Silicon Valley Tsinghua Network Decided To Cease Accepting Individual Donations to China Earthquake
The Silicon Valley Tsinghua Network (SVTN) announced today that it will cease accepting individual donations to the China Earthquake Relief Fund after June 12th, 2008. The volunteers at SVTN will continue their services of providing tax-deductible receipts, supporting the company matching programs, as well as following up with the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) to make sure that every dollar of the donations fulfills the mission of helping earthquake victims in the rescue and reestablishment efforts.
We would like to express our heartfelt appreciation to all of the donors, the alliance organizations and the volunteers for the overwhelming support during the fund raising event following the cataclysm.
Within 24 hours after the earthquake, SVTN, MITBBS, and Legal Immigrant Association (LIA) initiated the Sichuan Earthquake Relief Committee (SERC) to coordinate the donation activities and quickly gained support from more than 20 organizations in the United States. As of June 1st, 2008, the China Earthquake Relief Fund has received more than 8,400 donation transactions from over 30 countries and regions, totaling more than 1.6 million US dollars. More than 1,600 company matches are being processed; 1.2 million US dollars has already been wire transferred to the Red Cross Society of China in the past couple of weeks, while the rest on the way once the donation money reaches the Silicon Valley Tsinghua Network's bank account.
After the June 12th cutoff date, our volunteers will continue their services of processing the tax-deductible receipts and the company gift match requests. The donors should expect to receive the e-receipt in their registered email accounts at Google Checkout or PayPal in early June. For those donors who did not provide the email address, we will mail the receipt to your address. Meanwhile, we will follow up with RCSC to make sure that the donation results in direct help to earthquake victims.
Silicon Valley Tsinghua Network is grateful of the generosity and the trust from all of the donors and the great support from our alliance organizations. We are proud of building a convenient donation platform rapidly to channel funds from individuals, corporations and organizations to help the victims of the Sichuan Earthquake disaster. We'd also like to honorably mention the great support from the PayPal team and the Google Checkout team for waiving the transaction fees, as well as timely resolving the technical issues for fluid transactions.
SVTN's China Earthquake Relief Fund is organized and operated by volunteers entirely. The majority of our volunteers are employees of the high-tech companies in the Silicon Valley, California. During the fortnight after the earthquake occurred, our volunteers answered countless phone calls and email inquiries, processed a stream of transaction records in our database, and built an entirely new website with latest news and donation progress. Thanks to their endless dedication and selfless contributions, they have made it possible to provide the donation service with ZERO administrative overhead, as well as offering completely transparent accounting methods for our operations.
Last, but not least, we would like to express our gratitude and respect to the earthquake relief task force who have, and continue to risk their own lives to aid the earthquake victims. It has been a humbling experience for all of us to witness the vulnerability of human life, but inspiring to see the strength we possess when united in a mission of rescue and reestablishment after the devastating natural disaster.
To help the earthquake victims in hardship will be a lengthy and costly process. We encourage individuals and organizations to make donations through other non-profit organizations, especially those with specialty in epidemic prevention and school rebuilding.
For more information and latest update, please visit http://www.tsinghuafoundation.org
Sincerely,
Silicon Valley Tsinghua Network
Email: sichuan2008relief@gmail.com
