Donors Continue to Give as Year Comes to a Close
Donors Continue to Be Generous as Year Comes to a Close
With examples of donor fatigue scarce and holiday giving robust as the year draws to a close, charity officials are saying 2005 could well set a record for overall giving, the Associated Press reports.
By any measure, this has been a year of enormous challenges for charities and disaster-relief groups, and donors have responded generously. Most prominently, private donations to aid victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami have passed the $1.6 billion mark, while donations to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts are approaching $3 billion.
Still, many nonprofit groups entered the holiday fundraising season worried that donor fatigue would adversely affect their year-end appeals — a concern compounded by the fact that nonprofits in some areas of the country are serving more people this holiday season than in recent years. In Lansing, Michigan, for instance, more than twenty-two hundred residents applied to receive donations of toys and groceries, up 20 percent from last year, while the local branch of the Salvation Army was forced to turn away hundreds of families after exhausting a fund it had set up to help pay needy resident's utility bills.
In contrast, the Salvation Army's Omaha chapter is running slightly ahead of last year's fundraising totals and expects to reach its holiday goal of $2.2 million — an outcome that spokeswoman Susan Eustice attributed to donations from new donors who came on board after Hurricane Katrina because they "saw we were doing good work." And while Red Cross chapters in some hurricane-ravaged areas are facing fundraising shortfalls, chapters in other areas of the country are reporting strong year-end giving, said Kathleen Loehr, a vice president of development at the organization.
According to the Giving USA Foundation, charitable giving totaled a record $248.5 billion in 2004 — a figure likely to be surpassed in 2005, said the foundation's vice chair, Dell Martin, boosted in part by a one-time tax break for major donors enacted by Congress in Katrina's wake.
"If you look historically at years with disasters and catastrophes, giving hasn't fallen," added Martin. "Americans have shown that when there's something extraordinary, they step up to the plate."
Crary, David.
“America's Charities Impressed by Donors.”
Associated Press
12/14/05.
Primary Subject: Philanthropy and Voluntarism
Location(s): International, National
FC008497
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