Thomas, media manager with ICAN, added: “We’re trying to get maximum exposure for Irish Red Cross online fundraising. The more places we have the ‘creatives’ running, the chances of raising a good amount of money gets better.”
Globally, the technology sector has led many fundraising efforts to aid the disaster-hit region. Microsoft has given US$3.5m and Cisco donated US$2.5m, including almost US$500k raised by its own employees. Michael and Susan Dell have donated US$3.5m through their charitable foundation. IBM has given more than US$1m as well as providing 1,000 laptops, batteries and country-specific power supplies that are to be used as part of the recovery process. Customers of Amazon.com have already given more than US$12m.
By Gordon Smith
