Need Is Great, but Charities Say Raising Funds for Darfur Proves Challenging

By Caroline Preston

As secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan’s relationship to the U.N. World Food Programme is not

typically that of benefactor.

But in May, Mr. Annan gave the World Food Programme $500,000 he had been awarded for his environmental leadership to help raise awareness of the organization’s problems securing money for its work in Darfur, Sudan.

Like the World Food Programme, relief organizations in the United States and around the world have experienced major difficulties drumming up financial support from governments for their efforts in Darfur, leading the organizations to turn increasingly to individuals like Mr. Annan. But their fund raising has been hampered by the duration of the conflict and some donors’ reluctance to support crises brought about by war.

Government donations to the World Food Programme were so sluggish this year that in April, the organization announced it would have to slash by half its rations to civilians in Darfur because it had received only $238-million, or 32 percent of the money it had requested for Sudan. Following a peace agreement signed last month, the organization received additional donations, but as of early June, its $746-million request was still only 49.6 percent filled, meaning that Darfuri civilians will have to wait until October before they start receiving full rations again.

Friends of the World Food Program, a nonprofit group in Washington that raises private money for the U.N. organization, has been stepping up its fund-raising efforts to help fill the gaps. In addition to Mr. Annan’s gift, the group also recently won a big donation — $1-million — from Pam Omidyar, the wife of Pierre Omidyar, who founded eBay.

Web Updates

Charities that distribute food provided by the World Food Programme to civilians in Darfur are also competing for donations.

CARE, in Atlanta, has to date raised about $3-million from private donors for Darfur and neighboring Chad, toward its goal of $4-million, by consistently featuring the crisis on its Web site and in fund-raising appeals. But because of the food cuts by the U.N. group, the charity is considering increasing its fund-raising goal and asking individuals and foundations for additional support.

U.S. government funds to charities in Darfur have also been tight this year. Charities are awaiting $228-million in emergency spending for humanitarian aid in Darfur and Chad, but the money is not expected to become available until August, forcing many of the charities to scale back their programs.

CHF International, for example, has reduced the scope of its job programs for displaced civilians until the government funds are available.

“You could almost describe it as a holding pattern,” says John Chromy, senior vice president for external relations. “We might employ 40 women to make fuel-efficient stoves and they’re producing 200 a week. If we had the resources, we could be employing 400 and producing 2,000.”

To help compensate, the group will try to attract individual donors, foundations, and companies through a Darfur-themed film festival later this year. It is also bringing one of the Darfuri women who has participated in its basket-weaving program to speak in several U.S. cities.

The International Medical Corps, which has brought in more than $2-million, has also taken steps to educate donors about the crisis, including information on Darfur and Chad in nearly all its monthly e-newsletters for the past two years, as well as holding briefings and events for small groups of donors.

Even with those private donations, however, budget woes have forced the organization to lay off 11 expatriate staff members and 20 Sudanese employees, as well as suspend a nutrition program.

Nicholas de Torrente, executive director of Doctors Without Borders, in New York, which raises all its money from private donors, says the push to get nongovernment gifts is a good thing. Governments don’t always give out of purely humanitarian concerns, he says.

Trouble Winning Attention

Even with increased fund-raising efforts for Darfur, charities are not seeing anywhere near the kind of response they received after natural disasters like the tsunamis or Hurricane Katrina.

Most groups have received only several million dollars from private sources — Oxfam has raised some $3.3-million and Save the Children about $6.7-million, tiny sums in comparison to the approximately $30-million and $130-million those two groups raised after the December 2004 tsunamis.

Fund raisers and other nonprofit leaders say it has been a challenge to maintain donors’ interest in Darfur since 2004, when most groups started raising money for the crisis.

“We work very hard to keep the issue in front of our donors, but it is always more difficult to raise money on a consistent basis for these kinds of crises compared to a large-scale emergency like a natural disaster,” says Debra Neuman, senior vice president of external relations for CARE.

Still, some groups have benefited from news-media attention and activism in the United States surrounding the crisis. Charities like Mercy Corps, which has raised about $1.4-million, and American Jewish World Service, which has brought in $3.6-million, say they saw a spike in donations in late April and early May, around the time of a rally in Washington in which more than 50,000 people participated. (The American Jewish World Service was a key organizer of the event.)

Indeed, unlike many long-festering crises in Africa, such as the eight-year conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Darfur crisis has struck a chord with many Americans, helping to drive up fund-raising results.

The fund-raising success of the American Jewish World Service, for example, has been buoyed by Jewish donors. The organization is giving out 75 percent of the money to aid groups working in Darfur; the remainder is used toward advocacy.

“The issue of genocide resonates very strongly in the Jewish community,” says Gitta Zomorodi, senior policy associate. “We’ve had an amazing donor response.”

American Jewish World Service is now considering how it will sustain that momentum among donors and build support for longer-term needs.

“We need to think long and hard about how we are going to raise ongoing funds,” says Matthew Emry, a senior program officer with the organization. “You can only continue to do humanitarian assistance for so long before the wells run dry.”