EDITORS’ NOTE:
On September 4th The Agitator sounded the alarm , questioning whether fundraising efforts were rising to the level required for the impending Ebola disaster. Our conclusion, in the post Fundraisers and Ebola, was “NO!” We urged our sector shed it’s complacency. Many Agitator readers agreed.

Seven weeks later, on Monday, October 20th, the New York Times, in a piece by Stephanie Strom titled “Donations for Ebola Relief Are Slow to Gain Speed” reported that, with the exception of mega-million gifts from donors like Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, the level of individual gifts is nowhere at the level of other recent disasters like the Haitian earthquake, the Southeast Asia or Philippines or Japanese tsunamis.

Then, last night, there arrived in our mailbox a plea to all fundraisers from Francesco Ambrogetti, currently with the UN Population Fund, but a 20+ year veteran in international fundraising on global problems like AIDS.

Franki suggests, and rightly so, that we fundraisers as a tribe get off our individual and collective butts and take action even if it means setting aside our narrow interests.

Roger and Tom

Powerless fundraisers: how the lack of funds is putting the world at risk
By Francesco Ambrogetti, October 21, 2014

In 1985, when Bob Geldolf decided to take action on the famine in Ethiopia he faced a dilemma. He could have produced a record and donated part of the sales to Oxfam or other nonprofits, or launch an unprecedented movement using the power of music and people to fundamentally change the response to a crisis that was claiming thousands of lives.

The result, Live Aid, with an estimated £150m raised, may have cut the famine’s death toll by between 25% and 50%. So why for the current Ebola crisis do we blindly accept the inability of the world to act quickly and to raise the emergency funds now so urgently needed?

Just consider the scale of funds so desperately required. The cost estimates are all over the place. On the one hand, The Economist estimates that a 70-bed facility costs $170,000 to build and requires a staff of 165 to treat patients and handle waste management and body disposal. On higher end of the cost scale, the World Health Organization estimates a 50-bed facility will cost $900,000 a month; therefore a 100,000-bed operation would cost $1-2 billion a month! This is with the context of an estimated 5000-10,000 new cases a week by mid-December.

The UN launched an appeal of $1 billion to tackle Ebola over the next six months, but only $257 million has been received, or 26% of what is needed, with another $162 million pledged. In spite of generous promises from the US and British governments, the World Bank, as well as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, one of the missing pieces of the Ebola puzzle is the power of citizens and individuals to marshal support worldwide.

Of course there are fundraising appeals here and there, particularly from the humanitarian and development aid organizations, but we as a nonprofit community are collectively failing to be true to our basic mandate of morality. We are simply accepting the injustice and horror of delay and minimal involvement without acting.

If you need an example of why our sector is delinquently tardy and internally petty, just look at the surreal accusation and the ongoing debate on Facebook about Oxfam using an MSF photo for a fundraising appeal.

Ebola is not just an African or humanitarian problem. Ebola is about fundamental justice, human rights and safety for the entire world.

WHO, the only global organization to deal with the crisis, has miserably failed to detect it early and take action on Ebola. One of the reasons is the lack of funds and staff in Africa. Contributions that member states are obliged to pay to WHO declined to 25% in 2010-2011. The remaining contributions are earmarked for specific projects, reducing the flexibility WHO needs to shift funds around.

And yet tragically, to this day WHO does not accept donations, online or offline, from small-gift private individuals. Those same individuals who gave hundreds of millions of $$ for tsunamis, earthquakes and other disasters over the past 10 years.

As a sector we are capable of great accomplishments. #Icebucketchallenge raised a record $120 million in few weeks for a very important disease, but we do not facilitate people who want to give and act for this global crisis? Are we saying that Ebola is less sexy or important than ALS?

We know that emotions drive actions and giving and surely Ebola has all of the key core emotions: fear (which is the strongest emotion) for a contagion that can touch anybody … sadness and disgust as the media pictures the piles of bodies left decomposing in the street … anger for the slow response … surprise in realizing that we all are vulnerable … and finally joy when we see the faces and the stories of those who survived the plague.

I am absolutely certain that caring people around the globe are begging to act and to give to Ebola. Yet they have little opportunity. Why have we failed to unleash our skills, social media and all our channels to change the Ebola game?

How can we blindly accept, for instance, that Glaxo Smith Kline announces that a vaccine will be not be ready before the end of 2015? When AIDS activists were surrounded by the grim reality of people dying with HIV they didn’t accept the claims of Big Pharma and government regulators that no cure was available. Nor “expert” opinion that years would be required to develop and test one.

Together they acted. Mobilized people. Raised money. And pushed against the status quo until a response was urgently tested and provided.

There is no cure for Ebola, but there is no one single economic or technological reason why people should get Ebola and die of Ebola.

What can we do about it?

1. Let’s raise as much money and as fast as possible. It is in our capacity to raise at least $1 billion, but we need to step up the game, divert our annual or acquisition campaigns, acting together and using the power of our activists and supporters.

2. Let’s unleash the power of people to ask for a more accountable and quick response. Let’s mobilize people to not accept the status quo that WHO or Big Pharma are imposing. We have the power to simply say the status quo is not OK. We can’t wait a year for a vaccine or delay any more months for the beds and staff desperately needed.

At the International Fundraising Congress closing plenary, Kumi Naidoo, the leader of Greenpeace, invited fundraisers to stop playing by the rules imposed by the status quo. It is time we change the rules of Ebola with the power of people and the money our sector is trained and equipped to organize.

Francesco

P.S. Editors’ Note. What is your organization doing to help in this disaster? If you’re an online consulting firm are you offering assistance to the World Health Organization? If you’re a nonprofit are you offering up all or a portion of your year-end giving? (You may be surprised at how much your donor appreciate this). Or are you just “standing by” hoping the bad news will go away? Please let us know.

P.P.S. Additional Editors’ Note: While you’re figuring out how your own organization or consulting firm can help, why not make a contribution to one of the NGOs on the front lines. Here’s a list from the New York Times.