Fund Raising Goes Global to Meet Growing Needs

More and more charities are seeking, and winning, contributions from different parts of the world

Roma Kapoor, a native of India who moved to the United States in the 1990s, is helping United Way raise its profile globally.

Since 2007, she has been traveling back to her country twice a year to establish local United Ways. They operate in much the same way as their American cousins: attracting donations from companies that encourage employees to make donations to meet local needs.

So far, five United Ways have been created in India; they collected $3.7-million last year.

Ms. Kapoor’s effort is one among many ambitious endeavors by nonprofit groups across the United States and Europe to significantly expand the amount of money they raise globally. Already, United Way Worldwide annually raises some $1.5-billion outside America, bringing total contributions last year to more than $5.2-billion.

As United Ways expand their solicitations to new parts of the world, they encounter other groups that are household names, such as Habitat for Humanity, Save the Children, and a wide range of environmental groups, social-service organizations, universities, and others.

Many are raising hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, every year. World Vision, the international relief group in Federal Way, Wash., for example, now raises almost two-thirds of its annual budget — more than $2-billion — outside the United States.

Recession’s Pinch

International fund raising, which some charities have accelerated even as the recession pinches fund raising in the United States and elsewhere, is as varied as the organizations doing it. Some charities solicit pedestrians on the street for donations, while others run American-style fund-raising drives seeking multimillion-dollar gifts.

More and more, charities “are behaving in the same way a corporation would, going through globalization in their fund raising,” says Daryl Upsall, a fund-raising consultant in Madrid who has worked in dozens of countries and is now expanding street fund raising into six new nations on behalf of charity clients.

“In a globalizing world, your capacity to grow and expand is proportional to your capacity to invest,” he says. “In these times, when international NGO’s, universities, and other groups have assets in banks they cannot trust or in stocks that have crashed, it is better to invest in growth than lose money by saving. Why not invest in something that gives you a return?”

‘21st-Century Phenomenon’

Winning contributions from many different parts of the world, other fund raisers say, can help protect nonprofit organizations from severe economic downturns.

“Agencies that are highly dependent on two or three markets have struggled more, and single-country groups have been hit hard — they cannot move their investment around easily,” says Amanda Seller, a fund raiser in the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

In the last three to four years, Ms. Seller’s organization, which receives the bulk of its support from governments around the world, has stepped up efforts to seek private gifts, largely through street fund raising in Asia, Europe, and South America.

The organization is on track to meet a goal of netting some $90-million in contributions from donors outside the United States within the next two to three years, says Ms. Seller.

More and more charities are adding fund raisers who specialize in international solicitations to their staffs. “Increasing numbers of people have the title of vice president for international development,” says John Lippincott, president of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, a membership group for fund raisers at colleges and universities. “This is a 21st-century phenomenon.”

The interest in international work goes well beyond colleges:

• Already active in 90 countries, Habitat for Humanity International plans to announce a global multibillion-dollar capital campaign that will seek money on four continents.

  The charity is recruiting a committee of volunteers from around the world who will head the effort. And even before the announcement of the campaign — planned for 2010 or 2011 — it has secured several big donations. Habitat is also hiring three new fund raisers who will focus on seeking big gifts, working in Bangkok, Dubai, and London.

  The original plan was for the global campaign to be announced this year, but the recession has caused officials to hold off, says Mark Crozet, the charity’s senior vice president for development.

  Habitat, which started actively raising money overseas about seven years ago in England, has seen donations abroad decline in the recession, in some cases by double-digit percentages. Even so, it will still raise more than $10-million from overseas donors this year, Mr. Crozet says.

• In the last four years, the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International, a membership group for business leaders in 200 countries, has hired fund raisers for the charity’s branch offices in Australia, India, Switzerland, and South Korea — and recruited a global network of hundreds of Rotary members who volunteer to raise money. The volunteers, including a group of 41 who travel from their native countries to Chicago each year for fund-raising training, “know the donors and their culture much more than anyone here in Evanston, Illinois,” says Brian King, Rotary’s director of international fund raising.

  And, he adds, they are a key reason why the charity raised more than $90-million outside North America in the fiscal year ending in June.

• World Vision International, which raises money from donors who “sponsor” needy children with monthly gifts, seeks contributions globally through offices in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia, in addition to its American headquarters.

  The three most recently opened offices are Spain and France, which started raising money in 2005, and Italy, which just started raising funds last year.

  According to Aki Temiseva, the charity’s vice president of global marketing, the fund-raising methods used in each region vary. In France and Spain, for example, they include telemarketing, street fund raising, radio, and Internet appeals.

  “Both France and Spain grew extremely fast from 2006 to 2008, exceeding our expectations,” says Mr. Temiseva. “We currently have more than 10,000 sponsors in Spain and almost 10,000 in France.”

• Operating in more than 100 countries, Save the Children, a group of federated charities founded in Britain, has been creating Save the Children organizations in Brazil, Canada, and other developed countries. To this end, the largest Save the Children charities — in the United States, Britain, Norway, and Sweden — are contributing a total of up to $6-million every year, with the goal of making the new Save the Children offices autonomous in five to seven years.

To date, seven new Save the Children organizations have been founded. The most successful is the now self-sufficient Italian organization, which started out by seeking monthly donations and has moved into soliciting larger gifts, particularly from corporations. It now raises close to $30-million each year.

Seeking Talent

Despite such returns, raising money in new parts of the world is challenging for many charities. One of the biggest problems is finding qualified fund raisers who are both native to a particular region and who can attract donations.

At the Nature Conservancy, which raises about $2-million annually in Australia and Hong Kong, efforts to secure large gifts in Hong Kong have been hampered by difficulty in finding and keeping experienced Asian fund raisers.

“Turnover has been an issue,” says Audrey Im, who directs the charity’s fund-raising efforts in North Asia. “We’ve experimented with different models, including bringing someone over from the States who spent two years there,” she says. “The idea was to identify someone in two years.” But that did not happen, Ms. Im says. As a result, she says, the fund-raising job has sometimes been vacant for as much as a year.

Still, most charities now expanding their fund raising internationally are getting results. And while the recession has slowed the momentum of many organizations, charity officials working overseas expect the globalization of fund raising to continue expanding.

“It feels like we are on the cusp of something wonderful,” says Juanita Ortiz, a fund raiser who works with Ms. Kapoor at United Way Worldwide. “We’re part of a new wave of philanthropy around the world.”