Number of Groups Soliciting Workers Grows Rapidly

The federal government’s annual charity drive looked much different two decades ago. At

that time — the late 1980s — only a handful of federations of national and international charities participated in the drive, known as the Combined Federal Campaign, which raised $166-million in 1988. Since then, the number of charity federations in the campaign has grown sharply, up to 31 in 2005, when all federations and charities received a total of $268.6-million in pledges from federal workers. Nearly half of these federations had contracts with Patrick Maguire, a California fund-raising consultant.

Federations are nonprofit organizations that are coalitions of charities that raise money through on-the-job campaigns. Mr. Maguire’s company, Maguire/Maguire Inc., helps federations and their charity members raise money and get their messages heard. In all, more than 1,800 national and international organizations (most of which are part of a federation) competed for funds in 2006 in the Combined Federal Campaign.

Mr. Maguire says the addition of so many groups to the fund-raising drive has been a positive step, opening up new choices for donors. A key to success, he says, is for nonprofit groups to craft compelling names and images that clearly convey their missions and get the attention of federal workers.

Some nonprofit organizations that compete with Mr. Maguire’s client federations, however, say he has taken marketing strategies to an extreme, leading to confusion for donors.

25-Word Pitch

Under Combined Federal Campaign procedures, federal employees each year receive a catalog of eligible organizations. Each group provides a maximum 25-word description of itself and its mission. In addition to that description, the government calculates and publishes each charity’s percentage of administrative and fund-raising expenses as a share of its total support and revenue.

Using this guide, workers make cash gifts and pledges to the federations and charities of their choice. Key to navigating the directory is a table of contents at the front that provides the names of federations of charities and the page numbers where each federation’s members are listed. (Charities that are not members of federations are listed together under headings of national and international unaffiliated organizations.)

Mr. Maguire says he realized while consulting with organizations in the Combined Federal Campaign that many federal workers have no preconceived idea of which charities to support each year and look to the directory’s table of contents for help and ideas.

A charity belonging to a federation that catches the eyes of potential donors could receive a substantial number of donations. Mr. Maguire says his research shows that 20 percent of federal workers who give through the Combined Federal Campaign are looking in the catalog for a specific charity they already know they want to support. Eighty percent of contributors, he says, “have an idea of what kinds of charities they’d like to support but have no specific charity in mind — they look for issues, like fighting cancer or helping stray animals.”

While some federations in the campaign in the 1980s represented a broad mix of causes and charities, Mr. Maguire believed that taking a specialized approach would be more effective.

A new federation was soon following his advice: Independent Charities of America, which was formed in 1988 by a group of federal employees that used an advertising and marketing company that employed Mr. Maguire.

By 1991 the federation was allowing member charities to create new federations, under its umbrella, that were designed to represent the member charities by category.

For example, charities that served children were assigned to the new federation Children’s Charities of America, and those that fought disease went to Health & Medical Research Charities of America.

By 1995 — when Mr. Maguire bought the association-management division of the advertising and marketing company and named it Maguire/Maguire — Independent Charities of America had nearly a dozen “thematic” federations in place.

Mr. Maguire says that by dividing the charities by group and giving federations names that make clear their purpose, it made it much easier for contributors to find the types of charities they wanted to support.

‘Aisle Signage’

Today the Maguire lineup of federations in the Combined Federal Campaign includes Animal Charities of America, Christian Charities USA, Conservation & Preservation Charities of America, and Military, Veterans & Patriotic Service Organizations of America.

Mr. Maguire says he expects to help create several more organizations in coming years.

He has received criticism for helping start so many federations and for helping some charity members of federations change their names to be more descriptive of their missions. “Is it fair to play with the names?” Mr. Maguire asks. “Of course it is fair. It’s just aisle signage.

“Donors care about issues, and we help them find what they want to support,” he says. “It’s why you don’t get a Sears catalog anymore but you get 15 catalogs from places like Horchow and Eddie Bauer and L.L. Bean, and each one of these is better than the Sears catalog ever was. Raising money is all about merchandising. It’s what this business is.”