Hurricane Ike Relief Efforts (#1)

Hurricane Ike battered Galveston and points east over the weekend, and as is often the case in disaster situations, corporations and ordinary Americans have been reaching into their pockets to contribute to relief and rebuilding efforts. Earlier today, ExxonMobil (headquartered in Irving, Texas) announced a $5 million donation for relief efforts to be split among the American Red Cross, the United Way, the Salvation Army, and the Texas Disaster Relief Fund. (The oil giant's donation comes just a week after it announced a $1.5 million donation for disaster relief assistance in Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Gustav.)

Also earlier today, Lowe's and the Home Depot Foundation announced separate $1 million donations for recovery and rebuilding efforts, while Wal-Mart announced a $2.5 million contribution (in cash and merchandise donations) toward relief efforts.

These efforts are in addition to the Hurricane Ike Disaster Relief Campaign announced yesterday (and reported in PND here) by the Chicago-based McCormick Foundation and its partners, including the Chicago Tribune, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Colorado Rockies, CW11 New York/WPIX-TV, the Denver Newspaper Agency, Fox 61 Hartford/WTIC-TV, KTLA-TV Los Angeles, Newsday, the North County Times, and WGN Radio.

The Office of Texas governor Rick Perry has added a hurricane recovery page to its site that is an excellent source of information for folks who have been affected by the storm as well as those in the media and around the country interested in tracking the recovery and rebuilding effort.

We'll continue to follow the story and would love to hear from you if you have breaking news about the philanthropic response to the disaster. Feel free to use the comments section to fill us in on the latest.

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Update (Sept. 17, 2008, 11:45 a.m.)

As reported this morning in PND (and yesterday in the Wall Street Journal), Wal-Mart has announced a $2.5 million commitment (consisting of cash and merchandise) to Hurricane Ike and Gustav relief efforts, while the UPS Foundation has announced grants totaling more than $1 million to the American Red Cross, Aidmatrix, and CARE in support of their hurricane relief activities.

And oil giant BP has announced that it will donate more than $8 million through its foundation to community organizations in areas of Texas and Louisiana affected by Ike and Gustav. The company also announced that it will match the contributions of its employees to disaster relief efforts.

We'll continue to track donations to hurricane relief efforts as they are announced.

-- Mitch Nauffts