Sorry for the lengthy post, but the information is important. I'm not trying to promote the local predominant denomination, but the following gave me pause: A good friend of mine is an emergency room doctor who has a special LDS "calling" responding to disaster situations for the LDS relief agency. Among the many emergencies to which he has responded, he was sent to Asia after the tsunami last December. I know he made at least two trips of two to three weeks each. After he returned the first time, I asked him about how best to make my own modest contribution, such as to which agency. His reply was very enlightening. He said that many agencies, even some of the better known agencies, are very inefficient and have high overheads, some as high as 40 percent or more; therefore, your donation dollar does not go very far. Furthermore, what actually arrives on site often is not needed or cannot be used ( parkas sent to Baghdad in summer, rice that cannot be cooked because of lack of water, that sort of thing) and that the waste is just incompetent. He told me that he used to resist donating to the LDS agency, but that after what he has seen time after time in the field, he has learned that the LDS Church consistently does a better job than anyone else. Where the LDS Church needs to coordinate with others, they often do so with other carefully selected agencies such as the Catholic Relief Agency and the American Red Cross. In other words, they don't just try to go it alone, either. With a low overhead of just four percent or so, It's hard to beat them. It's would be hard to do better. After that conversation, I determined to make all of my other donations for disaster relief through the LDS relief agencies. Kim