U.S. Charities Turn Their Attention and Their Funds Toward Haiti’s Long-Term Needs

American charities have raised more than $774-million to help Haiti recover from the earthquake that leveled much of the nation’s capital last month.

Relief workers say that the money will go a long way toward supporting a years-long recovery, outlines of which are still being worked out. But very few groups say they have enough money to be able to stop fund raising for Haiti now, and some organizations say they could use considerably more money to help the country rebuild. Meanwhile, estimates of the earthquake’s damage continue to rise. A recent study by economists at the Inter-American Development Bank put the costs of rebuilding at between $8-billion and $14-billion, making Haiti’s earthquake proportionately the most devastating disaster in modern times.

The U.S. Fund for Unicef is “in the middle” of its fund raising, says Caryl M. Stern, the group’s president. The organization has received more than $49-million, which is helping to meet the U.N. agency’s “flash appeal” of $128-million.

Last week, the U.S. charity started a campaign to raise money for school supplies, part of an effort to move away from appeals that focus on immediate relief and persuade donors to help Haitian children’s lives return to normal.

While Ms. Stern says that it will obviously be much more difficult now to raise money for Haiti than it was right after the earthquake, the charity will continue to send e-mail messages and letters and run advertisements.

‘A Bit of a Pause’

But the mad dash for money in the weeks after the earthquake has largely ended.

Officials at International Medical Corps, which has raised $5-million, are in conversations with foundations and other big donors about gifts to help the long-term rebuilding. But the charity isn’t making a big push for new donors.

World Vision U.S. is focusing on reporting back to people who have already contributed, rather than asking directly for more money, says Randy Strash, strategy director of emergency response.

His group’s global operations are well on pace to meet their initial $100-million goal and have so far raised $78.5-million in cash.

Mr. Strash, though, says Haiti’s needs are so great that the group could use 10 times that. Oxfam affiliates have already raised $92.8-million, just shy of the $100-million the group says it will need for its five-year response.

“We’re taking a bit of a pause from a lot of our more aggressive promotion,” says Stephanie Kurzina, director of development at Oxfam America. Her charity is still accepting earmarked gifts for earthquake relief, but it may stop providing that option on its Web site at a later date.

Spending Wisely

Charities are, in general, trying to avoid spending too much too quickly.

World Vision’s global operations have spent at least $8-million so far and anticipate spending $30-million in the first 90 days, about a third of their overall total.

“We’ve been careful not to overspend in the emergency phase without leaving anybody out of the equation in the areas that we have taken responsibility of,” says Mr. Strash.

The American Red Cross has committed $80-million of the $276-million it has raised for the immediate needs. Oxfam is putting $18-million toward the initial relief efforts of the next few months. It anticipates spending about 20 percent of the $100-million raised for Haiti each year for the next five years.

Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, says it’s a good thing that aid groups seem to be avoiding a rushto spend quickly, something that contributed to waste after the 2004 tsunamis.

“If you try to spend faster than the absorption capacity, you blow it,” he says. “It gets wasted. You fuel corruption.”

But experts also warn that inevitably some groups will get too little and others too much. “Some organizations will have raised more than they can program, that’s a certainty,” says Saundra Schimmelpfennig, the author of a blog on foreign aid who worked for the American Red Cross in Thailand after the tsunamis.

Aid workers who have spent time in Haiti say the relief efforts are, on the whole, well organized and have overcome the logistical bottleneck of the first few weeks. But getting people into safe shelters, free from the rain and protected from violence, is an enormous short-term challenge.

Port-au-Prince will need 18,000 latrines by the end of April to beat the rainy season, says Jacobo Ocharan, disaster risk reduction manager at Oxfam America. So far his group has built about 5 percent of that number.

As charity officials rush to meet those immediate challenges, they are beginning to grapple with big questions that could reshape Haiti’s future. Mr. Strash of World Vision ticks off a few: whether to move the country’s capital to another, less disaster-prone location and how to reforest its hillsides, provide employment opportunities outside the capital so educated people can live elsewhere, and make shantytowns more livable.

“The lessons we learn from this could very well inform the whole industry going forward,” he says.