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| Philanthropy |
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Marilen Cawad
07/01/2005
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Overlarge
Largesse
Nonprofits usually compete for funding, conducting
intense marketing campaigns to portray themselves as the first option
for donors
who want to make an immediate contribution during a
disaster. Many of these
groups, however, found themselves poorly
equipped to respond to the outpouring
of support for the Asian
tsunami.
The day after the disaster struck, CARE
launched an
online campaign entitled “Asia Quake Disaster.” The website featured
updated news, photos and streaming videos of tsunami victims and relief
and
recovery operations. It also had a link to a page where donors
could pledge
funds with a credit card. CARE capped online donations at
$10,000 per
transaction, and asked that larger amounts be transmitted
by mail or phone. In
the United States, CARE alone raised $43.3
million. (The group says
approximately 8 percent of that figure will be
used to cover administrative
costs.) The organization admits to being
challenged by the deluge of donations.
“How soon can we open 60,000
pieces of mail?” CARE development director Beth
Gluck asks. “What do we
do with all the checks? How soon can we respond back to
the
donors?”
International aid organizations have also learned not to provide
a surfeit of cash to the affected area too quickly. “We don’t
want to
overtax a fragile system of domestic NGOs [nongovernment
organizations] that
lack the capacity to absorb large grants,” says
Raymond Offenheiser, president
of Oxfam America, an international
development and relief agency headquartered
in Washington, D.C. Over
the long term, a deluge of U.S. dollars into developing
economies can
also cause local currencies to steeply appreciate, which can lead
to
rapid inflation.
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