We all know the drill.

A natural disaster strikes in some faraway place like Haiti. We stare in horror at the live images on the TV screen, reach for our credit card (or, sign of the times, pound out a quick text message) and instantaneously send $10, $25 or whatever we can to help.

And then, inevitably, we move on – justifiably proud that we did our part, yet at the same time clueless as to exactly where that money went and what it accomplished.

“All NGOs (non-governmental organizations) know that when the media attention (on a disaster) first hits, they’ve got a window and they’ve got to raise all their money at that point,” said Darcy Pierce of Scarborough. “So what they say is, ‘Give us your money and we’ll figure out what to do with it later.’ It’s not their fault – it’s just kind of the environment we live in.”

Pierce, who earlier this year co-founded a nonprofit called Maineline Haiti, is trying to change all that.

Next month, he will head south to witness the groundbreaking for a school in the Haitian village of Cabaret. If all goes according to plan, it will be the first of 10 schools built over the coming months in a region north of Port-au-Prince – each at an estimated cost of $50,000.

And every dime will come from Maine’s business community.

“I get really frustrated when I see the lack of integrity and transparency that happens in these fundraising things,” said Pierce, a former commercial airline pilot who has spent the last decade working as a consultant for various organizations that provide international disaster relief. “It’s more impressive to say, ‘Here’s what your money did,’ rather than just say you gave it.”

It all started in January, just a week or so after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, killing an estimated 250,000 Haitians and leaving another 1.5 million homeless.

Pierce was talking over lunch about the still-emerging relief effort with Kim Stiver, marketing strategist for CD&M Communications in Portland, when a light bulb went on: Why not create a conduit that directly connects corporate donors up here in Maine with the people who need the help down there in Haiti?

In other words, bypass the American Red Cross and similar mega-organizations with their “administrative costs” and multi-layered, sometimes opaque operations and instead do it all – the fundraising, the priority setting, the one-on-one coordination with those who are doing the work in Haiti – right here in Maine?

“There’s a lot of (overhead) that happens that needs to happen (with larger organizations), so I’m not trying to say that none of that is necessary,” said Pierce. “But what I am saying is there’s a lack of transparency and understanding of what we are actually funding and what we are getting for our value.”

To be sure, this is hardly the first time Mainers have reached out and touched poverty-stricken Haiti, widely regarded as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere even before the earthquake struck nine months ago this week.

The Portland-based nonprofit Konbit Sante has labored mightily for the last 10 years to improve health care around Haiti’s northern city of Cap Haitien.

And last winter, the Maine treasure-salvage ship Sea Hunter plowed through stormy seas and a thicket of red tape to deliver 200 tons of relief supplies, almost all from Maine’s attics, garages and basements, to an orphanage in the southern city of Les Cayes.

But this effort is different. It not only focuses exclusively (at least for now) on corporate donations, Pierce said, it also serves as a model for the next inevitable disaster, and the one after that, and the one after that.

And it’s working.

Go to www.maineline.org and you’ll see the logos of 37 Maine companies (including this newspaper) that already have pledged to support Maineline Haiti with cash, in-kind donations or both. The “leadership members” include Unum, Preti Flaherty, Reed & Reed Inc., Hussey Seating Co., Macdonald Page & Co. LLC, and Kennebunk Savings.

You’ll also see that Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian aid organization that already has built 10,000 temporary shelters in Haiti, stands ready and able to start hiring local workers to build the schools with the help of Maineline Haiti. (The North Carolina-based charity also has secured grant funding to pay teacher salaries for at least the next three years.)

Maineline Haiti’s first fundraising effort, a golf tournament last month at Nonesuch River Golf Club in Scarborough, raised $25,000. But that, noted Pierce, was just the beginning.

Today, members of Maineline’s leadership group will gather to assess how much farther they’ve come raising the hard cash needed to turn the 10 schools from the best of intentions into the best Maine has to offer.

Among them will be Jonathan Piper, managing partner for Preti Flaherty, who said Tuesday that he has a long list of companies he hopes to add to Maineline’s ever-growing roster. The benefit, he noted, extends far beyond adding a humanitarian luster to this or that corporation’s image.

“All of these companies’ employees and their children will know that somewhere in the world, they helped,” Piper said. “And the people down there will know they have friends in Maine.”

Noted Pierce, “That’s the goal line – when you see people’s lives change.”

Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at: bnemitz@mainetoday.com