Posted on November 29, 2005

With Donations Still Available, Tsunami Aid Continues

While charitable giving in the wake of the South Asia tsunami broke all fundraising records for a humanitarian crisis, almost a year later nearly half of the estimated $1.3 billion that Americans donated to help tsunami victims has not been spent, the New York Times reports.

Leaders of nongovernmental organizations involved in the relief and recovery effort have indicated that they have big plans to rebuild the region's infrastructure, including housing, schools, and hospitals, but are aware that donors and the media want the donated funds to be fully accounted for. "We've never been in this situation before, and we are trying to be really clear with people who gave money for this disaster that this is what we're doing with it, these are our plans for it," said Thomas Tighe, president and CEO of Direct Relief International, in Santa Barbara, California, which provides donated medical supplies to developing countries and disaster areas.

Still, the kinds of investments in housing, training, and education that Direct Relief and other groups such as CARE International and Save the Children provide take time as well as money to implement. According to Eric Schwartz, of the United Nations' Office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, "[B]uilding back better doesn't mean building back faster, and we have to make a distinction between the urgency of our efforts and haste because if we don't, we're going to cause more suffering."

As a result, organizations are proceeding with caution while trying to publicize their plans for the contributions they received in an effort to assure donors they are being used wisely. For the first time in its fifty-eight-year history, for instance, Direct Relief established a separate account for the $14.3 million it received after the tsunami and pledged that 100 percent of the money would be used for recovery work. Indeed, in addition to the $27.3 million in goods it has shipped to the region, the organization has committed $8.2 million to be distributed in stages to local organizations providing health care. In some cases, those payments will depend on local organizations achieving targeted goals. "I'm not saying this is the right way for all organizations to account for their expenses," Tighe said, "but I felt like we needed to do it for our donors."