Talk of War, Economic Woes Heard at Annual Meeting of Fund Raisers

The war in Iraq — and its effects on the economy — were a main topic of conversation at last week’s annual meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals here.

A small crowd of people gathered during meeting breaks around a television tuned to CNN, while some fund raisers worried about the possible effects that war might have on giving, especially because of the already-teetering economy, which has led individuals, corporations, and governments to trim support for nonprofit organizations.

“War definitely gives donors an excuse not to give,” said Deborah Stanley, director of development at Casa de Amparo, in San Luis Rey, Calif., which supports abused children. “Fund raisers just have to focus on how to counter the excuse.”

“A protracted war would be a real disaster for fund raising,” said Kathryn J. Nixon, executive director of the Rundel Library Fund, in Rochester, N.Y. “Donors rise to the occasion in tough times, but they can’t make up the losses we’re seeing from cutbacks in government funding.”

Concerns about the safety of travel, plus the strange pneumonia that is spreading around the world, appeared to have put a damper on attendance at the meeting. The association said that about 3,000 people attended — 500 fewer than went to last year’s meeting. However, it would not say how many cancellations had been made in the week before the meeting.

While many development officers said they attend the association’s annual meetings to get fund-raising tips from their peers, they said that due to the war and the strained economy they were doing as much commiserating as learning this year.

“I wish I could bring my board members here,” said Joanna Curtis, director of development at Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis, which has built six fewer houses in the past year than it did in 2002 because of money problems. “If they talked to other fund raisers they would understand that everyone’s having serious difficulties raising money.”

Despite the troublesome economy, 60 percent of charity officials in the United States and 75 percent in Canada who were surveyed in February by the Association of Fundraising Professionals said their groups raised the same amount or more in 2002 compared with 2001, according to results the association released here.

Most groups in the United States that raised more money last year than in 2001 experienced only moderate increases; the average rise in giving was 1.4 percent. Canadian respondents reported an 8-percent increase.

Some larger U.S. groups saw more-substantial increases in 2002.

Respondents that raised between $10-million and $50-million reported a 6-percent increase over 2001 fund-raising totals. The only group of Canadian respondents that showed a decline — about 2 percent — was organizations that raised between $5-million and $10-million.

To conduct the survey, the association contacted 3,000 of its members in the United States and 3,000 in Canada. Joyce O’Brien, a spokeswoman for the group, said the 311 U.S. respondents and 343 from Canada were a representative sample of the group’s 26,000 members.

While eight in 10 respondents from both countries cited the economy as their biggest fund-raising challenge in 2002, charity officials pointed to many other challenges, including:

• The anthrax scare in early 2002, which fund raisers said hurt direct-mail solicitations.
• Donors’ demands for details about the cost-effectiveness of their contributions.
• Restrictions donors placed on the use of their money.
• Lack of new donors.
• Increased competition from other charities, which one respondent called “too many straws in the water.”

Paulette V. Maehara, the association’s president, said she believed that some of the group’s members also had expressed “angst” about the potential effects of the war when they completed their surveys.

“The good news is that we have weathered bad economic times and difficult circumstances before,” Ms. Maehara said. “We know that donors will continue to give.”

A full report on the survey, “AFP State of Fundraising 2002 Survey,” will be released on the organization’s Web site, http://www.afpnet.org, in late April.

For more information, contact the Association of Fundraising Professionals at 1101 King Street, Suite 700, Alexandria, Va. 22314; (800) 666-3863; paffairs@afpnet.org.

In Canada, fund raisers job-hop more than other employees, according to the results of a sweeping new survey of Canadian development officers.

Forty-two percent of Canadian fund raisers who completed the survey planned a job change in the next year, compared with 35 percent in the total labor force, according to a report on the survey, which was commissioned by the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the AFP Foundation for Philanthropy, Canada, and conducted last fall by Canadian Policy Research Network. More than 3,900 questionnaires were sent to members of the association, and 1,380 — 35 percent — responded.

Other highlights:

• Many Canadian fund raisers are new to the field, with almost 40 percent of respondents having fewer than five years’ experience working for nonprofit organizations.
• The majority of fund raisers who completed the survey are employed at small organizations; almost 40 percent work at groups with fewer than 10 employees, while 61 percent work in organizations that employ fewer than 25 people.
• Far more women than men are employed in the field: 69 percent of Canadian development officers are female.
• Most respondents to the survey work at either health organizations (almost 36 percent) or education groups (24 percent). Social-service groups employed another 15 percent of respondents, while 6.5 percent of fund raisers worked for arts and cultural institutions.

An initial report on the survey findings is available on the association’s Web site, at http://www.afpnet.org..The final report will be published in May. For more information, contact Joyce O’Brien, at jobrien@afpnet.org.