Great little article on Disaster Economics and how you get the most 'bang for your buck.' I have two research papers that deal with this topic area (one is public/private collaboration; the other is when and why do consumers donate to charities). It's tough to get people to devote more resources to a problem that might happen...even when that might happen is practically a will happen. It's much easier to worry about the problem after it occurs. Not just from a government standpoint, from a human and corporate philanthropy one as well. Look at Maslow's hierarchy.
We want to self-actualize, so we want to provide other people with the most basic necessities so that we can do that. The most basic necessities are physiological in nature (lowest level), not safety/security (second level). You feel more valuable when you provide someone with food and water than you do when you give them a Rolex (esteem is higher up the pyramid than both physiological and safety/security needs). Hence, we donate to Haiti after the earthquake so we can feel as if we gave actual water and actual food to someone; rather than donating before so that the infrastructure could be improved to prevent the scope of the disaster. Granted, there was no (I don't think) "Help Protect Haiti" fund before the earthquake, but the point remains. We like to see the tangible nature of our philanthropy just as we like to see Red Cross dropping sand bags. The only problem is that a dollar before is worth ten dollars after. Anyway, my blurb is a bit rushed, so I apologize if it not incredibly coherent. Really, I just read this and it was exactly in line with a few papers I'm working on and I thought the MOP would like to read it.
Water for Life, is trying to 'reverse-trend' it on Twitter and raise money to build wells in Haiti. I talked about this initiative in my class to tie together social media and CSR. Neither of these are me trying to make myself or you guys feel guilty, I just think it's interesting.
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