Humanitarian and International Development NGOs

As Hurricane Gustav approached this weekend, the president and both would-be presidents engaged in a bit of fund raising, mostly for the American Red Cross (ARC).  Barack Obama directly asked all those in his fund raising network to send funds to the ARC; John McCain made mention of the ARC in his remarks and the RNC made a direct plea for delegates at the convention to make a donation; and President Bush asked for support for both the ARC and the Salvation Army.

Does it strike anyone else as odd that our political leaders now style themselves as philanthropic advisers when disaster hits?

(1) Instead of telling me where to make my charitable contributions, I would have hoped to hear more about what we can expect from the government’s response. FEMA still does not have a thoroughly vetted strategy for housing after an emergency (and why FEMA was ultimately given this responsibility rather than HUD still mystifies me).  I’m also unclear as to how FEMA has increased their capacity to coordinate all the local nonprofits that might respond, a role to which they agreed after both the agency and the ARC said it was the other’s responsibility during Katrina - so neither did it.

OK, perhaps these are too technical for a general audience.  But I also haven’t heard any present or future president articulate a vision for government’s role in disaster response.  President Bush, in his remarks, noted that it’s the job of the federal government to assist the states.  To what level?  What will public funds - both state and federal - pay for?

Are citizens expecting one thing and the government set up to deliver another?   My sense is that there is a  mismatch between what the Stafford Act offers (that’s the law that gives structure to FEMA and disaster funds), and what disaster survivors - and perhaps even the unaffected general public - expect.  To hear about the role of our government after disaster and how legal structures, public budgets, and leading agencies will successfully meet those obligations - that’s what I expect from political leaders.

(2) I expect a charitable adviser to have done some vetting.  I’m making an assumption here, but my guess is that there was not a great deal of analysis or comparison of the ARC and other responding organizations done by the administration or either campaign.

Even if there was, it’s a poor use of the bully pulpit.  The American Red Cross is one of the most recognizable brands in the sector (though technically it’s not a nonprofit, but a government-chartered institution).  The Salvation Army regularly ranks among the top three of nonprofits receiving the most revenue annually.  People don’t need a great deal of direction for them to come to mind.

Immediate response to a disaster is inherently local. Grassroots organizations have significant trouble accessing the funds they need, since they don’t have a national profile.  Local foundations like the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation* (which was formed after hurricane Katrina to support relief efforts), the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, and the Community Foundation of Acadiana (which covers southwest Louisiana) all created Gustav funds and know how to identify local groups doing excellent work.  It would not have taken much to find and mention such organizations in addition to the ARC and other national organizations.

Maybe each made his plea on behalf of the ARC because its current financial position is precarious and they want to keep it healthy.  The organization does play a role in the National Response Plan, after all.  But any donor will tell you: that’s usually the wrong reason to ask for her money.

In a report for the Aspen Institute about the nonprofit response to Katrina, I recommended mandating that the American Red Cross give 5% of its disaster fund raising to local funders after an exceptional catastrophe. With the American Red Cross such a strong and recognizable brand, I didn’t think it wise to try to create a national fund (with all the risk and start-up costs) that would support grassroots organizations on the local level.  But if would-be presidents are going to give their personal imprimatur, perhaps a private national fund that distributes funds on a competitive basis to the American Red Cross AND local groups - i.e., to whichever organizations are doing the best work - is the next great innovation.

Let’s keep in mind: Private, voluntary action is both necessary and welcome after emergencies hit, but it is not sufficient nor fully capable of doing all that’s needed.**  Rather than try to score political points and look caring by asking people to donate time and money, I call on President Bush and Senators Obama and McCain to make clear what government will do.  And then make it work.

* Disclaimer: I am a founder of the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation and continue to provide strategic advice to the foundation.

**In all the media frenzy over Gustav, they missed a huge opportunity to highlight the incomplete nature of the recovery from Katrina.  Local folks, faith-based groups, and nonprofits have done heroic things in the past three years - yet all of it amounts to a small percentage of what’s needed.  This recent report by Oxfam does an excellent job of laying that out.

Regarding mechanisms to raise and distribute funds in the wake of emergencies, it might be productive to revisit lessons from my experience with hurricane Katrina.  I arrived in Louisiana 10 days after the storm and helped found the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation.

As documented in reports like my Weathering the Storm: the Role of Local Nonprofits in the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort (Aspen Institute) and the Urban Institute’s Open & Operating? An Assessment of Louisiana Nonprofit Health and Human Services after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, local nonprofits and faith-based groups filled large gaps during the relief phase, yet had great difficulty accessing funds to pay for their efforts.  This despite what was by most measures the largest philanthropic response in U.S. history, ultimately over $3.5 billion, as tracked by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.  

One reason is that many of the responding organizations were never before involved in disaster relief – they were trusted local groups that recognized the need and jumped in.  They had little capacity to make themselves known to a national audience, especially while providing additional services in a fast-evolving and compromised environment.

International relief NGOs were among the most successful in distributing their resources quickly to groups on the ground, even though many of these NGOs were responding to a U.S. emergency for the first time.  They deployed staff to the area and used their experience, earned in international settings, to infiltrate local networks.  Some remained beyond the relief phase: Mercy Corps’s program operated past a couple of years, for example, and Oxfam America has made a long-term commitment, with a robust staff still in the region (disclaimer: I authored a report for Oxfam at the one-year anniversary regarding the recovery status of low-income communities).

It should be noted that the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, which raised the bulk of its almost $130 million in the early days of the disaster, did not distribute its first grants until December 7, 2005, more than three months after Katrina hit.  I would venture that it’s not exactly what many small donors had in mind when they contributed, hoping to relieve the immediate suffering they were witnessing on TV. 

A large block of those first grants were channeled to state funds created specifically for Katrina relief, and Mississippi’s state fund had still not used any of its $17 million ($12.4 million from the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund) by September 2006, fully one year after Katrina.

Rather than act as a pass-through to organizations already at work, similar to what they did with funds raised for the 2004 tsunami, the former presidents created a new organization - with its own staff - to handle the distribution of the money, much like a traditional foundation.  Part of the motivation stemmed from concerns about accountability and the desire to track the use of the funds more closely.  But even a determined and well-resourced start-up could not get up to speed to be relevant during the relief phase, though it lasted 10 times longer than the norm for a big catastrophe.

The positive side is that those funds were available as relief moved to recovery and reconstruction.  While the bulk of donations by the public invariably occurs immediately after an emergency, a significant portion of resources are needed over a long period of time as communities slowly rebuild.  This is another aspect that recommends the joint appeal model discussed in the previous post.  Such an appeal has the potential not only to collect and deploy donations quickly, but may also have more leeway from the public to meter their uses throughout the different phases of recovery.