Balkan Turmoil Could Signify Turning Point for Giving On Line

Americans are donating millions of dollars to charities helping the Kosovo refugees — and unprecedented numbers of people are making their gifts via the Internet.

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Technology is doing more than help groups raise money, however: It has transformed the way relief groups do business and called significant attention to the plight of needy people around the world.

The growth in on-line gifts comes as charities say the plight of Kosovo victims has inspired record contributions.

“The response of the public has been exceedingly strong, absolutely unprecedented in terms of an emergency response to CARE,” said Marilyn F. Grist, the Atlanta organization’s senior vice-president for external relations. CARE has raised more than $1.4-million for its relief efforts in the Balkans since the beginning of April. About $191,000 came in through the group’s Web site (http://www.care.org) during that same time, compared to the $100,000 that the charity received on-line, over a two-month period, to help rebuild Central American countries after they were devastated by Hurricane Mitch in the fall.

Among the other charities that say on-line gifts for the Kosovo situation are far bigger than for any other emergency situation:

* The American Red Cross (http://www.redcross.org) says that on-line contributions account for $545,000 of the $6.1-million that the organization has raised from individuals, foundations, and corporations since the start of the crisis.

* Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, in New York, has raised $209,000 through its Web site (http://www.dwb.org) and $393,000 through its toll-free donation number.

* UNICEF-USA (http://www.unicefusa.org), in New York, has raised a total of $300,000, including $43,000 in contributions via the Internet.

* Almost one third of the money that Save the Children (http://www.savethechildren.org), in Westport, Conn., has raised — $40,000 out of $125,000 — has been donated on line.

Even with the growth in on-line gifts, more traditional forms of donations still account for the lion’s share of contributions. The Pew Charitable Trusts and the William H. Gates Foundation have made grants of $1-million and $1.5-million, respectively, which will be shared by the American Red Cross, in Washington; CARE; and the International Rescue Committee (http://www.intrescom.org), in New York. Ted Turner, founder of the United Nations Foundation, announced a grant of $1-million to support the relief efforts of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Several companies — including AT&T, Automatic Data Processing, Bell Atlantic, and Time Warner — have announced that they will match their employees’ donations (within limits) to selected relief organizations that are working on the Kosovo crisis.

Charity leaders say that they are gratified by both the traditional and on-line donations, but that they are especially relieved that their Web sites are beginning to pay off. On-line donation efforts, they say, have made it easier for them to focus their attention on the relief programs, rather than on fund raising. “We don’t have to answer the phone. We don’t have to take any information. It’s so much simpler at a time of crisis,” says Matthew De Galan, communications manager at Mercy Corps International (http://www.mercycorps.org), in Portland, Ore.

Raising money on line is not without its dangers, though. Since the beginning of the crisis, traffic to the Web site (http://www.oxfamamerica.org) run by Oxfam America — which has already raised more than $500,000 for its relief efforts — has increased to as many as 10,000 “hits” a day. The Boston organization believes that the increase in traffic was responsible for overwhelming the computer that hosts the Web site and rendering the site’s donation page inoperable for a day and a half.

While such stumbles have caused temporary problems, relief groups say they have found the Internet a powerful, low-cost way to tell the public about their efforts to aid the refugees.

World Vision, in Federal Way, Wash., which has raised $115,000 in on-line donations, adds new information to its site (http://www.worldvision.org) almost every day. Using videotapes it made before the NATO bombings, it has also posted interviews with Kosovars driven from their homes and first-person accounts of the crisis in Kosovo.

Relief groups are not just using Web sites, but are also relying increasingly on electronic mail to communicate with supporters. Since the start of the crisis, almost 300 people have signed up to receive UNICEF-USA’s e-mail updates on its emergency-relief work, which brings the list’s total to more than 6,100 subscribers. During the refugee crisis, the alerts have provided information about the situation and UNICEF-USA’s relief activities.

Relief workers from many charities working in the Balkans have been e-mailing reports and diary entries for use in press releases and on their organizations’ Web sites. A member of Catholic Relief Services’ (http://www.catholicrelief.org) emergency-response team even has a digital camera, which allows him to take pictures that he can send by e-mail to the group’s headquarters in Baltimore.

Even in the midst of the crisis, relief organizations are finding novel ways to use technology to get their message out.

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, in Louisville, Ky., which relies on church members for donations, has made it easy for congregations to get involved with its relief efforts. The group has posted a bulletin insert about the Kosovo crisis — which includes a prayer and instructions on how to make a donation — as an Acrobat Portable Document Format file on its Web site (http://pda.pcusa.org/pcusa/wmd/pda). Because the format allows data to be posted on a Web site exactly as if it came from a printer, all congregations need to do is print it out and copy it.

Mercy Corps is using a combination of technologies to get its message to the news media. Using a satellite phone, the group’s president, Dan O’Neill, who has been working in Macedonia, calls in a daily report of his experiences in the refugee camps to Mercy Corps’ voice-mail system. Producers at the Salem Radio Network retrieve the messages each day and transfer them into computer sound files. The files are then posted on the network’s internal Web site, and are available for the network’s radio stations across the country to use in their news reports.

The power of the Internet has allowed some relief groups to reap unexpected benefits that go far beyond dealing with the Kosovo crisis. While charities are often frustrated that donors pay attention only to crises that are in the news at the moment, Doctors Without Borders has found that its Internet site is helping to reverse that situation.

Last fall, frustrated by the lack of press coverage of the famine in southern Sudan, the group started its “Bracelet of Life” campaign, which distributes paper bracelets that the charity’s volunteers use to measure malnutrition in small children. The group encourages people to wear the bracelets to raise awareness of the famine.

The link to the Web page about the Bracelet of Life campaign is right below the link to information about Kosovo, and visitors who came to the site to find out about the crisis in the Balkans are also reading about the famine in Sudan. Requests for the bracelets have shot up since the beginning of the crisis in Kosovo. The charity now receives at least 20 requests a day, compared to about five per week before the bombing started.

“It’s great that people are so concerned about the Kosovo refugees, but there are refugee crises all over the world,” said Barbara Kancelbaum, the group’s communications director. “So, it’s gratifying to us when people, through looking for information about Kosovo, end up finding out about something that’s going on in Africa.”