Americans have mounted one of the largest philanthropic campaigns in the nation’s history. And even as charities continue to provide counseling, financial assistance, and other help for people directly affected by the attacks, nonprofit groups around the country are starting to gird for a war and a recession that could affect their fortunes and operations for many months to come.

The September 11 hijackings — which brought down four commercial jetliners, the World Trade Center towers, and part of the Pentagon — have prompted more than $676-million in individual, foundation, and corporate gifts to existing disaster-relief charities and special funds created to aid the victims’ families. An additional outpouring of donated goods and offers to volunteer have far exceeded what charities can use.

The New York Attorney General’s office, which oversees charities in the state, stepped in last week to help coordinate what has become a far-flung jumble of fund-raising and relief efforts. The office organized the first of a series of meetings among charities and government agencies providing support to victims of the disaster and their families. It also announced plans to set up a database to help groups avoid duplication in their efforts to help.

“The mechanics of turning generosity into direct help will not be easy,” Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said, adding that “millions of generous Americans are depending on us to see to it that their donations are used wisely, and that every dollar goes to those most in need.”

$676-Million Donated

The amount donated in just the first two weeks represents a quarter of the money raised by relief charities and other international groups in all of last year. And the $676-million sum, which does not include the value of volunteer time, is certain to rise as more gifts arrive and as money raised by local groups in New York and elsewhere is added to the total.

For immediate and long-term needs, most contributions have been concentrated in a handful of charities. The American Red Cross had raised at least $211-million at press time in the first two weeks after the attacks, and the Salvation Army had raised about $21-million.

In addition, the September 11th Fund, created by the United Way of New York City and the New York Community Trust, had raised more than $120-million as of press time. A second newly created aid organization, the September 11th Telethon Fund, took in an estimated $150-million in pledges during a two-hour “Tribute to Heroes,” which featured scores of Hollywood and recording stars and was simulcast on 35 television channels. The Telethon Fund, which will directly benefit victims and their families, is being overseen by the United Way of New York City.

Yet even as the response has left some charities well-financed for immediate needs, the disaster itself has cast a longer-term pall over the nonprofit world, both in the affected cities and nationwide.

The pool of donations available for everyday charitable programs is likely to shrink as investors grapple with an unstable stock market and donors put their philanthropy toward disaster relief. This is a particular concern now, as arts, education, health, environmental, and other non-relief charities head into the usually lucrative November-December fund-raising season.

Giving From All Corners

Besides collections for World Trade Center and Pentagon employees and their families, scores of smaller funds have been created to benefit the families of those who died trying to help: hundreds of firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical workers.

Donations have come from all corners of society. In their first game back in Shea Stadium after the attacks, baseball players for the New York Mets donated their paychecks for the night — close to $500,000 — to relief efforts, and Michael Jordan, returning to the basketball court, will donate his first year’s salary.

In Oklahoma City, site of the last major terrorist attack on American soil, two building-company workers held a 48-hour “sail-a-thon” on Lake Hefner that raised $14,000 in pledges for the New York and Pentagon victims.

Children at Kramer Middle School, located in one of Washington’s most impoverished neighborhoods, collected about $400, mostly in pennies, for the family of a student from a nearby elementary school who was killed in the plane crash at the Pentagon.

Grant makers have also sought to do their part. In an unusual move, at least 15 community foundations, from San Francisco to Philadelphia, are raising money to benefit charities located outside of the funds’ geographic areas. Private and corporate foundations have provided at least $174-million in disaster-related grants to nonprofit groups, on top of the millions that foundations have given to the Red Cross and the September 11th Fund.

Many of the fund-raising campaigns have set new records for Internet giving.

One central resource for nonprofit organizations: the Liberty Unites site, which was created by six of the nation’s biggest high-technology companies, including Cisco Systems, eBay, and the Microsoft Corporation. Liberty Unites, which President Bush spotlighted in a White House speech hailing Americans’ charitable response, has identified more than $91-million given online to disaster efforts.

As Americans opened their hearts to charities, some watchdog groups have alerted people to be on the lookout for fund-raising scams, including one mass electronic-mail solicitation that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is reviewing. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has gone so far as to advise Americans not to respond to telephone solicitors raising money for disaster relief. “If they’re starting to call you,” he warned, “there’s something wrong going on.”

A major question emerging for all of these charities, both new and old, is how to spend the money. Private insurance and government disaster assistance will cover many of the costs, leaving charities to figure out how to plug the gaps.

Board and staff members have just begun to consider what fraction of the money raised should be redistributed as direct cash assistance to family members, what fraction should be used to finance immediate counseling and other charitable programs, and what fraction should be put into a reserve fund for any wartime needs that may arise.

In New York, where more than 6,400 people were presumed dead as of last week, charities are struggling to meet the immense emotional, logistical, and financial needs of families, while dealing with their own organizational losses — of telephones and office space and, more important, of volunteers, clients, and donors.

Boys & Girls Clubs in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, for example, are trying to find ways to help more than 150 children whose parents or other loved ones are presumed dead in the World Trade Center collapse.

In determining priorities, charity leaders must grapple not only with uncertainties over how the global war on terrorism will unfold but also with unfamiliar challenges posed by the disaster itself. Unlike more conventional disasters, such as earthquakes and hurricanes, the effect of the terrorist attacks was national as much as local, macroeconomic as much as microeconomic, and psychological as much as structural.

“I’ve been on 22 different national Red Cross disaster operations, and this doesn’t compare to any of them,” says Jay D. Scott, executive director of the Crawford County, Ohio, chapter of the Red Cross, who has been helping the national office with its activities in New York. “To have four separate terrorist incidents at the same time is nothing the nation has ever faced before. It’s an ongoing, unfolding event that we continue to work and look for new ways to respond to.”

The Red Cross last week announced that it will use at least $100-million to provide tax-free financial aid to families of victims for everything from mortgage payments to funeral expenses.

Red Cross and other charity officials say offers of volunteer help, blood, and donated goods have been so numerous that they have far surpassed the immediate needs.

Alyson Jackson Snavely, a Red Cross volunteer (and former Red Cross staff member) from Chapel Hill, N.C., who was deployed to New York, says she and other emergency coordinators not far from the disaster site had to stop directing volunteers to the Family Assistance Center at Pier 94, run by New York City with help from the Red Cross and other organizations.

“They have been completely inundated,” she says. “There were something like 7,000 spontaneous volunteers from this area who just said, ‘Here I am. Put me to work.’”

While Ms. Snavely says she is aware that turning away volunteers in the days following the disaster could alienate some who wanted to help, she has tried to tell as many people as possible “to keep in mind your efforts and your energies are going to be needed for a long time to come.” And she adds: “If you can rest and take good care of yourself now, emotionally heal yourself, you are going to be needed when the rest of us can no longer function.”

Volunteers with specialized skills, such as doctors, have been able to help. Since few survivors were rescued from the 10 stories of burning rubble left from the collapsed buildings, doctors were for the first time included in Red Cross “outreach teams,” which have been going door to door in apartment buildings near the World Trade Center to make sure residents are okay and that they know about the help that is available.

Other Americans have also found ways to give their time.

Bar associations in the New York and Washington areas are providing pro bono lawyers to help families with everything from filing for death certificates to securing survivor benefits. Northwest Medical Teams International, a faith-based group in Portland, Ore., that sends volunteer doctors, nurses, and others to disaster sites around the world, is providing crisis counseling to New Yorkers and sees only expanded needs to come.

The disaster coverage “is on TV 24 hours a day, so it’s impacting our entire nation,” notes Todd Pynch, a Northwest Medical Teams volunteer who is also senior pastor of a church in Corvallis, Ore. “It’s not just people in New York who are traumatized.”

The Chronicle’s special section was reported by Debra E. Blum, Elizabeth Greene, Stephen G. Greene, Laura Hruby, Heather Joslyn, Nicole Lewis, Elizabeth Schwinn, Meg Sommerfeld, Ziya Serdar Tumgoren, Nicole Wallace, Ian Wilhelm, and Grant Williams.