Because
I’m no longer employed in a leadership capacity with a charity organization, I
can say things that I would in the past refrain from saying. But for the sake of my friends and colleagues
still in charity work and for the public at large, here I go… Many
charity organizations are simply not designed to effectively handle large
influxes of money for unexpected tragedies, nor should we expect them to be unless
we pay them for that service.
What
brings this to mind for me now is the news in northeast Ohio regarding families
of the victims of the Chardon School shooting who are suing the United Way of
Greater Cleveland and its Geauga County Chapter for allegedly misdirecting
donated “Chardon Healing” funds. The
goal of this article is not to promote an opinion on this specific incident but
to speak in general about the dynamic of crisis fundraising and response. There are many cases in which charity
organizations have come under criticism for not directing donated funds as
expected by the masses of contributors.
Let
me premise this article by saying that my thoughts and prayers are with the
families of the victims of the Chardon School shooting. I remember that day well and how affected I
was by it, paralyzed for days at the tragedy of it all. I do indeed hope that those families receive
all the assistance they need.
Often
when a crisis occurs, people will respond by donating money to help the victims
involved. I continue to be moved by the
gracious generosity of many to help others in need. It is a special thing to witness and it gives
me reason to stay optimistic about the human experience.
Handling
such financial outpouring, however, to help in the most effective manner is a
big hairy challenge for the charity organization that accepts the
responsibility. Truth be told, charity
organizations are simply expected to do so even though they know it will be
impossible to satisfy everyone’s expectations.
They do so because their stakeholders expect them to and because it
would be a public relations debacle if they said no thanks, not this time. I give charities credit for making the
attempt. It is after-all their purpose
in the community to help.
Now,
from a manager’s standpoint, I want to stress to readers the intracasies and
considerations involved. A terrible
tragedy has happened in the community and people are hurting. Emotions are running high and money is pouring
in from many individuals, each of whom has a slightly different notion of how
the money should be used. The charity is
expected to distribute all of the money to the right people very quickly even though
some affects of most tragedies are long lasting. And here’s the clincher, no one wants to pay
for the managerial expertise necessary to facilitate the giving – every dollar
must go directly to the victims!
The
charity must still assign personnel to facilitate the distribution in an
orderly manner. This involves fielding hundreds, if not thousands, of phone calls and emails, creating an application process, interviewing many
affected individuals and families, coordinating services, accounting for who
gets how much and why and so much more.
This type of work is more involved than just cutting a few checks and
calling it a day.
In
the case of the Chardon School shooting, if memory serves, almost a million
dollars was collected in a very short time (a lot of money to be sure, but not so much compared to other tragedies and fundraising efforts such as a hurricane relief
fund that might affect tens of thousands of people). Imagine being responsible for the charitable
help to tens of thousands of people. Will the charity
hire additional employees to do this very involved work? Probably not. In
fact, nonprofit organizations are notorious for giving already overworked
employees more responsibility, especially if they don’t have additional funds
to pay for more help. I beg the
question, should we expect the charity to hire additional employees to do a
thorough job if we don’t allow for even a small amount of our charity dollar to
be used in this manner? Well, you might
say, I’ve donated to this charity in the past and they should use that money to
do this work. That sounds quite rational
except for the fact that every dollar given in the past is immediately budgeted towards
already existing needs in the community.
Most charities don’t have additional resources set aside to facilitate unexpected
tragedies and if they do, those dollars are minimal.
Generally
speaking, it is common for charities to receive financial contributions year
‘round that are earmarked by well meaning contributors to be used 100% for the
direct needs of clients (no overhead expenses). This is an
understandable desire, as people don’t want their contribution to be used for
such boring stuff as staff salary, snow removal for the agency parking lot or office expenses but it is
an expectation that is frankly unrealistic.
Charities have expenses like any other organization and unless we
acknowledge this fact we’ll be doomed to position even the best managed
charities to fail when we need them to do their best work on our behalf –
responding to a crisis.
The
public rightfully does not want charity organizations to “profit” from tragedies. Trust me, they don’t. In fact, they are put at great risk when we
expect them to deliver quickly and in a big way with absolutely no additional
funding. Not only might they unintentionally mismanage
the crises but their other ongoing programs may suffer as well because
resources are surely being pulled from them to do the urgent unfunded work at
hand.
Would
it be so unpalatable to the public for a small percentage of the donated funds
to be used for oversight expenses, say 3% or 5%? I, for one, would not mind if the charity
used a small amount of my donated funds to get the job done well. There are other considerations that need to
be addressed too, such as how to set up special funds with clearer parameters in order
to minimize contributor confusion and angst but that is content for another article.
For
now, I would simply ask readers to give their charity organizations the benefit
of the doubt. They are doing the best
they can with limited resources. It is an especially difficult task to administer a special fund after a tragedy without the necessary dollars to manage it effectively. And to
my colleagues in charity organizations I would recommend, it’s time to
communicate in a better, more straightforward way what you can and cannot do for
the community – and how much it will reasonably cost!
