My email last Sunday about the famine in Somalia (at the end of this email), in which I offered to match any donation up to $100, has generated – I hope you're sitting down – nearly $200,000!  I was expecting maybe a couple of dozen donations that I'd match up to $2,500, but I'm now giving $10,000 to match more than 100 people who've already donated – and 10 of my friends, who committed $175,000 of the nearly $200,000, are going to use their gifts to match the next 1,750 donations, so please feel free to forward this email, post it on your Facebook page, etc.  Just tell people that if they donate to any organization doing famine relief in Somalia, email my assistant Leila at Leilajt2@gmail.com and we'll match it up to $100 per donation (until the matching money runs out).

 

My email was forwarded to the person who writes the Donor of the Day profile for the Wall St. Journal, who wrote a story in today's paper (below) – here's the beginning:

On Sunday night, Whitney Tilson sent an email to people he knew urging them to support aid agencies working to address the famine in Somalia. As an incentive to give, he offered to match every gift given up to $100 each.

The 44-year-old founder and managing partner of T2 Partners LLC, a New York-based hedge fund, says he sent the email to roughly 10,000 people, drawn from his professional and philanthropic contacts. He figured 20 people might respond with $100 each and "maybe a couple people more than that" would give a slightly larger gift, he says.

Since Sunday, the response to his email has been overwhelming. Mr. Tilson has personally matched the first $10,000 in gifts. In addition, 10 of Mr. Tilson's friends have kicked in an additional $175,000 in matching dollars. Those friends include: Ciccio Azzollini, chief executive of Cattolica Partecipazioni SpA; Jeff Kaplan, a partner of Deerfield Partners; Anthony Meyer, president of Ocean Road Advisors; and Chris Stavrou, owner of Stavrou Partners.

Now, Mr. Tilson needs 1,750 people to step up to see their $100 donations matched. "Just email me," he says, and forward on your donation receipt as verification.

I'm often asked why I spend the time putting together these emails.  There are a lot of reasons – no wisecracks please about fueling my out-of-control ego! ;-) – but this experience reminded of another reason: being able to reach thousands of people with the click of my mouse can occasionally do some good. 

 

Until this week, the best example was a decade ago, when I spammed all of my email lists with a story and photos (see: www.tilsonfunds.com/Adoption) of an Ethiopian brother and sister who had recently been orphaned by AIDS and needed to be adopted (my parents, who lived in Ethiopia then (they now live in Kenya), knew their father).  Sure enough, an old friend of mine adopted them and they're doing great – now 22 and 20 years old!

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·         WSJ

·         NY CULTURE

·         SEPTEMBER 23, 2011

First-Time Email Plea Brings Outpouring for Somalia

By MELANIE GRAYCE WEST

On Sunday night, Whitney Tilson sent an email to people he knew urging them to support aid agencies working to address the famine in Somalia. As an incentive to give, he offered to match every gift given up to $100 each.

Whitney Tilson

The 44-year-old founder and managing partner of T2 Partners LLC, a New York-based hedge fund, says he sent the email to roughly 10,000 people, drawn from his professional and philanthropic contacts. He figured 20 people might respond with $100 each and "maybe a couple people more than that" would give a slightly larger gift, he says.

Since Sunday, the response to his email has been overwhelming. Mr. Tilson has personally matched the first $10,000 in gifts. In addition, 10 of Mr. Tilson's friends have kicked in an additional $175,000 in matching dollars. Those friends include: Ciccio Azzollini, chief executive of Cattolica Partecipazioni SpA; Jeff Kaplan, a partner of Deerfield Partners; Anthony Meyer, president of Ocean Road Advisors; and Chris Stavrou, owner of Stavrou Partners.

Now, Mr. Tilson needs 1,750 people to step up to see their $100 donations matched. "Just email me," he says, and forward on your donation receipt as verification.

So far, donations have ranged from $18 to a matching gift of $100,000, with most coming in at exactly $100. Most of the donations have been directed to the global poverty organization, CARE, with other gifts going to Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders and the International Rescue Committee, among others.

Provided the donation supports famine-relief work in Somalia, Mr. Tilson says that he will see the gift is matched.

Mr. Tilson's primary philanthropic interests have mainly been in education—he's passionate about education reform in the U.S.—and he says he's never helped to raise money for disaster or relief work. He just decided to do something with the hope that the offer would get passed around, posted to Facebook and "go viral," he says. "It took me half an hour to craft a compelling email and I've never made an offer to match philanthropically like that."

Mr. Tilson is involved with a few nonprofits that work in Africa and has traveled to various countries. He spent some of his childhood in Tanzania, and his parents, both educators, were members of the Peace Corps. Now retired, they live in Kenya. His sister, also living in Kenya, is involved with women's public health in Africa.

But Mr. Tilson says his email was mostly born out of reading recent news reports and seeing photos of the famine in Somalia.

"I've got three of my own kids and seeing parents there holding their kids while they die of starvation is pretty tough," he says. "I suspect those pictures probably impacted the people who gave the same way they impacted me."

From: Whitney Tilson
Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2011 5:19 PM
Subject: Photos and articles from Somalia -- and how you can help

 

I was overwhelmed by these photos on the NY Times web site about the mass starvation that's occurring in Somalia (warning: not for the faint of heart).  750,000 people could die in coming months, but little is being done, for reasons discussed in the last article below. 

 

I will match anyone's donation up to $100 each – just email me and let me know – and will donate a minimum of $2,500 (but I hope 50 of you make me donate $5,000!; and if this email goes viral, I'll ask some friends to help).  At the end of this email is a list of organizations working to address the famine.

 

Below is an op ed in today's NYT by Nick Kristof – here's an excerpt:

The United Nations warns that the famine in the Horn of Africa could kill 750,000 people in the coming months, and tens of thousands have already died. In a German aid hospital here in Dadaab, Dr. Daniel Muchiri showed four wards full of children suffering from severe malnutrition. Even among the rare children who reach this well-equipped hospital, one dies each day on average — and Malyun Muhammad may soon become one of them.

…Listening to the stories of these Somalis left my heart aching. Consider one man I met who had just trekked across the desert and arrived at Dadaab: Bele Muhammad, a 45-year-old farmer. Two of his children had starved to death in the previous three weeks, he told me. A 14-year-old boy, Abdul Aziz, died first, and then an 8-year-old girl, Fatuma. Mr. Bele's wife and six remaining children were near death, so he set out on foot with 50 others to walk to Kenya to scout a route.

It was a horrific 10-day journey, partly because eight armed bandits attacked his group shortly after it crossed the Kenyan border. "The robbers asked me for money, and I said I had none," Mr. Bele recounted.

The bandits separated the men from the women and then, he thinks, raped the women. The bandits tortured the men with fire to find where they had hidden money; Mr. Bele showed me the burns on his face and arms.

Finally, the bandits realized he had nothing and released him. And now, despite the ordeal, Mr. Bele is sending word back to his family that his three strongest children, ages 4 through 12, should set out and try to walk to Dadaab — even if that means they will be attacked by bandits, even tortured or raped along the way.

"If they stay in Somalia, they will die of hunger," he said bluntly. That's what the choice comes down to for many Somalis: Do they risk starvation at home or torture and rape while fleeing?