Donors Give More Than $27-Million to Aid Victims of Calif. Wildfires

Donors gave more than $27-million to help charities respond to the wildfires in Southern California, which burned 500,000 acres, destroyed 1,600 homes, and killed seven people.

The American Red Cross received the vast majority of that money, an estimated $20-million. By October 29, the organization had stopped accepting contributions to the relief effort, its largest since Hurricane Katrina, but it was still encouraging donations to its general disaster fund.

Other charities received far smaller sums. The Salvation Army brought in about $1.5-million; Direct Relief International received $350,000; and Operation USA took in $10,000.

“There’s been a real outpouring of generosity, in part because of the very dramatic nature of the fires,” said Mark W. Everson, president of the Red Cross. “When these homes were destroyed, they weren’t partially damaged. They went to the ground and there’s nothing left.”

Mr. Everson said his charity might give other organizations some of the cash it raised if there was money left over. Initially, the Red Cross said it would need between $12-million and $15-million to respond to the wildfires.

In early November, the Red Cross was still operating a few shelters, providing mental-health counseling, and cleaning up neighborhoods devastated by the fires.

Direct Relief International was funneling support to hospitals and clinics, while the Salvation Army was providing financial assistance to people who’d lost their homes, among other support.

Future Gifts

While the Red Cross did receive most of the big gifts announced right after the fires, many businesses planned to donate additional cash to local charities in the coming weeks.

The Walt Disney Company, for example, gave $200,000 to the Red Cross but planned to donate another $1.8-million in the coming weeks. Bank of America planned to give $1-million — half to the Washington charity and half to local organizations.

“The Red Cross seems best equipped to respond immediately, but we’re concerned about what happens in two weeks or two months,” said Janet Lamkin, California president of Bank of America. “We want to make sure our local partners that we work with on a day-to-day basis have sufficient funds.”

Community foundations were also playing a huge role in helping to raise money for longer-term needs. The San Diego Foundation received $3.5-million for its After the Fires Fund, and expected to bring in another $2-million. Much of the money came as a result of an e-mail sent out by the Council on Foundations, which also won the attention of former President Bill Clinton, who held a fund-raising event to benefit the San Diego Foundation on Nov. 3.

The San Diego grant maker also benefited from its experience responding to the 2003 wildfires, which consumed a similar amount of land and destroyed about twice as many houses. “The first time we had the fire fund, the response was pretty slow, but this time we were ready to go and people were familiar with us,” said Bob Kelly, the foundation’s chief executive officer. “We’re probably the experts in this now.”

The foundation’s staff members had their first meeting to discuss a response to the wildfires at 10:00 am on Monday, Oct. 22, a day after the fires started. Two weeks later, they completed an initial assessment of needs, and they plan to release a survey of long-term needs on Dec. 5.

As in 2003, the foundation will likely support a mix of established local charities and new organizations it creates to help people recover from the fires. Mr. Kelly said he expects the community foundation will help provide mental-health counseling, new clothing, college scholarships, and job assistance to people who’ve lost homes, savings, and employment because of the fires.

In some cases, the wildfires took a direct toll on charities. Nine of the San Deigo Foundation’s 45 employees were evacuated from their homes because of the blazes. Many fund-raising events scheduled before the fires were cancelled or morphed into benefits for fire victims.

For its part, the Red Cross, which was pilloried for its response to Hurricane Katrina, used the wildfires to test some new policies and partnerships it had developed in the wake of the Gulf Coast catastrophe.

A day after the fires broke out, officials with the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives with top companies, called the Red Cross asking for ways that businesses could help. Later that day, the Washington charity called back with an answer: It needed warehouse space, assistance in transporting goods, and fuel cards. The Business Roundtable then sent an e-mail to its members, and by Thursday the Red Cross had received the support it needed.

That ease of communication was a result of a partnership signed in September between the business association and the Red Cross, said Johanna Schneider, a spokesperson with the Business Roundtable. Many corporate leaders found that they didn’t know how best to help people affected by the 2005 Gulf Coast storms, Ms. Schneider said, so her organization has been working with the Red Cross since then to facilitate private companies’ response to disasters.

Save the Children also signed an agreement in recent months with the Red Cross and Church of the Brethren, this one designed to ensure that children get the care they need during an emergency. As part of the agreement, Save the Children and the Red Cross had supplied shelters in California and across the country with kits of crayons, toys, and games so they would be available when a disaster struck.

The Red Cross’s emergency response benefited from stronger relationships with federal, state, and local government, as well as with its chapters in the affected areas, Mr. Everson said. “I don’t think there’s any question that the government and other players all responded more effectively in this disaster,” he said.

Fighting fraud was also a priority for organizations that responded to the fires. The Red Cross and other charities checked the names of people who asked for assistance against a common database to ensure that individuals didn’t receive cash or other aid twice from different organizations.

The Internal Revenue Service, meanwhile, warned against a fraudulent e-mail asking people for contributions to help victims of the wildfires. The “phishing” scheme, which tried to trick recipients into providing personal and financial information, went so far as to include text from an actual speech about the wildfires delivered by a member of the California state assembly.

Two-and-a-half weeks after the fires started, many people in the charitable world were viewing the emergency response as a success. But the small scale of the fires did little to inspire confidence that relief groups could respond effectively to another catastrophe the size of the Gulf Coast storms.

“The many differences between the two disasters don’t do much to allay concerns that the weaknesses exposed during Hurricane Katrina have been addressed,” said Tony Pipa, author of Weathering the Storm: the Role of Local Nonprofits in the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort, which was commissioned by the Aspen Institute.