ReliefSponsors.org - Relief Sponsors

    While we do accept donations of physical items, sometimes its more of a problem than a help.  Southern Search & Rescue, Inc. and its divisions are always happy to accept most any type of donation, but it you have a physical item to donate, please contact us first to see if we will be able to accept it.  The funny thing is about item donations, is that it actually takes a lot of money to accept them.

    During recent disaster, many organization (most of them newly formed to help for that disaster) learned that accepting item donations was not as easy or cost effective as they thought.  Many organization that received donations for the 2004 Tsunami relief efforts, learned that it was going to cost more money to transport the donations received, than to take cash and purchase items closer to the disaster zone.

    Another example was during Hurricane Katrina.  While millions of people donate or helped in other ways, any physical item donations that were received and shipped to the Gulf Coast states caused a large hit in the fact that it cost of lot of money to move those items.  Not only do you have to cover the fuel cost, you have storage fees, labor cost, vehicle expenses and more.  It would cost far less to move cash (via check, credit card, etc.) from say Texas to Florida, than to ship a truck load of food or water the same distance.  In fact, it would cost almost nothing to move the funds compared to thousands to move the freight.  You can not always count on companies to do it for free.