For three weeks, Americans have attended fund-raisers, donated online, phoned telethon lines and tossed change into buckets and cans on an unprecedented scale for a major disaster.

	Online Graphic: Disaster relief / Events, giving compared

Laurie Reinhard, director of disaster relief for the American Red Cross, knows the level of generosity from watching daily donation figures that dwarf even what came in immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or last year's South Asian tsunami.

Gianna Marie Balsamico, 6, understands what's happening from watching television pictures of New Orleans' victims with her mother, which prompted "Gigi" to sell bottled water to raise money from drivers in her Ross subdivision.

"I'm very surprised, I mean excited, at the generosity of people stepping up," said her mother, Patty Balsamico, who sent $230 from her daughter's effort to the Red Cross last week. "You can never err on the side of over-contributing to something like this, because the people need help."

Total Hurricane Katrina-designated donations to the Red Cross, Salvation Army and other organizations by people, businesses and others reached $867.3 million by midweek, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. That's well short of the record $2.2 billion U.S. charities received in the wake of 9/11, but the giving has come more rapidly after Katrina.

It's uncertain if Katrina donations will surpass those allotted for victims of the terrorist attacks, but analysts of philanthropy see several key factors in the quick outpouring of donations aimed at the Gulf Coast:

The public has become increasingly comfortable with money transactions over the Internet. Online donations enable organizations such as the Red Cross to receive and track financial support with immediacy they lacked a few years ago.

The volume of media coverage in Katrina's aftermath, including criticism of the inadequacy of the government's response, spurred more donations than would have been the case in previous disasters.

Americans' familiarity with New Orleans as a tourist destination and cultural symbol has driven a lot of support, along with sobering images of countrymen from disadvantaged backgrounds who lost what little they had. If the race and income of victims was any factor in the federal government's response to Katrina -- as critics have suggested and the Bush administration denied -- it appears not to have slowed fund-raising.

"I think people feel good about giving, that they're doing something constructive, and that it's easy to see the results," compared to causes such as curing disease, said Russell Dynes, a retired sociology professor and co-founder of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware.

Victims' desperate need "comes into people's living rooms, and, I suppose, they can't avoid it," Dynes said. "There's also a certain amount of, not guilt, maybe, but thankfulness that 'It's not us. We still have electricity.' The giving is a little bit vicarious."

A marketing coup
The post-Katrina pleas have become a flood of their own. Turn on the TV and there's a telethon or Red Cross public service ad. Go to a football game and someone has buckets out to receive dollar bills. Buy a carton of milk and a sign next to the cash register urges a donation tacked onto the grocery bill.

The marketing of disaster relief has reached unprecedented levels from a triple whammy of epic catastrophes in the modern communications age: the terrorist attacks, tsunami and Katrina.

Joel Gallen, a Los Angeles producer-director, recalls how pleased he was in 2001 to orchestrate a $150 million charitable success in the form of "America: A Tribute to Heroes," a two-hour concert telethon involving all of the major television networks and cable channels.

"The first time, I thought, 'OK, great, I pulled it off, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. This will never happen again because there's only one 9/11,' " Gallen said last week. "Then cut to four years later."

A collection of top television executives came to him once more, asking him to produce "Shelter from the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast," which aired for an hour on about two-dozen networks Sept. 9 and raised an estimated $30 million for the Red Cross and Salvation Army. The lower figure, compared with "A Tribute to Heroes," might be explained by the show's shorter time span or the volume of donations people had already made, including through other national and local telethons.

"The quicker you strike, the more money you're going to make for that cause. It's in everyone's minds and hearts ... and there's a lot of emotion immediately that translates into donations," said NBC Universal spokeswoman Rebecca Marks, whose network held its own telethon before joining in "Shelter from the Storm."

Pittsburgh's TV stations, which collaborated on fund-raising for the first time after the tsunami, made a similar effort Sept. 8 and took in pledges of $633,000.

"This just seemed natural, with the devastation in the South, to do that once again," said Ray Carter, WPXI general manager. "I don't know that this will be a habit ... but given the gravity of the tsunami and the scope of damage in New Orleans, I think that's why we jumped into the fray and decided to team up."

Every disaster is different and prompts different reactions. Compared with 9/11, far more people have lost their homes from the hurricane, although the sense of an attack against America four years ago might have stirred stronger emotions. The tsunami was a similar natural disaster but happened thousands of miles away, in lands with which many Americans were unfamiliar.

There was at least some warning of Katrina's potential, so the Red Cross began gearing up for relief efforts and special fund raising before the devastation was evident, said Reinhard, the nonprofit group's director of disaster relief.

Seven million mail solicitations to past donors went out within days. Requests to business partners helped beef up computer servers to accommodate thousands more online donations than usual. Media contacts resulted in ubiquitous spread of the Red Cross 800 number and Web site.

The efforts resulted in $689 million in Red Cross contributions as of Thursday morning. Nearly half, or $329 million, was donated online. Another $162 million came through individual donations of $5,000 or more to the national organization, primarily from businesses.

About $77 million was donated by phone on 1-800-HELPNOW (1-800-435-7669). Businesses and organizations have contributed about $36.5 million from "cause" marketing, approaching people directly. The rest has been raised through the organization's local chapters.

About four of every five Katrina-related charity dollars have gone to the Red Cross, as opposed to other organizations. It reports giving financial assistance to 236,000 families, in addition to still-uncounted food and shelter expenditures. Officials estimate that the agency's total relief costs will exceed $1 billion. About $1.1 billion was raised by the Red Cross for 9/11, and Reinhard was uncertain if that would be surpassed.

"It could happen," she said. "The generosity has been remarkable. I anticipate that's going to continue."

Donors moved to give more
The amount of giving may be a concern for others in the nonprofit sector who serve other needs besides disasters. It's not always clear where the money for that check or credit card transaction comes from, and whether it cannibalizes other forms of charity.

The latest disaster comes at the same time as United Way organizations across America are making their annual workplace appeals for payroll deductions on behalf of community causes.

"It enters our mind that people are so moved by the events in the Gulf Coast, and families from there coming up here, that they might divert their annual giving [from] local programs," acknowledged Bill Meyer, president of United Way of Allegheny County.

The local population hasn't shown a lack of support for United Way in other recent years of disaster giving, Meyer said, including last year's significant fund raising for victims of Hurricane Ivan. He said the 2005 local United Way goal was $31 million, up from $30.7 million collected last year, and the modest increase is limited by economic conditions rather than Katrina's impact.

The flip side of a well-publicized disaster such as the hurricane, Meyer said, is that its images remind people that there's a large segment of the population with social and financial needs. "It really does help people understand how fragile so many families are," he said.

Sipping a beer at Finnegan's Wake on the North Side on Tuesday, Bob Foreman ticked off a list of all of the approaches he'd received on behalf of Katrina's victims at ball games, on the street, over the broadcast waves.

And if a stranger approaches on behalf of the same cause the next day?

"You reach in and pull out five bucks," he said with a shrug. "Everywhere you go, you feel obliged to contribute. ... This is as bad as the tsunami, and it's our people."