I was supposed to be in New York this past weekend, and it was a pleasure trip, so I cancelled it (for obvious reasons).

I grew up on Long Island, and have family on Staten Island. My uncle there, a first-responder, has been a part of search and rescue efforts. My family is fortunate to all be ok and to have just property damaged.

The storm there is shocking in so many ways, and almost a week later they’ve only just scratched the surface of recovery.

Mommy Points came up with an idea of ‘Comments for Contributions.’ The original idea was something like ‘100 for $100’ where a blogger would donate $1 per comment, up to $100.

But bloggers can be a competitive bunch, and a collaborative bunch too, and we’ve challenged each other to do a bit more. The combined comments (in a designated thread) on each of six blogs:

• Mommy Points
  
• Deals We Like
  
• Very Good Points
  
• Wandering Aramean
  
• Ghetto IFE
  
• … and this one

…will determine how much is donated, up to 1800 comments in total for $1800 in contributions.

Living in DC I was only barely affected by the storm, sure the city shut down for a couple of days but I lost power for less than 18 hours. I’ve been lucky in so many ways.

So I’m glad that the group of six of us can both give to assist in relief efforts, and also help engage our readership in that effort as well.

More on how you can help decide how much I donate in a moment. First, a word on how you can make donations, while tapping into either matching contributions from travel providers or mileage-earning incentives (or both!) at the same time.

Mommy Points put together a list of mileage-earning opportunities for contributions and also mileage donation opportunities, along with help from Wandering Aramean who lives in Lower Manhattan.

• JetBlue is matching customer donations up to the first $50,000 donated to the American Red Cross and also offering 6 points per dollar to their TrueBlue members.
• Delta is donating $100,000 to the American Red Cross relief efforts. Skymiles members can also donate miles to the Red Cross.
• United Airlines is matching up to $100,000 in donations to three charities: the American Red Cross, Feeding America and AmeriCares. They’ve already received more than three times that amount, so no matching opportunity remains. But gifts of $50 receive 250 bonus miles and $100 or more earns 500 bonus miles. They’ll award up to 5 million bonus miles for contributions.
• American Airlines is offering 250 AAdvantage miles to members who donate $50 and 500 miles to members who donate $100 or more as well.
• Hilton is offering 10 points per dollar for contributions through GlobalGiving and matching up to $100,000 in contributions.
• Starwood Preferred Guest will match points donations made to the American Red Cross through November 30th.
• Salvation Army accepts donations of United and Delta miles.

Now, here’s how you can help right now and in this post.

I don’t usually like talking about my own charitable giving, I feel like charity shouldn’t be ‘showy’ and at least speaking purely personally I prefer to do it quietly.

But there’s this challenge on the table to help and the involvement device of a comment helps bring more attention to giving for others perhaps and generating some incremental social excitement could help spur involvement from others. So I’m willing to break my own rules or at least strong preferences here.

Leave a comment about the storm, either how you were affected, what you’re doing to help, or how it’s weighed on you.

The six of us will collectively donate $1 for every comment received in the relevant post on our blogs. Leave a comment here in this post by Noon Eastern on Thursday, November 8th. The goal is $1800 to charity to support relief from the storm.

In that way, you can help direct my charitable dollars and those of three other bloggers to hurricane relief.