Everyone Is Pledging Millions to Nepal. Here Is Where You Can Actually Send Money

In the last two days the UN has released US$2 million, the United States has pledged $500,000 and a disaster adviser, India has flown in roughly 50 tonnes of aid, and condolences have arrived from most of the world’s capitals. All of it is real and all of it matters. None of it answers the question people keep asking us on WhatsApp: I am one person and I want to send something — where?

You cannot donate to a UN allocation. So here is the practical answer, with the caveat that matters most first.

The short answer: the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund

The Government of Nepal runs a single national relief fund, and it takes international cards directly at pmdrf.nchl.com.np, operated by Nepal Clearing House. One page, one payment, from any country. No bank transfer, no SWIFT code, nobody in the middle.

Three things make it the honest first recommendation rather than the obvious one:

If you would rather not give to a government

That is a reasonable position and we are not going to argue you out of it. Two organisations are working in the affected districts and are the only others we will vouch for:

Nepal Red Cross Society — more than 200 staff and volunteers running evacuations, search and rescue, emergency supplies and transitional shelter. They had reached roughly 5,000 people in the first days. Donations at donation.nrcs.org.

IFRC — the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies released emergency funding behind the Nepali response, with regional teams able to scale it. Donations at ifrc.org/donate.

What we would avoid: a fundraiser you have not heard of, set up in the last week, collecting to a personal account. Some of those are sincere. Enough of them are not that the odds are simply bad.

We are not collecting, and that is deliberate

We could put a donate button on this page and forward the money. We are not going to.

A trekking company in the middle adds nothing except a step you cannot audit, and it asks you to trust a stranger with money at exactly the moment when trusting strangers with money is the thing to be careful about. Send it to the fund, keep your receipt, and cut us out.

The other way to help, which nobody asks about

The flood hit one corridor in northern Rasuwa. Everest, Annapurna, Manaslu, Upper Mustang, Pokhara and Kathmandu were untouched and are running normally.

Every autumn booking cancelled out of sympathy takes income from a guide, a porter, a teahouse family or a jeep driver in a valley the water never reached. That is the second wave of damage after a disaster in a country where tourism is the wage, and it is entirely preventable.

So: give to the fund if you can. And if you were coming to Nepal this October, come.