September 15, 2005 | Read Time: 5 minutes
The Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and dozens of other organizations will be required to spend the next year or more helping Americans recover from Hurricane Katrina, putting more strain on resources that were heavily tapped less than nine months ago to help victims of the South Asian tsunamis.
However, the real challenge that nonprofit groups face is not likely to be a financial one. The bigger test for humanitarian groups will be whether they can use their money and volunteers effectively — a responsibility that has become even more important after the slow response of government agencies in the days immediately after the storm.
The effort Americans put out to help tsunami victims is unlikely to limit their ability to dig deeper to help those whose lives were destroyed by Katrina. American charities raised more than $1.5-billion for tsunami-recovery efforts, but that amounts to far less than 1 percent of what Americans will give to charities this year. According to Red Cross records, the charity has already given more since Katrina struck than after any other hurricane.
So while raising enough money may not be a problem, past experience shows that spending it effectively is more challenging. For example, evaluations of charitable activities after the tsunamis suggest that American charities may not be fully equipped to do all that is expected of them. What’s more, many donors exacerbate the problem by channeling their generosity in inappropriate ways.
In India, for example, donors gave quilts to those affected by the tidal waves, all of whom lived in the hot and humid southern regions of the country, where warm bedding was not a high priority. Likewise, much of the aid provided to Indonesia and Sri Lanka was food, which was perhaps critically important right after the tsunamis struck, but soon became less so, since the agricultural areas of the two countries lay outside the regions that sustained the most damage. As sympathetic Americans send unsolicited gifts, similar examples will undoubtedly turn up in the Gulf states.
More troubling is evidence of serious organizational problems, even at experienced relief organizations.
Most of the humanitarian groups working in South Asia were short of trained people who could handle the complicated logistics of getting aid from donors to recipients, according to a report issued this summer by the Fritz Institute, a private organization that seeks to improve humanitarian work. Only one-quarter had sophisticated computer equipment to track where their assistance was going, the report said. Many charities also evaluated their work by how quickly they provided help, rather than by broader measures of how useful it was to those who needed it.
Collaboration with other philanthropic groups and governments presented difficulties as well. In fact, the Fritz Institute reported, relief organizations were more likely to cooperate with local authorities and the military in South Asia than with one another. As a result, competing “supply chains” led to congested transportation systems and bottlenecks in providing relief.
Working in an area as vast (and with as poor an infrastructure) as that affected by the tsunamis complicated the efforts of these organizations in ways that those engaged in helping Hurricane Katrina’s victims should not encounter. Customs officials, according to nearly three-quarters of the organizations surveyed by the Fritz Institute, held up the distribution of medical supplies and similar items.
But as the confusion surrounding the evacuation of New Orleans suggests, dealing with multiple layers of government and overlapping bureaucracies from Washington to local jurisdictions in three states will not be easy. And while the highways and communications systems in the storm’s path were not as badly destroyed as those in South Asia, they are in much worse shape than most American organizations are accustomed to.
If the difficulties faced by the organizations helping tsunami victims are any guide, charities providing relief in the wake of Katrina must rapidly hire employees with training and experience in managing complex logistics problems. American businesses could play a valuable role in helping charities.
Although corporate philanthropy has already started to assist people in the Gulf states, most of it will come in the form of donations of cash and products. Charities would probably find it even more useful if companies would donate the time and services of executives whose careers have depended upon creating and mastering warehousing and distribution systems — like those at Wal-Mart and Home Depot, companies that are already leading the relief effort.
In addition, relief groups should not stint on investing in computer software, information systems, and other tools (as well as the personnel to manage them) so they can better figure out what victims need and respond to them, and do more to ensure that their work doesn’t overlap with that of other organizations.
Unfortunately, however, in light of controversies over the use of donations to help survivors of the September 11 attacks, several charities engaged in assisting tsunami victims pledged that no contributions would be used for administrative expenses. Whatever that policy might do to increase giving, this short-sighted approach is bound to ensure that donations will be used less effectively than they could be.
With the scale of the destruction produced by Hurricane Katrina and the extensive news-media coverage it has received, nothing short of outright fraud — and perhaps not even that — will keep Americans from contributing money and volunteering time to assist victims.
The charities that are on the front lines of the relief effort will not lack the resources they deserve. But unless they pay more attention to how these resources are used than their counterparts in South Asia did, those who had the misfortune to be in the hurricane’s path will wind up doubly victimized: first by the storm itself, then by ineffectual attempts to help them recover.
Leslie Lenkowsky is professor of public affairs and philanthropic studies at Indiana University and a regular contributor to these pages. His e-mail address is llenkows@iupui.edu. Helen Liu, his research assistant, contributed to this article.
