Direct Magazine: Surge of Support

Direct Magazine / http://directmag.com

Surge of Support

Feb 1, 2005 12:00 PM , BY LARRY RIGGS

Heavy media attention coupled with technology that can quickly process online donations contributed to windfalls for several charities raising money for tsunami relief.

Predictably, the disaster — which devastated parts of Asia and Africa on Dec. 26 — has also sparked a growing amount of fraud, which some industry watchers think might be with us for some time.

In December, for example, the Better Business Bureau received about half a million complaints, more than twice the number it usually gets. CEO Bennett Weiner attributed this largely to concern about the reputability of Web sites soliciting contributions for the relief effort.

Despite that fear, Americans have given generously to legitimate charities.

At press time, Catholic Relief Services had pulled in more than $25.1 million on its Web site Catholicrelief.org, with average gifts in the first few days running at $220, said Kevin Whorton, director of direct response fundraising.

The charity also raised about $11.1 million through mail and telemarketing to existing lists of contributors and expires, he said. CRS has a mail donor list of more than 1 million names and a permission-based e-mail donor list of about 92,000.

Whorton noted that the Baltimore agency, which operates in more than 90 countries, was in the process of re-evaluating direct marketing efforts and whether it should try to reach people through mail and/or e-mail.

Part of that task will include seeing just how many of these donors fit CRS' usual giver profile of women 60 years old and above with grown children.

Whorton did concede that CRS has cut out telemarketing, “even though it worked in the initial stages.”

CRS also has begun appealing through mailings to the approximately 17,500 Catholic parishes in the United States, he noted.

Initially, a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times pointing to CRS as an agency working in the stricken regions helped jump-start these donations, Whorton said. But, he added, none of this would have been possible without the nonprofit e-commerce technology supplied by Kintera Inc., which put up a companion Web site for CRS that could accommodate the donations which at one point were rolling in at about $150,000 per hour.

“I was vacationing on the beach in Mexico the Saturday after Christmas when I got a call from [a major charity] and within an hour we'd set up an online system to handle donations,” said Kintera CEO Harry Gruber. ^ Back to top

Meanwhile, Oxfam America raised more than $20 million, 70% of which came through the Web site Oxfamamerica.org and the remainder from direct mail and other sources, said spokeswoman Helen DaSilva.

As with CRS, she attributed much of the Boston organization's success to media mentions and links on Yahoo!, Google, Apple.com and Moveon.org.

“Even Atlantic Monthly magazine's online edition had it on for a while,” she said.

For World Vision, press coverage also served as the best promotion vehicle for its tsunami relief efforts. At deadline, the Federal Way, WA-based Christian charity had pulled in about $8 million in the United States and about $40 million worldwide, said spokesman Dean Owen.

In the days following the disaster, the group's Web site Worldvision.org had some 10,000 visitors each hour, compared with the usual 5,000 to 8,000 per week.

The average gift was about $100.

“On New Year's Eve, we even got a donation of $100,000,” said Owen, noting it was charged to an American Express card — so the donor had to pay the full amount right away.

He noted that most of World Vision's tsunami-related donations were made at its Web site but some came in through e-mail and regular mail.

Another donation source for World Vision was its link with Seattle-based Tully's Coffee, which began marketing a “Tsunami Blend” product soon after the disaster. All proceeds from this $10 product were slated to go toward World Vision's tsunami relief efforts.

Church World Services has raised at least $450,000 for tsunami aid on its site http://churchworldservice.org, said David Mulder, director of direct mail.

The Elkhart, IN organization is stressing direct mail as well, having sent out emergency mailings to its house file and 100,000 pieces to various Christian congregations around the country.

In addition, CWS had dropped a prospect mailing to names from such organizations as Project Hope and others.

One question that has emerged about raising all this money for tsunami relief so quickly is how much this might take away from other deserving programs around the world.

For its part, CWS' next mailing probably isn't going to stress the tsunami as much. It plans to emphasize other causes, said Mulder, but even so it likely will keep up the tsunami-related efforts for six months to a year. CWS is in the mails every month.

Some corporations also have jumped into the tsunami relief fray.

For example, clothing direct marketer and retailer Gap Inc. made a $1 million contribution that was earmarked for groups such as the American Red Cross, Oxfam, Unicef, Save the Children, Care, and Medecins Sans Frontieres. Gap also ran a page of links to those charities on Gap.com through January and doubled the contributions it received from individual employees.

“So it will be more like $3 million when all is said and done,” said spokeswoman Amy Lund.

After the tsunami struck, many Web sites emerged that misrepresented themselves as legitimate charitable operations.

According to the Better Business Bureau and Gift.org — its online charity scam operation — many of these ruses involve phishing and/or spoofing whereby scam artists pose as authentic entities to lure users into revealing their credit card numbers and other sensitive financial information.

“It's only been a few weeks since the tsunami so it hasn't been long enough to tell,” said Ann McGuire, director of Web site Fraud-Aid.com.

“But [tsunami aid-related fraud is] going to be massive,” she said. “And it probably will last for about the next five years — or at least until the next huge natural disaster.” ^ Back to top