Charities Grapple With Uncertainty as War Unfolds

The war in Iraq is prompting many charities in the United States to take action to help the troops, provide

aid, and promote peace, while other organizations are focusing on the fallout for fund-raising and advocacy efforts unrelated to the conflict.

Many charities fear that the war will depress an already-sagging U.S. economy and drain federal dollars away from philanthropic efforts.

“The damage to fund raising right now is not so much that we’re in a war or a down economy,” said Robert F. Sharpe Jr., a planned-giving consultant in Memphis. “It’s the uncertainty of it all. When donors take a wait-and-see attitude — waiting to see how the war turns out or how the market’s going to react — that environment tends to make people freeze up and not give.”

Some fund-raising experts said they think many people will hold off making gifts until the war winds down, in part to wait out fluctuations in the stock market.

Even so, most fund-raising advisers said that American charities would make a big mistake if they held off seeking donations because of the war.

“Homeless children, art museums, legal-aid organizations: They needed help yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and war doesn’t stop that,” said Robert Zimmerman, a fund-raising consultant in San Francisco.

In forthcoming direct-mail appeals, Mr. Zimmerman is advising his clients to include a reference to the war and then quickly move to an explanation of their organizations’ work. “The worst anybody is going to say is no,” said Mr. Zimmerman. “To simply pull the plug because war is going on is a disaster.”

Following are snapshots of how some charities are making decisions as the war unfolds:

Helping Service Members and Their Families

Some charities have added fund-raising campaigns to raise money to assist military personnel and their families.

In mid-February, the Mile High United Way, in Denver, began soliciting for a special fund to help families of military reserve and National Guard members who have seen their incomes drop because of the call to active duty. So far, the Homefront Campaign has raised more than $16,250, said Kelley Cahill, vice president of marketing for the Mile High United Way. The American Red Cross’s Mile High Chapter and the Colorado National Guard Foundation are distributing the money, which helps pay for housing, utilities, and other expenses.

Meanwhile, donations to the national headquarters of the United Service Organizations, which helps uniformed military personnel, were soaring, although staff members could not say how much money had come in. “Everyone is really swamped because we have been getting so many phone calls,” said Donna St. John, director of communications at the USO.

At the same time, the USA Freedom Corps, the White House office that coordinates President Bush’s call to national service, announced its “On the Homefront” program, which is designed to help Americans who want to volunteer.

Timing of Appeals Is Everything

Once war seemed imminent, fund raisers at Bailey House, a charity that provides a home and assistance for people infected with HIV/AIDS, in New York, sped up one mail appeal and postponed another.

An appeal to 67 friends of one of the charity’s board members was sent out the week before war broke out. It made no mention of the looming conflict and so far has brought in $15,000 for the charity. The small size of the appeal enabled the charity to be flexible with its mailing date, said Yvonne C. Ervin, deputy director of development.

A second mailing to 6,000 donors will be delayed for at least a few weeks, until the direction of the war and its impact are clear, she said. “I didn’t think the timing was right, with the war starting,” said Ms. Ervin. “People are skittish. We don’t know what else is going to happen.” The second appeal, which needs to be sent by early May to raise needed money for the current fiscal year, will mention the war in some way, but Ms. Ervin is not yet sure how.

Environmental Defense, a New York group, decided to immediately send letters to donors to acknowledge that the war would affect its efforts but to make clear that the work would go on.

In a letter to donors dated the day after the war started, Fred Krupp, the organization’s president, wrote that “working together to safeguard our environment is one endeavor that must continue even as war is waged.” He went on to warn that “some special interests, seeking to roll back environmental protections, have used times like these to try to advance their cause undercover,” adding that “experience has taught me that our watchdog role is never more important than when the country’s attention is focused elsewhere.”

Some charities said the war and the international events that preceded it have already taken a toll on donations.

The Atlantic City Rescue Mission, a religious-affiliated charity that serves homeless and working poor people, said that response to fund-raising appeals in February and March this year were down 21 percent from the same months in 2002. “We are making the assumption that people’s eyes have kind of left home and are beginning to look abroad and toward the bigger nonprofits” that will work on relief efforts in the Iraq area, said William R. Southrey, the group’s president.

Mr. Southrey said his approach is to try to make a connection to international events while emphasizing the importance of meeting local needs. For example, he recently told a gathering how an Arab and Israeli met at the shelter after becoming homeless and went on to became great friends. “We look and say, ‘These are world events, but we are all part of the same world,’” said Mr. Southrey. “So we make the effort not to generate anything false, but if there’s something here that is in common with what’s taking place in the world, we tie them together.”

Rethinking Publicity and Lobbying

Charities that run hard-hitting issue advertisements have had to rethink their strategies.

Last week Fenton Communications, a public-relations company in Washington that advises nonprofit groups, circulated an e-mail newsletter with a list of suggestions for tailoring messages during wartime. Among the advice: Refrain from making overly critical attacks on the president or stretching the facts to create links between a charity’s work and the war when an obvious connection doesn’t exist.

Some organizations have decided to put advertising campaigns on hold.

The American Legacy Foundation, an anti-smoking group in Washington, had planned to unveil a series of ads in April showing “a graphic depiction of the death toll of tobacco,” said the organization’s president, Cheryl Healton. But that campaign will have to wait, she said. While she said the charity’s target audience, teenagers, might still respond to the ads, running them now “would open up so much negative criticism that could hurt the foundation and our efforts.” Ms. Healton said she is prepared to wait six months or longer, until the fighting in Iraq is resolved, although she hopes it will not take that long.

The charity had to make a similar decision in 2001 after the September 11 terrorism attacks, scrapping an advertisement that included images of young people wearing biohazard protective suits. That ad, which was filmed long before the anthrax-mail scares, never ran.

Juggling Timing of Appeals

Some charities were having trouble attracting people to attend events during the days following the start of war.

The Asian Pacific American Dispute Resolution Center, in Los Angeles, hoped to sell 200 tickets to its awards dinner last week. Instead, 130 people were expected to attend, said Najeeba Syeed-Miller, executive director of the center. Some prospective ticket buyers told the group that they didn’t feel right attending a celebratory event, she said, which was held the same night as a war protest in town. “People’s attention is being pulled toward the war,” said Ms. Syeed-Miller. “It’s understandable. It’s not the best timing.”

Several public radio stations have had to make decisions about how to handle their on-air fund-raising drives in light of the need to provide listeners with comprehensive news coverage of the war.

WBUR in Boston began its spring fund-raising drive on the morning after the war began “with the assumption that we would evaluate it every hour,” said Mary Stohn, a spokeswoman for the station. The station got a strong response from listeners who donated, she said, but it suspended the effort that afternoon “because a great deal of news was coming out of the region.”

The station eventually decided to postpone the appeal for now. “The assessment was that most people are tuning into us to find out what’s going on and they don’t want to be interrupted even with a small break,” said Ms. Stohn.

Hawaii Public Radio was prepared, if necessary, to postpone its April 2-11 fund-raising drive to focus on news coverage if the war in Iraq dragged out. Michael Titterton, the station’s general manager, said any postponement could stretch no more than three weeks. “Sooner or later, we have to have a fund raiser, otherwise we’d just dry up and die,” he said.

Stephen G. Greene and Brad Wolverton contributed to this article.