Relief Groups Prepare to Provide, and Seek, Aid as Threat of War Looms

In a letter mailed last month to 125,000 of its donors, the International Rescue Committee, in New York, urged recipients to help cover the costs of aiding Iraqi refugees and displaced people.

“Our hope is that war in Iraq — and

ALSO SEE:

Clouds on the Horizon

Sierra Club Hopes New Fund-Raising Steps Counter Economy’s Slump

all the terrible suffering it brings — can be averted,” wrote the group’s president, George Rupp. “But, if war does break out, hope alone will not save people’s lives.”

The letter is one of the first by international-relief charities to make a direct appeal tied to the threat of war.

“We’re going out a little bit early,” said Mark R. Collins, director of response mailing, “but we’ve got the go-ahead to begin working with people already displaced in Iraq.” A similar mailing in October 2001 to raise money for its activities in and around Afghanistan was the most successful in the organization’s history, raising nearly $1-million.

Holding Off

Most other groups have held off on seeking support until they face a full-fledged emergency. Many international-relief organizations are, however, gearing up to expand operations in the Middle East, as the world waits to see whether the United States and its allies attack the forces of Saddam Hussein. The organizations’ situation is complicated not only by uncertainty over whether and when war will break out, however, but also by the fact that most of the groups are barred from operating inside Iraq itself.

Some groups are moving supplies and people near Iraq in anticipation of possible flows of refugees. Oxfam America, for example, is preparing to provide water and sanitation for possible refugee camps in Iran, Jordan, and Syria, and plans to open offices in Jordan and Syria to oversee relief operations, should they be necessary. An Oxfam official has already conducted a preliminary assessment of the water and sanitation systems in Baghdad.

“We’re all hoping there won’t be a war,” said Laura Guimond, director of external relations for Mercy Corps, in Portland, Ore. “But we’re also preparing to respond, because we feel we have a humanitarian imperative to help those who suffer the most.”

Mercy Corps is supporting the work of Peace Winds Japan, which provides medical aid in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. But a major emergency in that region, Ms. Guimond said, could affect humanitarian operations elsewhere in the world.

“One major concern we have is that it not drain attention and resources away from Afghanistan,” she said. “We’ve seen signs that may already be happening.” She says that the Bush administration, now preoccupied with Iraq, appears to be backing away from its commitment to provide long-term support for the Afghan people.

Resources for relief groups ebb and flow with world events, but many such organizations did fairly well last year, despite the absence of a major crisis to rivet donors’ attention.

Mercy Corps’s donors came through in a big way last year, said Matthew De Galan, the chief development officer. Mercy Corps received $1.5-million in December alone toward its $4-million annual budget — about 35 percent more than it had projected. Unrestricted gifts for the month were up 20 percent from 2001.

Gifts of stock were up about 15 or 20 percent in value from the past two years, Mr. De Galan said, adding: “I can only speculate that people are giving up on stocks, figuring that the price won’t ever go back up, so they’re giving it away.”

Internet gifts continue to grow at Mercy Corps, accounting for 17 percent of giving, compared with 13 percent the previous year.

Decline in Gifts

At Catholic Relief Services, in Baltimore, giving was down a bit during the final three months of 2002 (the first quarter of its fiscal year). Average gifts dropped from $74 to $68, and the group received about 9,000 fewer gifts in October and November than it did in the same months in 2001, said Albert Brill, the group’s deputy executive director. The charity is currently helping to underwrite the work of Caritas Iraq.

“We’re not getting the second or third gift we’d normally get from some of our larger donors,” Mr. Brill said. “They’re being loyal, in the sense that they are giving a large annual gift, but it’s the same size as the year before for many of our folks.”

At CARE USA, revenue from July through December grew about 1 percent from the previous year, but fell substantially short of the increase the organization had projected — $27.9-million in unrestricted gifts, compared with the $29.9-million it had hoped to receive.

Plans for the current fiscal year call for an 11-percent increase over last year in unrestricted funds, said Lmichael Green, CARE’s director of strategic planning. That goal reflects a return to giving levels seen before the economic aftermath of the 2001 terrorism attacks, which depressed giving to CARE and other charities. The charity is betting that decline was temporary — but cannot yet tell with certainty, he said.

At the International Rescue Committee, “we squeaked by at the end of the year and met our numbers,” said Janet M. Harris, vice president for development. But the organization’s $18.9-million fund-raising goal this year is only a modest increase over the $18.3-million it raised last year — which was itself a $5-million drop from fiscal 2001.

Of course, humanitarian emergencies tend to swell the coffers of organizations like the International Rescue Committee, which helps refugees and other people who have been ejected from their homes.

“We got some megagifts last year because of the Afghanistan emergency that I couldn’t possibly hope to repeat this year,” Ms. Harris noted. But, she added, “I pray more fervently for world peace than for better fund-raising numbers.”