Both large and small financial services firms joined the worldwide effort to relieve the suffering caused by the earthquake in Haiti.
Independent financial advisers contacted clients through e-mails and tweets late last week, offering suggestions about ways to help. Many even encouraged clients use their cell phones to make an automatic donation.
Cathy Curtis, a financial adviser with Curtis Financial Planning, sent an e-mail to her clients on Friday with a list of credible organizations that take donations of money for people in Haiti. Her e-mail also included guidelines to avoid scams.
She's hoping her e-mail to clients and posts on Twitter will spur more donations. “Some of these people may donate who didn't think of donating, or were worried about donating to the wrong place,” she said.
Ms. Curtis and her husband personally donated a few hundred dollars and she said she may also make a donation in her firm's name.
She posted on Twitter suggesting to the more than 2,600 people who follow her that they can text “Haiti” at 90999 from their cell phones to donate $10 to the American Red Cross for relief efforts. The money will be automatically deducted from their monthly cell phone bills.
“I'm Tweeting about donating because I don't know if people know how easy it is,” Ms. Curtis said. “I'm seeing this all over the Internet. Everyone I know is talking about it.”
An employee told Preston Byers, founder of ClearBridge Wealth Management, about donating $10 via a text message. Mr. Byers, whose firm manages $120 million, was initially concerned it might be a scam.
After investigating it, he concluded it was legitimate and alerted 150 clients and friends.
“We don't want to push people,” he said. “But it's a great idea and it's so easy. All you need to do is punch in five numbers and it's automatically taken out of your bill. If half a million people do it, that's $5 million dollars.”
Reports on Friday showed that the Red Cross had received more than $4 million from text messages.
Mr. Byer's firm donated $500 to the Red Cross.
Meanwhile,
LPL Financial adviser Frank Congemi spent most of last week at his office in Deerfield Beach, Fla. He is a board member for the Deerfield Beach Chamber of Commerce, which is spearheading a program to get people to donate to Food for the Poor, a relief organization that has been working with countries like Haiti for 28 years.
Mr. Congemi, who manages $100 million in assets, also has an office in New York. He said he has about a dozen clients with relatives in Haiti.
“The Haitian clients I have are consumed with contacting their families,” he said. “Some of them have called me to ask what kind of services and input we have.”
For their part, larger financial services firms said they donated over $10 million to relief efforts as of Friday.
General Electric Co. gave $2.5 million;
Citigroup Inc. $2 million; and The
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and
Bank of America Corp. $1 million each.
State Street Corp. donated $400,000, and
Wells Fargo & Co. donated $100,000, as did U.S. Bancorp and Discover Financial Services.
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. also donated $100,000 to Haiti relief efforts through the American Red Cross International Relief Fund. The insurer has also expanded its Matching Gift Program for its employees and financial representatives.
At
Deutsche Bank AG's global markets equity group, and
Jefferies Group Inc., the trading desks got involved. Both firms said they would donate net commissions earned on trading Friday. For Deutsche Bank, the commitment worked out to $4 million.
Jefferies said it would also give $1 million, and is also donating the salaries of its more than 2,500 employees. As of midday Friday, Jefferies said it was “on track” to donate about $5 million, with “continued client support” on the trading desks.
Reports indicate as many as 50,000 people may have died in the Jan. 12 disaster.
