Charities in New Orleans See Increase in Giving by Returning Residents

Donations by individuals and grant makers in the New Orleans metropolitan area are rising, some major New Orleans

charities say, a trend signaling that people are returning to the region and are choosing to support nonprofit groups that helped their neighbors in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Gary Ostroske, president of the United Way for the Greater New Orleans Area, who fled the storm with his family, says donations by local residents to the United Way stood at roughly $20-million annually before Katrina.

During the first year after the hurricane, that amount fell to $11-million. But last year, he reports, local donations rose to $16.2-million, a 47-percent increase in donations from a region still struggling to recover from enormous damage.

“There’s been a significant jump in the giving habits of those people who saw what the United Way was able to do” during and after the storm, Mr. Ostroske says. “There’s clearly people coming back, but I think the majority of those dollars are people who had come back and seen the value of what the United Way is doing.”

Other groups, such as the Second Harvest Food Bank of New Orleans and Greater Acadiana, also say their local donations are recovering, though some say they base that conclusion on anecdotal evidence.

Ben Johnson, chief executive officer of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, says he’s heard from wealthy individuals — sometimes through intermediaries — who want to set up funds designed to help rebuild. One new donor recently contacted the foundation to set up a $1-million fund that will be used for low-cost housing. Intermediaries told Mr. Johnson that the donor — whom Mr. Johnson says he can’t name — had heard about the foundation’s other rebuilding funds after the storm.

The city’s changed nonprofit landscape may be a factor in the fund-raising increases.

Before the hurricane, New Orleans had many small nonprofit organizations, often with overlapping missions, competing for contributions, according to Keith G.C. Twitchell, president of the Committee for a Better New Orleans/Metropolitan Area Committee.

But the disaster winnowed the number of charities considerably. “We’ve lost some really good and important organizations, but you might also say that there was a certain Darwinian nature to that process,” says Mr. Twitchell. “In many cases, it was the weakest organizations that didn’t survive.”

Now, he says, there are fewer, but stronger, nonprofit groups competing for the funds that are available.

‘One Catastrophe Away’

Other local charities have found themselves with a higher profile since before Hurricane Katrina. Terry Utterback, the chief philanthropy and communications officer at the Second Harvest Food Bank, says the group’s fund-raising solicitations are all mailed to people who live in and around New Orleans. The average gift has increased 25 percent, he says, from before the storm, rising from $29 to more than $40.

“Our fund-raising goals were achieved within nine months of this fiscal year,” he says.

The increases are coming despite the still-significant obstacles to fund raising. Many New Orleans residents evacuated the city after the storm and have not yet returned. Others are living with relatives or friends in the area, making donors who have given in the past harder to find and rendering many mailing lists out-of-date. Still others are struggling to repair their homes, find new jobs, or support family members who are even worse off.

Both Mr. Utterback and Mr. Ostroske say the damage caused by the hurricanes forced local residents to more fully appreciate the work of charities. Many found themselves in need of help after the storm, and others saw family members, friends, and neighbors receiving assistance from nonprofit groups for the first time.

“I personally am upper middle class, my wife and I do very well, but I was standing in line at Red Cross waiting for my stipend,” Mr. Utterback says. “Everyone realizes we’re just one catastrophe away from having to think everything that was a given was taken away from us. We’ve heard time and time again, ‘God bless you, you helped my mother. You helped my sister’s family. You were there.’”

Corporate Help

That sentiment, in fact, is the theme of the United Way’s advertising and promotional material this year. Campaign brochures highlight post-Katrina efforts such as distribution centers, an emergency hotline, and rebuilding programs, and Mr. Ostroske and other United Way officials say they’ve shifted their priorities to align with rebuilding needs.

Enterprise Rent-a-Car is one company whose workers doubled their donations during the most recent United Way campaign. The company’s fund-raising drive yielded $140,000, compared with $70,000 before the storm.

The campaign leader, Alexis Hocevar, a vice president and general manager for Enterprise Rent-a-Car in southern Louisiana, is a member of the United Way board. Mr. Hocevar says the percentage of Enterprise’s employees who made a gift rose, though he doesn’t have exact numbers, and the size of the average donation was larger as well.

Geography played a role in Second Harvest’s fund-raising achievements.

Mr. Utterback says many new donors are from the western section of the city, which sustained significant damage from both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The group has since opened a distribution center there that, he says, has raised its profile in the area, which has in turn produced more donations than before.

“They were just pummeled,” Mr. Utterback says. “We were there.”

Nicole Wallace contributed to this article.