after the September 11 terrorist attacks, nonprofit groups around the country are bracing for what could be a disastrous end-of-year giving season. The worsening economy, coupled with the nation’s preoccupation with the tragic loss of lives in the attacks and the possibility of war, is certain to present fund-raising challenges for tens of thousands of nonprofit organizations nationwide.

Charities of all kinds have felt the reverberations already. In Boston, fund raisers at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum spent the morning of September 11 mapping out ambitious plans to meet the institution’s goals for the next fiscal year. After the meeting ended, they heard that four planes — two originating from Logan Airport, just a few miles away — had been deliberately crashed.

Fund raisers quickly realized that all the decisions they had just made at the meeting would have to be reconsidered. They are now urging museum colleagues to shelve all projects for which it is not essential to seek donations. They canceled a gala scheduled for September 28 that was to have netted $85,000, out of concern that it would seem inappropriate to hold a party, especially when so many attendees knew victims of the attack. Three companies that had planned to rent the museum space for events decided not to proceed, causing a loss of about $35,000 in revenue.

“For the corporate community, the economy was tough before and it’s tougher now,” says Susan Olsen, director of development and external relations at the museum. “Where are they best going to direct discretionary resources? It may not be to sponsor exhibitions or other types of events.”

Other charities have already seen pledges withdrawn, and suffered other economic woes. Nancy Lublin, executive director of Dress for Success, a New York charity that provides business clothes to low-income women seeking employment, says an organization that had planned to make a seven-figure gift to her group came back after the attacks to say it no longer can. The gift would have given a huge lift to her charity’s budget.

While Ms. Lublin says she has been enormously touched by the generosity to relief groups — and by the hundreds of people who have offered to give her group the clothes of businesswomen who died in the World Trade Center attack — she worries about the consequences the vast outpouring of donations may have for charities not involved in disaster assistance. “I don’t know how nonprofit organizations that are not connected to disaster relief or national security are going to make it,” she says.

Jeane Vogel, a consultant in St. Louis, predicts that economic hard times lie ahead for some nonprofit groups, especially those whose trustees have not been taking seriously the need to raise money and generate revenue. “Charities that are teetering are going to have serious problems,” she says. “Some of this is very Darwinian, it’s survival of the fittest. The organizations whose boards have slacked off are going to fail.”

An ‘Unusual Combination’

History suggests that it’s not political or military crises that cause big problems for fund raising, but economic ones. A new study commissioned by the American Association of Fundraising Counsel found that overall giving to charity increased after the 1991 Gulf War and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, but declined when the stock market fell sharply.

“When you look at how people react to catastrophe and crisis, they react generously,” says Patrick M. Rooney, director of research for the Center on Philanthropy, in Indianapolis. But it’s an “unusual combination where you have this catastrophe and the economy is already so soft that the catastrophe could precipitate a recession, which could then attenuate giving.”

Although the study did not break down exactly what categories of giving were most affected by the crises, at first glance, giving to religion seems to be “invariant to what’s going on anywhere else,” says Mr. Rooney. Giving to the arts does not seem motivated by the economy, while giving to education is more vulnerable, says Mr. Rooney.

Waiting Until Year’s End

But even as the economic signs grow ominous, very few charities are significantly shifting their 2002 fund-raising strategies yet. Instead of making any immediate decisions about changes in approach, most say they will use year-end donations as a bellwether.

“It’s important for us to take a month or two and see how things are shaping up before we consider any changes,” says Thomas J. Gulick, executive director for development and marketing at the San Francisco Opera Association, which has not seen a drop in contributions so far. “Any type of planning right now in anticipation of a downturn is premature.”

One question charities face is whether to mention the attacks in their appeals to donors. Some groups that believe their missions and programs relate to the attacks plan to do so, but others fear being viewed as opportunistic.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, in Philadelphia, is revising its end-of-the-year mail appeal to mention the destruction in New York and Washington, and the influence it will have on the children it pairs with adult mentors.

“We plan to shape a message of relevance,” says John Lubbe, vice president for fund development. “Many kids are more in need of an adult voice and presence in their lives than ever before.”

At Sojourners, a Christian ministry in Washington, fund raisers hope that donors will be moved to give to the charity after they see its efforts to rally public support for a just response to those who carried out and planned the hijacking.

The organization helped to arrange for more than 2,500 religious leaders to sign a statement opposing a vengeful response, and a copy was published in The New York Times as well as on the group’s Web site and in its newsletter.

Randi Nordeen, Sojourners’ director of development, says the group already has received a number of unsolicited donations — including one check for $1,000 — accompanied by notes thanking the group for its response to the terrorist attack.

The group will need the help: It expects to lose $40,000 from donors unable to fulfill pledges because of the faltering stock market. “I’m afraid that we’ve lost that money, at least in the near future,” says Ms. Nordeen.

Wary of ‘Backlash’

However, some charities are wary of using the tragedy to connect with donors, even if it might help with fund raising.

Joseph J. Levin Jr., president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, Ala., is still weighing mentioning the attacks in a mail appeal. Even though the group, which among other things works to prevent hate crimes, has a “natural connection” to the attacks, Mr. Levin says the organization is proceeding cautiously. “Organizations that raise money through the mail or any other way should be careful not to trivialize or in some way unfairly use those events for fund-raising purposes,” he says.

Lorraine Hartnett, a fund-raising consultant in Revere, Mass., advises most groups to steer clear of references to the attacks: “I would not go so far as to focus any appeals on that tragedy unless you are a directly related nonprofit, like the Red Cross or the Salvation Army.”

Ms. Hartnett says that organizations not involved in disaster relief might appear to be using the tragedy to spike fund raising. “I think there is a possible backlash to that,” she says.

Some charities are choosing to contact donors about the tragedy without requesting support. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation plans to insert a letter from its president into the next mailing of its quarterly publication. “It is impossible to communicate with our donors across the country and not make mention of the state of the nation,” says Christine R. Hoek, vice president for advancement.

In addition, CARE USA, an international relief group based in Atlanta, mailed a letter from its president to its 400,000 donors without the customary business-reply envelope it usually encloses for people to send in contributions. “It’s not about fund raising,” says Marilyn F. Grist, vice president for external relations. “It’s acknowledging what happened and the tragedy of what happened and what a difficult time it is for everybody.” Ms. Grist and the organization’s president, Peter D. Bell, also called major donors, particularly in New York, in the days following the attacks to ask about the welfare of friends and family. Although CARE USA is not raising money or otherwise directly supporting the relief efforts following the attacks, the charity and its 10 international affiliates have been funneling contributions from donors to other disaster-relief organizations.

Criticism On Hold

Donors may also not respond to messages from charities that seem antagonistic to President Bush’s administration.

After the attacks, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, in Washington, made significant changes in the content of its direct-mail appeals. The group scrapped an appeal criticizing Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bush administration, because officials felt it was not “appropriate,” says Mary Ester, director of development. Instead, the charity is planning a new appeal focusing on “security measures in the United States, such as retention of gun records and background checks,” she says.

The Interfaith Alliance, a group that promotes religious tolerance, in Washington, also plans to change its message. A direct-mail appeal that laid out the group’s opposition to the creation of the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is being exchanged for one that will discuss discrimination against Muslims. Susie Armstrong, the group’s development director, says the charity believes issues like government aid to faith-based groups “are not going to be on the radar screen of the American public for a while” in light of the recent disasters.

The attacks are already negatively affecting fund raising: Alliance officials project that a mail appeal that arrived in current donors’ mailboxes around September 11 will only raise $65,000, slightly more than half the charity’s target. The group also has low hopes for a piece mailed to 400,000 prospective donors around the same time.

Fund Raising Resumes

Although some charities put on hold solicitations to donors immediately following the attacks, most planned to return to fund raising by early October or, at the latest, November.

Duke University, in Durham, N.C., told its fund-raising staff to cease all mail and telephone solicitations to alumni in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area until sometime in November, and it will delay until November 1 its plans to send reminders to people who made pledges before the September 11 attacks.

Amnesty International USA, in New York, also canceled several of its mail appeals and postponed two fund-raising events scheduled for late last month and early October. “We have determined it is highly inappropriate for us to be in the mail soliciting at this point in time,” says Catherine Carpentieri, director of development for the human-rights charity.

Several nonprofit institutions, however, resumed fund-raising activities the week after the attacks. The University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, started calls again to its alumni six days after the attacks, with the exception of people living in the New York City or the Washington metropolitan area. Only a small number of the university’s alumni live on the East Coast.

“We wondered if people would be too caught up in the tragedy to even consider donating to their alma mater, and if it would be inappropriate for us to be asking, or if they would say that they had already given to disaster relief and had no more dollars to give,” says Jeff Driggs, the university’s director of annual giving.

The university raised $4,000 the first day back after ceasing calls on September 11, a figure Mr. Driggs said was on the high end for an average day of appeals. Telemarketers stuck to the regular script when calling donors, and did not mention the terrorist attacks. “For the most part, the tragedy didn’t come up,” says Mr. Driggs, who thinks giving to the university will not be affected. “I don’t see it making a major impact, at least on the annual-giving level.”

At least one charity, a public-television station in the South, went ahead with telemarketing on September 11, but only after callers had received sensitivity training about discussing the attacks, says Susan Paine, senior vice president for client services at Direct Advantage Marketing, a telemarketing company, in Pittsburgh. Only 6 percent of those contacted told the telemarketers they did not wish to talk because of the attacks, she says.

Other charities decided to proceed with fund-raising events in the days and weeks following the attacks but to also donate a portion of the money raised to other nonprofit groups that are helping victims’ families and the relief effort.

Local chapters of the American Heart Association, which has its headquarters in Dallas, held about 100 American Heart Walks around the country the weekend after the attacks and donated the first $250,000 raised to the New York Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund, run by the International Association of Fire Fighters, in Washington.

In some cases, fund raisers are simply changing the tone of forthcoming events. For example, George Brakeley, a consultant in Stamford, Conn., says one of his clients is considering taking the word “celebrate” out of the invitation to an event to mark the start of a major campaign this month.

Pleas to Major Donors

Now charities are starting to contemplate how best to impress on loyal donors the importance of not ignoring their causes, without seeming insensitive to the attacks.

Mark Rovner, a consultant at Craver, Mathews, Smith & Company, an Arlington, Va., direct-marketing firm, is advising his clients to turn to long-term major donors for support. “Historically, we have found that that group is very responsive to the fact that a cause they believe in is headed into lean times,” he says.

For the hundreds of local United Ways, that message is critical to the success of their annual on-the-job drives, most of which began right before or after the attacks.

The United Way of Northwest Louisiana, in Shreveport, for example, started an “Over and Above” campaign that encourages donors to help victims of the terrorist attacks while maintaining or increasing support for local nonprofit groups. “Local needs are still here,” says Patrick Jinks, the group’s campaign and marketing director. “They don’t go away just because there are more high-profile needs.”

Debra E. Blum, Laura Hruby, Meg Sommerfeld, Nicole Wallace, and Ian Wilhelm contributed to this article.