Advocacy Groups Face Stiff Fund-Raising Challenges in Bad Economy

Donations to advocacy groups and other organizations included in Giving USA’s public-society benefit category faced a 4.2-percent drop last year.

The fall-off for some advocacy groups was much steeper percentages than those figures suggest, and recovery may be choppy depending on the kinds of issues that capture public attention.

“What’s current is what drives support,” says Drew Wynn, development director at the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence and the Brady Campaign, in Washington.

Donations fell 26 percent last year at his group, in large part because contributions were especially strong the previous year when the organization was rallying attention for a landmark gun-rights case the Supreme Court was considering.

“In 2009, we didn’t have the same thing to propel us,” says Mr. Wynn.

In addition, he says, the Brady Center didn’t have sufficient cash last year to be able to spend anything on mailings to recruit new donors. The organization is sending such mailings now, however, as it highlights what it says are dangerous loopholes in laws governing gun sales at gun shows.

Compassion & Choices, a Denver group that focuses on the care and rights of the terminally ill, has been doing well as it seeks new donors. The organization hopes its efforts will increase giving, which has remained flat since 2008. It recently hired a second full-time major-gifts officer as it intensifies its fund raising.

Free Press, an advocacy group in Florence, Mass., that promotes independent media efforts, has struggled with a decline in donations, so it has been cutting costs, reducing its budget by 25 percent last year and by another 2 percent this year. But streamlining its operations may attract more dollars in 2010, says the organization’s president and co-founder, Josh Silver. Many of the foundations that backed off grant making last year because of financial constraints, he says, are back this year re-evaluating their grant-making portfolios and looking for the best investments.

“We have reinvented our fund-raising and marketing campaigns to make sure we are on the A list as funders emerge from the morass,” Mr. Silver says.

Free Press, for example, is producing a short animated film that it hopes will help explain the group’s complex issue areas in a quick and entertaining way.

Says Mr. Silver: “This will be no mundane pitch.”