SEND A TENT or Tarp NOW
Does my tent/tarp qualify?
Brand new tents and tarps are welcome, but we also encourage you to send us a tent/tarp you already own and have used, as long as it is in good condition. You can send us as many tents/tarps as you like, and if you have any connections through which you can help us purchase large quantities of tents or tarps wholesale, please let us know.
Your pre-owned tent qualifies if:
- It is waterproof.
- It contains all of its components and nothing is broken- tent, support poles, stakes, and RAINFLY!
- It is free of damage, mildew, dirt, strong offensive odors, and has been properly packed and stored.
- It is in good working condition. This will likely be someone’s house for a long time.
- Please be sure to include a waterproof ground covering (tarp) that the tent recipient can place underneath the tent and therefore have a greater chance of staying dry during the rainy season.
How Quickly Will Your Tent/Tarp Reach Haiti?
One of the great frustrations of all those who are trying to help Haiti now is that many of the supplies that have been sent to the country are not getting to people quickly enough. Four weeks after the January 12 quake, hundreds of thousands of people are still without shelter, and the rainy season is about to begin. This is why we have established a way to get tents and tarps to Haiti immediately and with a great sense of urgency. There is no good reason why it should take any longer than one week for the tent/tarp you mail us to actually start housing a Haitian family. Depending on how you ship your tent to Miami, FL, it could be in the hands of a Haitian family in as little as four days!
To Make This Donation Even More Personal…
If you would like this donation to be even more personal, we suggest that you write a message to whoever will be receiving your tent/tarp. If you would like to hear from the recipient of your tent/tarp, include your e-mail address. Even the poorest of the poor can often find a way to send an e-mail message. We can not guarantee that you will hear from someone in Haiti, but it is very likely that you will. Please be prepared however for the probability that this family will contact you both to thank you and to ask if you would help them financially. It will be up to you to figure out how you would like to respond if you hear from someone in Haiti. Feel free to contact Bryan or Julie if you would like to discuss this further.
If you would like to include additional items such as a small flashlight (solar powered or with batteries!), a picture of your family, or whatever else you can think of that might be helpful and/or meaningful, please do so as long as you can wrap whatever you send inside the tent/tarp. We do not want any items that do not fit inside the tent/tarp, and we want to make sure that your tent and all its component parts fit easily in the tent sack. If your ground tarp can also fit inside the tent sack, that is wonderful. If not, please wrap the tarp around the tent and secure the tarp to the tent sack by wrapping it with duct tape. Please do not use any more duct tape than is necessary to make sure that the package is snug and secure.
If you are sending a tarp and rope instead of a tent, please either wrap the rope inside the tarp, roll or fold the tarp, and make sure all the contents are tight and secure using duct tape. Mail it using the same instructions given for the tents.
Note: If you do personalize your tent/tarp as just described, please tie a red ribbon around your tent/tarp so that we will know which packages contain additional items and which do not. (the red ribbon should be tied around the package before you wrap it in brown paper if you use Parcel Post U.S. Mail!)
How Should You Package And Ship The Tent and/or Tarp?
If you use the U.S. Postal System:
1. Secure your tent and tarp with duct tape so that the entire package is tight. Then, wrap the entire package with brown paper (you could use paper shopping bags cut up and taped together).
If you are sending a tarp and rope instead of a tent, please wrap the rope inside the tarp, roll or fold the the tarp, make sure all the contents are tight and secure using duct tape, and mail it using the same instructions given for the tents. If you are purchasing a new tarp, you can leave it in the package and attach the rope with duct tape to make it secure.
2. Use your own address as the return address, and clearly address the package to the following address in Miami, FL:
Mark all shipments tentstohaiti.org
Attn: Morelus/Villier
Haiti Express Multi Cargo Services
8297 S US Highway 1,
Port St Lucie,
FL 34952-2859
3. Note: The length and circumference of the tent package together should not exceed 108 inches. If it does, you can still send it, but you will incur additional postage costs.
4. To give you an idea of what this is likely to cost, from just outside Madison, WI a 7 lb. package sent Parcel Post would cost $12.36, and take about 1 week to reach Miami. The same package sent Priority Mail would cost $18.40, and would reach Miami within 2-3 days. A 10 lb. package would cost $14.16 Parcel Post and $23.75 if sent via Priority Mail.
5. Once you have sent your tent to the Miami address, please send an e-mail message to Julie Johnson jjohnson@tentstohaiti.org to let her know when your tent was shipped. If you have shipped more than one tent, please let us know how many tents you have sent. Please also estimate the total weight of the package (or packages) you have mailed to Miami. This will enable us to let our partners in the Dominican Republic know both how many tents are on the way, and what the shipping costs from Miami to Santo Domingo are likely to be. They will then prepare to transport them to the Haitian border in the quickest and most cost effective way.
If you use UPS:
1. Secure your tent and tarp as described above.
2. Your tent/tarp must be in a brown corrugated cardboard box or you will incur an additional charge of $8.00.
3. Use your own address as the return address, and ship the tent/tarp to our Miami address:
Mark all shipments tentstohaiti.org
Attn: Morelus/Villier
Haiti Express Multi Cargo Services
8297 S US Highway 1,
Port St Lucie,
FL 34952-2859
4. The entire girth of the package must be 165 inches or less. Girth is defined as the length of the package, plus 2 times the width, plus 2 times the height.
5. From just outside Madison, WI, a 7 lb. package would cost $12.40, and a 10 lb. package would cost $14.58. Delivery is guaranteed to reach Miami within 4 days.
6. Again, once you have sent your tent to the Miami address, please send an e-mail message to Julie Johnson jjohnson@tentstohaiti.org to let her know how many tents you have sent, and the total estimated weight of your package(s) .
What Is the Complete Cost Of Sending A Tent/Tarp To Haiti?
We have already shared information to help you estimate the cost of shipping your tent to Miami.
This is all we are requiring of you financially in order to send your tent/tarp to Haiti.
But obviously there are additional costs involved in getting your tent to Port au Prince. If you would like to calculate the full cost of transporting your tent/tarp to Haiti through our system and donate the full cost to our efforts, we would be delighted to have this help! These shipping costs are going to add up significantly for us, and we are going to need to do quite a bit of fundraising in order to cover these costs. So your donation will be much needed and greatly appreciated. Here is the information you’d need to calculate the full cost of your tent reaching a Haitian family.
To ship your tent from Miami to Santo Domingo it will cost $1.00 per pound for 24-48 hour guaranteed delivery. So if your tent is 10 lbs., this would add up to $10.00.
Depending on the volume of the tents we send to Haiti from the DR, it will cost between .25 to .75 per tent to transport the tent to Haiti. Using the most expensive rate we could encounter, this would mean an additional $ .75.
So the total price to us of getting your 10 lb. tent to Haiti once we receive it from you in Miami would be $10.75. If you would like to help us pay for the total cost of sending your tent to Haiti, by all means please calculate the cost of getting your tent(s) from Miami to Haiti and make a donation to this effort. We would appreciate this so very much, and as our friends in Haiti often say, “thank you in advance!”
How Can You Make a Tax Deductible Donation to Tents To Haiti?
You can make a secure online donation by using the “donate” button on this site. Your gift will be deposited into the Haiti Partners MCC account, the non-profit organization through which contributions to the Tents to Haiti campaign will be tax-deductible. You will find an opportunity to send us a message with your donation as you move through the process of donating. Please be sure to write “Tents to Haiti” in this message. If you would like to send us a check, please make the check payable to Haiti Partners MCC, and write “Tents to Haiti” in the memo line on the check.
Please mail checks to the following address; (do not send tents to this address)
Tents to Haiti
P.O. Box 45236
Madison, WI 53744-5236
If you would like an “in kind” acknowledgment for the value of your tent for tax purposes, please e-mail Bryan Sirchio bsirchio@tentstohaiti.org indicating the estimated value of your tent. Be sure to include your postal address with this e-mail.