Taking the Long View

After years of struggling to connect with donors, World Concern, a Christian charity that does disaster-relief and development work in 29 countries, saw some promising signs early last fall. Donations had grown 5 percent over 2007 for the three months ending in September, thanks in part to a decision by the charity’s parent organization to give World Concern more autonomy in raising money.

Then came early October, when the stock market lost more than a quarter of its value in a mere seven days. David Eller, World Concern’s president, had been scheduledd to meet with a family foundation in Washington, D.C., in mid-October to finalize a $50,000 grant to help the charity combat hunger in Haiti. The night before the meeting (Mr. Eller was already in town on other business), a board member at the family foundation called him to cancel the meeting.

“The money’s gone,” the board member told Mr. Eller.

That experience epitomized the month for World Concern — donations to the charity declined 30 percent compared with October 2007. After noticing the drop, the charity immediately cut its budget by 10 percent across the board, and began contacting donors to try to reverse the downturn during the crucial fund-raising months of November and December, when the charity raises about a third of its money from individuals.

Even before the recession, World Concern was in a somewhat precarious state. For the past few years, its parent organization, Crista Ministries, has made cash contributions to World Concern at the end of the year to help the relief organization close budget deficits.

‘Not in Panic Mode’

The Crista grounds here have the feel of a small college campus. Mr. Eller works in a stately three-story building that dates from the 1920s and initially served as a tuberculosis ward. The resources of World Concern’s parent — Crista generated a surplus of $7-million in the 2007 fiscal year, and listed assets of $126-million — gave Mr. Eller some comfort as he began to put together contingency plans in mid-November.

“We’re not in panic mode,” Mr. Eller said, during an interview in Crista’s cafeteria. “We believe we will get through this.”

The charity has already survived for more than 50 years. In 1955, two local residents — a physician and a pharmacist — founded Medicine for Missions, which took unused medicines and shipped them to clinics and hospitals in developing countries to help impoverished people. In 1970, the charity became part of Crista, and later changed its name to World Concern, to better reflect the broad array of services it was providing.

World Concern still supplies medicines — its biggest program by far is providing de-worming medications to about 5.2-million people per year. Intestinal parasites infect about 40 percent of the world’s children, according to World Concern, and can rob children of strength and nutrition.

But the charity also now provides relief programs throughout the world. It teaches sustainable agricultural techniques in Haiti, provides “cash for work” to displaced families in the Darfur region of Sudan, and offers small loans to women starting businesses in countries like Bangladesh and Bolivia.

The charity estimates that its budget cuts will mean that 10,000 fewer people will get such help in the 2009 fiscal year, which ends in June. The budget cuts will have an even bigger impact on the number of de-worming tablets it ships abroad; World Concern says that 350,000 fewer people will get the tablets this year.

Overseas Focus

World Concern focuses on countries that rank high on indices of poverty and conflict, and for the most part it employs local citizens. Only about 35 of the 1,000 people it employs abroad are from Western countries.

Just one quarter of World Concern’s revenues come from private donations raised in the United States — the remainder comes from government and international grants, especially from the U.S. Agency for International Development. For example, under a six-year government grant that ends next year, the charity will have received nearly $10-million to help children in Haiti, Kenya, and Zambia who have been orphaned or otherwise affected by the AIDS crisis.

The percentage of World Concern’s budget that comes from government grants and international fund raising is now 75 percent; at the beginning of the decade, it was roughly 25 percent.

“That shows that our technical programming is really excellent,” Mr. Eller says. “But it also tells me that we haven’t done a good enough job of sharing that story with donors in the U.S.”

Donated funds from individuals in the United States are important beyond their cash value — many of the government agencies that award grants to the charity do so on a matching basis. A sharp decline in giving by individuals here could jeopardize government funds as well.

Shortly after World Concern took control of its own fund raising again this summer, after an unsuccessful year-long experiment in which Crista handled solicitations, the charity embarked on an effort to turn new, small donors into repeat donors who make bigger gifts. The charity has enjoyed some success with radio ads that play on a station owned by Crista and advertise the “44-cent cure” — for only 44 cents, a donor can pay for the two de-worming tablets needed to improve a child’s life for a full year. The charity is working on plans to use those radio ads in other markets.

Mr. Eller says World Concern recently parted ways with the company that had handled its direct mail. Nearly every mailing, he says, had the feel of an “acquisition piece” — it was hyperbolic and flashy. In July, World Concern sent out a mailing written by one of its own staff members, in a more sedate, friend-to-friend style, which ended up producing a higher average gift and about 15 percent more money than a glitzier mailing sent out about the same time by the agency.

Now, when donors give in response to a radio campaign, the charity sends three brochures — about one per month — that introduce the donor to the broader set of services the charity provides. “It gives us the chance to tell them our wider story,” says John C. Beck, World Concern’s manager of donor relations.

Few Major Givers

World Concern has no shortage of donors — the charity received gifts from more than 11,000 individuals in the 2008 fiscal year, which ended in June.

But the charity has struggled for years to connect with major donors. World Concern has never received a $1-million gift; its largest single gift, in 2001, was for $356,000. (However, the donor has given the charity more than $3-million over 15 years.) World Concern also received a bequest worth $850,000 from a woman who died in 1999.

Eight years ago, in a short article in The Chronicle, World Concern officials said they would begin putting greater emphasis on attracting support from major donors. But Mr. Eller, who became president in 2007, says the charity has continued to struggle. World Concern raised roughly $8-million from individual donors in 1999; in 2008, they raised just $4.64-million.

“Whatever they wanted to do back in 2000, they didn’t get it done,” Mr. Eller says.

One way the charity seeks to woo potential big donors is to take them to see the charity’s work overseas. World Concern arranged four trips last year, for groups ranging from five to 12 people. (The donors pay for their own travel costs.)

Even more donors would like to go, but the charity fears that too many visits would disrupt the relief work. “You don’t want your field offices to think you’re running a travel agency,” Mr. Beck says.

A donor named Sarah, who asked that her last name not be used, has been giving to World Concern since taking a trip to Ethiopia in the 1980s to see the charity’s response to that country’s famine. Her involvement deepened in 1993, when she began volunteering 30 hours per week at World Concern’s headquarters here.

“God was saying to me, ‘I want more than your checks. I want your life,’ ” Sarah recalls.

But she realizes the checks are important, too. She and her husband give $30,000 to $70,000 per year to charity, and about half of that goes to World Concern.

As of late November, Sarah still was weighing what she would give to World Concern this year. She had made a large gift in the summer, and wanted to make a year-end gift as well, but her financial advisers had different ideas, given the weak economy and declining stock market. “They said at the time, ‘We’d like you to not give any more this year,’ ” Sarah says. “I think I’m going to disobey them.”

Dave Blackmer, a major-gifts officer at World Concern, says several major donors told him they must cut back their 2008 gifts — some to just a third or half the amount they gave in 2007. Some of the donors have not only lost money on their investments, but are also financially supporting children who have lost jobs. The worst-hit have told him they’ll have to renegotiate multiyear pledges to a lower amount.

Mr. Blackmer says he takes such news “in stride,” and does not get angry when donors say they can’t follow through on a pledge.

“If you continue to work with the donor, when the donor is doing well again, he or she will be there for you,” Mr. Blackmer says. “But you have to be there for the donor during the hard times.”

Ups and Downs

November marked a slight improvement for World Concern over October’s fund-raising woes. Giving to the charity was down nearly 19 percent from the same month a year ago — a better relative performance than October’s 30-percent drop. In early December, Mr. Beck said he was hopeful that handwritten Christmas cards to 1,000 of the charity’s top donors would help lead to even greater improvements in the year’s final month.

“I don’t want to tip any apple carts,” Mr. Beck said at the time, “but I think the downward spiral has slowed down, definitely.”

World Concern is thankful the economic downturn has not delivered an even sharper blow. Mr. Beck says that, to the best of his knowledge, World Concern has no major donors who were employed by Washington Mutual, the Seattle-based bank that failed in September and was swallowed up by JPMorgan Chase. In November, JPMorgan laid off 3,400 people at Washington Mutual’s national headquarters, the vast majority of the people working there.

Some of the charity’s donors who have weathered the brutal economy are stepping up their support. Roger Oakland, who owns a business in Iowa that makes computer software for the agricultural industry, has been giving to World Concern for 20 years, and in the past five years he has become a key player in the charity’s efforts to respond to a food crisis in Haiti. Mr. Oakland has coordinated the shipment of 22 low-cost Chinese tractors to southern Haiti in the past two years — perhaps doubling the number of small tractors in use in that area of the country. He’s also paid for 29 people, mostly from his hometown of Story City, Iowa, to travel with him to Haiti and other countries to observe and aid World Concern’s efforts.

“A great majority of the people who go become donors to World Concern,” Mr. Oakland says. “The whole thing really works nicely that way.”

In the 2008 fiscal year, World Concern received more than $50,000 in cash donations from Story City, which has just 3,500 people. More than half the money came from Mr. Oakland and his wife.

No Big Event

Amid the deepening economic slump, World Concern is also trying to control what it spends on fund raising. Each February, the charity holds its annual meeting, bringing in heads of its offices from around the world. Typically, the charity holds a big reception, with dinner or heavy hors d’oeuvres, where donors can get firsthand reports from the heads of the overseas offices. This year, the charity is scrapping that plan in favor of smaller events at donors’ homes, which will save about $15,000.

Mr. Eller says the charity was able to quickly find 18 donors willing to host the events, and none of its donors have complained about the cancellation of the large reception.

“In their lives, this economic slump is real, and they intuitively know that we’re hurting, too,” Mr. Eller says.

Dan Fruhling, a Seattle resident who has been giving to World Concern for six years, will be playing host to a reception featuring the head of the Tibet office. The event will be held on Mr. Fruhling’s property in a Tibetan tent that he purchased in 2006, when he visited the country to see World Concern’s operations there, which focus on education and helping people become economically self-sufficient.

As the crucial year-end fund-raising season neared its end, Mr. Beck said he was seeing some hopeful signs, including strong interest in the charity’s “global gift guide.” The guide allows donors to pay for items needed by the charity’s clients, such as contributing $70 for a vaccinated goat for a child, and $1,400 for a machine-drilled well that could help an entire village.

“It’s become apparent to us that more and more people are interested in giving creative gifts to the poor,” Mr. Beck said.

In early January, Mr. Beck received good news from the accountants tallying the last gifts of 2008. World Concern raised $1,031,000 in December, about $23,000 more than it raised during the month in 2007. The Global Gift Guide produced about a third of the gifts, and $40,000 more than in 2007.

Mr. Beck described the results as “a miracle,” and said he still thinks the charity has a shot at hitting its goal of raising $5.6-million from donors in the United States for the 2009 fiscal year — which would be a 21-percent increase over 2008.

“We are having an outstanding performance, considering the economy,” Mr. Beck said. “We’re praying.”