November 29, 2001 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Donations for the victims of the September 11 attacks now total about $1.2-billion, a level of compassion and generosity that is astonishing, indeed awe-inspiring — and ultimately misguided.
The scale of the giving has not been about victims’ needs, which no one assessed before the donations began. Instead, the giving first met donors’ emotional needs. Donors have been fearful and angry about forces they cannot understand, grateful for or guilty about survival, and eager for absolution. Thus, we saw people stand in line for six hours to give blood when no extra blood was needed, and volunteers eager to clear rubble who were left fuming when turned away by professionals.
Helplessness and a wish to do something, anything, are hardly ignoble motives. But as international charities try to generate money for independent action to help millions of Afghans at risk of hunger, disease, and displacement, the actions of American charities deserve scrutiny.
No new charities were required to meet the needs of the attack victims and their families, because existing charities already could cover those needs. Yet dozens of new funds or charities have — as is usual in disasters — sprung to life, while the shift in giving has left many other causes facing tough times as recession deepens and needs rise in the United States and around the world.
Among charities, government, and companies, U.S. resources alone can meet the needs associated with the September 11 attacks — of that no doubt exists. Yet even well-informed and high-profile institutions that should know better — the Japanese Red Cross, for one — have donated cash to the American cause.
As the American Red Cross has accepted, reversing its plan to set aside part of its Liberty Fund for other needs, earmarking funds or the creation of specific new appeals means that vast amounts will have to be spent within New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania for those immediately affected by the attacks. That is the case even if tomorrow a worse event occurs or a greater need is discovered.
Even in a rich city like New York, located in a rich country, the families of some victims will need significant help, especially migrants, those on welfare rolls, and orphans. But for almost all of the families who lost relatives, a mix of federal funds, local government compensation, company provision, private insurance, and pensions will be available to meet all or some of their needs, before charitable donations ever have to be touched.
And even emergency personnel, such as firefighters — whose sacrifice brought a welcome recognition of the value of public service — had safety nets. It is reported that bereaved families will receive $25,000 from the mayor’s office, $150,000 from the Justice Department, and a tax-free lifetime pension equal to the firefighter’s salary. It doesn’t bring them back, but no money can do that.
With many physical and financial needs already met, where will hundreds of millions of dollars collected from donors go?
As is now common in Western disasters, emotional needs will find a flood of counselors and psychiatrists. To significant administrative costs, some charities can add large bills for fund raising, or admit to investing in infrastructure. Beyond that, defensive charity spokesmen offer few answers, as disputes grow over how to coordinate the efforts of 200 charities.
Money is still rolling in because of TV plugs, Internet ads, charity concerts, and tin-cup rattling. Some charities have refused to leave any barrel unscraped, even though few could justify spending more on U.S. needs while a far bigger disaster threatened in and around Afghanistan, where larger numbers looked likely to die than were killed in the United States.
In the past, it was possible to claim ignorance of greater need elsewhere, or say the most vulnerable could not be reached, or believe that a single charity could not balance a world of demands. For groups such as the American Red Cross, no such defense is possible. It has taken in $564-million in disaster relief, the biggest slice of the fund-raising pie, yet it had to use advertisements to appeal for the needy to come forward.
American Red Cross President Bernadine P. Healy has resigned, and many questions remain. Is there a problem here about leadership and political will within cash-hungry nonprofit groups? Could fund raisers not keep their heads amid the lure of so much money? Could they not halt their appeals for money when sufficient sums had been raised? Could they not replace competition with cooperation when, for once, enough money had come in for every charity?
And could they not urge donors to give to equally worthy causes, such as the needs of those whose lives could yet be saved?
While supposedly neutral and impartial charities wave the Stars and Stripes over a cause close to home and talk of the support they will offer those in the U.S. armed forces, it is left largely to governments to set the agenda for how independent aid groups will receive money to support the needs of those in Afghanistan.
Nick Cater is a British journalist and consultant who specializes in nonprofit issues. His e-mail address is cateralert@hotmail.com. A version of this column appeared on the Reuters Foundation’s http://www.AlertNet.org, an online site that focuses on humanitarian issues.
