Overlap in Numbers Makes It Hard to Total Up On-the-Job Donations

Figuring out how much money is really raised each year through on-the-job fund-raising drives is more complicated than it might first appear.

That is because competing organizations sometimes lay claim to the same dollars when reporting their totals.

United Way of America, for example, says that its network of roughly 1,400 independent United Ways raised $3.25-billion during the 1996-97 campaigns, and that preliminary estimates indicate that United Ways will raise 4 to 5 per cent more in the 1997-98 cycle.

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a Washington watchdog organization that tracks gifts to non-United Way charities, says on-the-job donations to “the alternative funds movement” in 1996-97 totaled $302-million. It projects that donations to the arts, education, health, and other alternative funds will go up 30 per cent in 1997, to $310-million.

But getting a total of the amount raised through on- the-job drives requires more than just simple addition. Both United Way and the alternative funds count money raised through United Way-run campaigns but earmarked by donors for non-United Way charities. Such donations amounted to about $89.8-million in 1996, according to the committee.

Robert O. Bothwell, president of the committee, says that United Ways only began to offer donors the option of designating non-United Way charities after strong prodding by the alternative federations. “There wouldn’t be any donor choice if there weren’t alternative funds,” he says.

But Karen K. Brunn, senior research associate at United Way of America, says the reverse is equally true: the dollars would not exist without United Way. “United Way volunteers are the ones who are actually out there conducting the workplace campaigns and raising the money,” she notes.

The United Way argument did not win over the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets guidelines that many charities follow. In 1993, the board voted to tell charities to stop counting dollars designated for other charities as their own gift revenue. That accounting change explains why the financial statements of many United Ways show smaller campaign totals than the figures announced to the public.