Federal Charity Drive Shows Dramatic Drop in Giving for 2013

The number of U.S. government employees who took part in last year’s federal workplace charity campaign fell by nearly 200,000, and total donations declined by 18.8 percent, The Washington Post writes.

Participation in the Combined Federal Campaign plunged by 22.9 percent from 848,150 in 2012 to 650,142 last year, and giving dropped from $258.3-million to $209.7-million.

Keith Willingham, director of the drive for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), pinned the decline on pay freezes and furloughs for federal workers arising from budget cuts. He also noted the impact of last fall’s government shutdown, which started just as “most local campaigns were set to kick off.”

In a blog post Friday, OPM head Katherine Archuleta said the decline showed the need to modernize the campaign, but critics of planned changes to the drive—including eliminating cash gifts and shifting administrative costs to participating charities—said the new regulations would deepen the downward spiral in federal employees’ giving.