Preparing for Chaos

Charities debate best ways to handle fund-raising appeals as Iraq conflict intensifies

Nonprofit organizations face a big question as they plan their fund raising for the next few months: Will the United States go to war with Iraq — and if so, when?

Charity fund raisers and consultants gathered here this month to discuss what plans to make for direct-mail and telephone fund raising as the conflict with Iraq intensifies. Because some charities rely heavily on such solicitations, the possibility that a fund-raising campaign could be overtaken by national events could impair the ability of some nonprofit groups to carry out their services and programs.

Speakers at the meeting, organized by the Direct Marketing Association of Washington, drew on their experiences during the Gulf War and after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Panelists encouraged charities to stick to their fund-raising plans but to stay as flexible as possible so they can respond to fast-moving events — and to have a backup plan in case things don’t go exactly as they expect.

“There’ll be more money lost in the next four months by people not mailing than by people mailing,” said Frank O’Brien, president of O’Brien McConnell & Pearson, a fund-raising consulting company in Washington. “That doesn’t mean that we should blithely continue what we’re doing.”

Charities need to be able to articulate why their work matters and why donors should support it in a tone that reflects the seriousness of the moment, said Mr. O’Brien. But, he emphasized, that doesn’t mean writing “glum, downer mail.”

“The worst mistake people made after 9/11, besides not mailing, was mail that said, ‘I know these are really terrible times, and somehow I hope you’ll find a way to figure out that we still matter at some level,’” he said. “If organizations don’t have confidence in their own voice and their own purpose in the world, donors are going to smell that, and go to other organizations that do.”

Backup Plans

Mr. O’Brien and the other speakers were also quick to point out that charities can’t think about how a war might affect fund raising without also considering other factors at work, such as the weak economy and the public’s waning trust in institutions, the result of events like the corporate-accounting scandals and the crisis in the Roman Catholic Church.

“We’re looking at a total context that’s not very pretty right now,” said Temple Elliott, vice president of fund-raising strategy at Epsilon, a consulting company in Burlington, Mass.

Ms. Elliott recommended that even nonprofit organizations that were planning their budgets based on a fund-raising forecast of growth prepare fairly detailed backup plans for what they would do if giving were flat or declined.

Another part of planning for worst-case scenarios is knowing who a charity’s loyal supporters are, said Ms. Elliott. “If you need to mount an extra mailing, if you need to generate more revenue, who are the people you can still go to and count on?”

Not a Surprise

Though charities are drawing on what they learned in the Gulf War, members of the conference panel said nonprofit officials should keep in mind how different that experience might be from a new war with Iraq. In 1991, they said, fund raising came to a standstill as donors were glued to their television sets watching the progress of the conflict. The Gulf War largely took the American public by surprise, they said, while this time the buildup to hostilities has been prolonged. Most fund-raising consultants at the meeting said that nonprofit groups might want to hold off on sending appeals or making phone calls during the first days of a conflict, but that they should renew their efforts soon after that.

Not everyone was in complete agreement, though.

Mark Rovner, senior vice president at Craver, Mathews, Smith & Company, a fund-raising consulting business in Arlington, Va., pointed out that the fear of retaliatory attacks in the United States is something that didn’t exist during the Gulf War, and that donors’ apprehension might make it difficult for them to go back to “business as usual” after the fighting starts.

Tom McGuire, vice president of membership programs for the National Wildlife Federation, in Reston, Va., was even more cautious. “If there’s shooting going on, we should be off the phones,” he said. “The war will occur on prime time. People will be drawn to watch this thing.”

As charities make plans for their fund raising in the event of war, Mr. McGuire said, fund raisers should talk with their donors to gauge their mood — advice that he admitted he sometimes has a hard time following, but said is well worth the effort.

“Talk to people; make a few calls,” said Mr. McGuire. “It’s actually really useful to move from these abstract numbers and letters to real people.”

Mr. McGuire said charities could be taking steps now to make sure they are ready to make quick adjustments in fund raising should war break out. The National Wildlife Federation, for example, is working to improve its financial-accounting system so it can see where its overall finances stand at the end of each day. This way, dips in donations will be noted right away, allowing for more time to change strategies or seek new sources of income.

It’s important that fund raisers “understand the economics” of their actions, added Mr. McGuire. “What happens if we mail and we lose 40 percent of our response,” he asked. “Are we better off than if we had never mailed at all?”

The federation also is carefully reviewing its production calendar now to determine what are the latest possible dates by which the organization has to make key printing and mailing decisions. Mr. McGuire said the federation wanted to give itself as much flexibility as it could to respond to world events.

To that end, he said that now is not the time for nonprofit groups to include dates on their fund-raising appeals, even if that’s something they’ve always done.

“If that mailing’s scheduled to go out April 2,” said Mr. McGuire, “don’t put April 2 on it, because who knows when we’ll actually use that form.”

Planning for the Worst

Rick Christ, president of NPAdvisors, a consulting company in Oakton, Va., offered another approach that charities can take to minimize the risk that breaking news poses to their direct-mail appeals.

One of the charities he advises sends out half a million letters each month designed to attract new donors. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the group decided that rather than send the letters out all at once and risk that a dramatic event might overwhelm the entire mailing, it would instead mail 125,000 letters each week.

“That’s more work,” said Mr. Christ. “But it also means that, at worst, if we’ve got one big disaster we’ve lost 125,000 pieces.”

The same organization, he said, just got an estimate from a printing company that said it could print a direct-mail appeal at 11 cents per package, compared with the 16 cents the charity paid another company in October. Mr. Christ said that in this economy, charities should be looking for deals.

“It’s not just nonprofits who are hurting, but the vendors are also concerned,” he said. “So answer the phone when a new printer calls, see what they have to say. Take the time to send some sample packages out. Do a little negotiating.”

Different Scenarios

While organizations can take some cues on mailing tactics from their experiences after September 11, 2001, the rules for what advocacy groups can say about the Bush administration in their appeals are very different now, several speakers said.

Then, as the nation rallied around the president in the months following the terrorist attacks, progressive advocacy groups shied away from criticizing the administration in their appeals. But Dennis McCarthy, president of the Share Group, a fund-raising company in Somerville, Mass., said that the mood among left-of-center donors is very different today.

“They’re mad — mad as a wet cat or a bunch of hornets,” he said. “They’re angry with the way the administration has conducted itself on a whole variety of levels.”

He and other speakers said that abortion-rights, environmental, and other activist organizations can and should be talking about how they think the administration’s policies are affecting their issues.

But, Mr. O’Brien cautioned the audience that donors are ambivalent to fund-raising appeals that link nonprofit causes, such as the environment or civil liberties, directly to the war. Even donors with strong ties to such groups may have a hard time following complex arguments about how a war in Iraq affects a nonprofit organization’s work, he said.

Response from donors to such mailings might go something like this, said Mr. O’Brien.

“First, I’m not so sure as a donor whether I understand all that, and even if I believe you, I don’t believe that the rest of the country is going to believe you,” he said.

Donors’ Attention

While groups that may have a connection to the war must worry about whether that link is strong enough, nonprofit groups whose missions are completely unrelated to the war worry that they may drop off of donors’ radar screens altogether.

But when Lori Held, membership director for the American Farmland Trust, in Washington, thinks about her own feelings regarding the potential conflict, she’s reassured about her group’s fund-raising prospects.

Ms. Held said she believes that the current situation with Iraq is far more complicated than the Gulf War or even September 11, and that, personally, she doesn’t want to think about it any more than she has to — a mindset that, if shared by others, could make people more likely to give to groups like hers.

“If I received a direct-mail package about an issue that I care about — completely unrelated to the war — if it’s concrete and makes me feel like I can make a difference in the world, I might be more engaged now in this horrific atmosphere than I would be if I’m just going about my normal life,” she said.

Joe Manes, vice president of A.B. Data, in Milwaukee, agreed, saying that, at a time when people feel anxious, charities should strive in their fund-raising appeals to give donors a sense of security and control and hope that they can affect change.

And just as important, said Mr. Manes, fund raisers have to make sure that, in this anxious climate, they don’t forget the lessons they’ve learned over years of hard work.

“There’s a temptation when there’s a crisis to say, ‘We’ve got to do it differently. What we’ve been doing doesn’t work,’” he said. “But what we have been doing does work.”

An audio recording of the panel discussion is available online at http://www.realimpact.net/incaseofwar.