August 22, 2002 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Americans have more confidence in the charities that responded to last September´s terrorist
attacks than in charities generally, according to the results of a poll released last week by Independent Sector, a Washington organization that represents charities and foundations.
Seventy-one percent of those polled said the September 11 charities act honestly and ethically in using donated funds, compared with 64 percent who held the same opinion about all charities.
“Given how much questioning there has been in the press about some of the ways in which the September 11 response was handled, the level of people believing that those charities were very ethical and honest in their handling of those funds continues to be very strong,” said Peter Shiras, senior vice president for programs at Independent Sector.
‘Complicated Response’
“The public has a much more complicated response than the media tended to portray in some of the earlier stories,” Mr. Shiras added. “As this story has unfolded, it may be that the public is realizing that indeed it is necessary and important to provide assistance both immediately to the families of the victims but also for longer-term needs. The public has a more sophisticated understanding of the complexity of disaster response by charities than the media do.”
The survey found that support for charities in general increased in the months following the attacks, with 73 percent of Americans expressing a positive view of charities in February. By July, that had fallen to 64 percent. However, the proportion of the public holding a positive view of the September 11 charities remained steady at 71 percent.
Chris Toppe, a senior analyst at Independent Sector, said he is not surprised that the public’s support for charities overall has come down a little since last winter. Throughout the 1990s, he said, surveys found that about 65 percent of Americans viewed charities positively. That figure spiked in the months after the terrorist attacks, Mr. Toppe said, as the public rallied around a variety of institutions, including nonprofit organizations.
“Things have settled back down to normal,” he said.
The survey was conducted for Independent Sector by Wirthlin Worldwide, which telephoned 1,003 people between July 12 and 15. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. That means that if the survey had been done 100 times, in at least 95 of those instances the results would be within 3.1 percentage points of those in the report.
Copies of the report can be obtained online at http://www.independentsector.org; by calling Independent Sector at (202) 467-6100; or by writing to the organization at 1200 18th Street, N.W., Suite 200, Washington, D.C. 20036.
