Americans go online to donate to tsunami relief
(CNN) -- Thousands of Americans were clicking Internet sites Friday, donating millions to help victims of Sunday's earthquake and tsunamis.
The giant Internet retailer Amazon.com placed a link to the American Red Cross prominently on its opening page. By midday Friday, more than 100,000 people had donated more than $8 million.
The Internet portal, Yahoo.com, also set up a link to the Red Cross and other charities. In the first 18 hours, according to Yahoo spokeswoman Nicki Dugan, more than 12,000 donors had contributed over $1.2 million to the Red Cross.
Dugan said Yahoo was also hosting the Red Cross donation site because the Red Cross had become overwhelmed with donations. She said the site was getting "around 450 clicks a minute."
Other Internet portals and providers such as Google.com and AOL.com were also carrying links to the Red Cross and other charities.
Amazon said in a statement that it offered its site because it "provides a safe and secure platform where those wishing to help can easily make a financial contribution to the relief efforts."
Amazon said 100 percent of the donations go to the Red Cross.
The world's largest online trading community, eBay.com, is offering donation opportunities to eight aid organizations through its Web site. Sellers on eBay can also sell items through the company's eBay "giving works" program and donate 10 to 100 percent of the proceeds to one of the eight charities.
The NonProfit Times, a publication for nonprofit managers, reported that online fund raising for nonprofits brought in about $2 billion in 2003, a 60 percent increase over the previous year. Overall, Americans gave $241 billion to charity in 2003.
While complaints about the 'miserly' generosity of the Bush Administration have surfaced in recent days, donations and actions at the grassroots level have quietly illustrated the concern and sympathy felt by ordinary Americans.

On Monday of this week, , the UN's chief of emergency relief, said that rich nations like the U.S. were being "stingy" by making small contributions. Egeland later recanted his statement, adding that America's contributions to Asia's tsunami relief was "one of the most generous pledges so far."

The Bush administration has pledged $350 million in aid for the relief effort. Critics have been quick to compare this to the $177 million spent every day in Iraq to conduct war in that country. In comparison, there was a $500 million pledge made recently by the government of Japan.

Independently of the government, individual Americans have been directly contributing money to aid organizations.  Amazon.com placed a link for the American Red Cross, collecting more than $8 million from 100,000 people as of Friday, December 31st.  12,000 donors have donated over $1.2 million to the Red Cross through Yahoo.com.

Scores of International aid organizations are accepting donations for helping victims of the earthquake and tsunami.  Many major companies including Apple Computer, Microsoft, , eBay, Google, and AOL are helping enable donations through the web.