Disasters take toll on charitable donations

Too much blame is being placed on donor fatigue, a study suggests.
Chicago Tribune
LOS ANGELES -- In cities from coast to coast, food bank operators are reporting that food and cash donations are down and the need is up.
In New York, some food pantry shelves are bare, a situation never seen before by 15-year employees. Food donations are off about a million pounds in a city that normally deals with 67 million pounds a year, officials said.
"A lot of people are tapped out this year. There's been a lot of 'ask' this year. It's been a hard year," said Carol Schneider of the Food Bank for New York City.
In Chicago and the rest of Cook County, food donations are down 8 percent, officials said. Online cash donations are up, but not enough to cover the food shortfall.
In Los Angeles, food donations are down 125 truckloads -- 5 million pounds less than the typical 45 million pounds a year.
Fatigue
Food bank officials such as Darren Hoffman of Los Angeles are citing "donor fatigue" or "compassion fatigue" as the likely cause for declining holiday donations, referring to how Americans may be exhausted after contributing more than $2 billion to victims of three hurricanes that battered Southern states this year.
"The Gulf Coast donations, that was the right thing to do," Hoffman said as he toured a cavernous warehouse that was reporting a 12 percent drop in food donations. "You just don't want people to forget you locally."
A study by Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy found that a third of 186 nonprofits surveyed reported a firsthand experience with donor fatigue. Even so, the study said, donor fatigue may be getting too much blame. The study noted that some fund-raisers say the climate is better now than six months ago.
Making a choice
What's indisputable is that more Americans face "heat or eat" dilemmas, choosing between fuel for their homes or food for themselves and their families.
The U.S. Agriculture Department recently reported that 38.2 million people -- about 13 percent of the population -- lived in households last year where, at some time, they wondered whether they would have sufficient resources to obtain food. That was the highest rate of "food insecurity" since 1998.
Food insecurity rates vary from state to state, but they have been rising in many. In Ohio, food insecurity rates jumped from 2.3 percent in 1999 to 11.4 percent in 2004.
"Almost certainly, the key cause of the worsening of the situation was weakness in the economy for the bottom half of American wage earners," said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks.
This month, a study of 24 cities by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Sodexho Inc., a food- and facilities-management company, reported a 12 percent increase in requests for emergency food assistance.
Kasandra Robinson of the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C., said relief efforts for last year's Indian Ocean tsunami disaster carried over into early 2005, and those first-quarter donations are contributing to what she contends is donor fatigue. Cash donations are down 54 percent and food donations are down 4 percent in the nation's capital, she said.