Fundraisers And Ebola
The World Health Organization announced today that the death toll from the dread virus Ebola has now exceeded 1,900 … and the epidemic is nowhere near under control.
At the same time, the media is reporting the increasing exposure, illness and possible death of the dedicated health care workers from American and Western European medical and humanitarian nonprofits. True heroes.
All of this got me thinking about those workers. They are on the front lines exposing themselves to danger and death while back home the brands they represent are, hopefully, raising money to help meet the mission.
But what about the fundraisers and their consultants, safe in their offices?
Are they rising to the urgency of the occasion? I think not.
I’m not saying that fundraisers who work for humanitarian or international health care organizations need to be in the line of fire to be effective.
What I am suggesting is that some in the home office seem out of touch with the reality and the true needs of their mission. Even Samaritan’s Purse, the nonprofit for which the now famous Dr. Kent Brantly volunteered, led today’s website with a feature on the visit by the Robertson family (of “Duck Dynasty” fame) to Alaska to celebrate “patriots in Alaska”. Heaven help us.
My point is that fundraisers need to act as the bridge between their medical heroes and volunteers in the field and their donors. Most do a lousy job at that from what I can tell by visiting websites and gathering direct mail and digital evidence. Of course there are exceptions, such as Doctors Without Borders.
Complacency and business-as-usual on the part of fundraisers is just not good enough when confronted with the threat to life the Ebola virus is to folks in West Africa and aid volunteers in field.
Time to shed the complacency, grow a sense of urgency and learn the art of storytelling from the field.
Just sayin’.
Roger
P. S. Tom and I would sure like to feature and give a big shout out to those humanitarian and health care organizations you believe are doing an effective job. Nominations please.
8 responses to “Fundraisers And Ebola”
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Roger, as usual lousy fundraiser. None of the WHO, Red cross who are on the front line or similar are raising money for this crisis. Granted there are several crisis (Iraq, Palestine, etc.) it is a missed opportunity. Again. Again and again. Better criticize the ice bucket challenge.
I’ve received a whole lot of communications from Medicins Sans Frontieres in Australia re Ebola – and it’s very good too. But not a peep from anybody else… just the regular direct mail/ email stream.
I can’t understand why the fundraisers are so silent. We all know that a crisis brings in the money.
I too have been expecting to see huge fundraising appeals. Someone is asleep at the wheel. Alas for us all.
Gail
I doubt anyone is asleep at the wheel. As the former Director of Development at Doctors Without Borders, I can give you a plausible reason why so many humanitarian medical NGOs are silent, and should be. Ebola is a complex and risky intervention for even the most seasoned international NGOs (like MSF). My friends on the ground at smaller organizations, two of them born of extremely experienced Doctors Without Borders staff, are struggling with the capacity to respond- recruiting trained medical staff, acquiring appropriate technical and logistic materials, etc. And there are other groups that I am talking to in the same exact boat. Trying to move, doing what they can, but struggling to mount a significant intervention. Talking about the work that they want to do, that they are struggling to do, would be inappropriate and outsized to their actual response. They do well to keep their credibility and stay silent until they have something to say.
International Medical Corps (internationalmedicalcorps.org) is supporting their urgent Ebola work on the ground with direct mail and email fundraising and have Ebola featured prominently on their homepage. Cheers to them for messaging that’s on target!
I read today’s post as an indictment of “fundraising light,” where my colleagues prefer to offer up PR stunts and fluff over engaging in honest-to-goodness communication about the challenges and profound meaning behind what we see unfolding. This kind of public health disaster is the result not of a virus, but of decades of neglect of the local public health infrastructure in west Africa. Even the fact that a cure is just receiving attention and getting mass produced, this masks the larger story about the global nature of public health, and of our moral obligation to imagine a future where the local community is able to contain and humanely respond to a crisis on this scale. If don’t buy that there is nothing to talk about yet. There’s so much we need to be talking about.
Working in the direct health area of Ebola is not part of LemonAid Fund’s mission, however, we help people help themselves and are fundraising to support the efforts of the people of Sierra Leone. We lost one of our volunteers that worked tirelessly to end Female Genital Mutilation as she chose to also volunteer at the hospital with the Ebola victims. We are redoubling our efforts to support the people doing the work and also to support our projects to not take giant steps backwards during this crisis.
It is complex!!
Peace, Nancy
Sorry for the late response, I’m catching up on my Agitator reading…
I think Partners in Health is doing a really good job of fundraising for its Ebola response efforts. Since the outbreak started, I have received consistent email appeals from them, keeping the issue top of mind even when it falls out of the media spotlight for a while. If you visit the PIH website, the Ebola epidemic is prominently featured on the homepage. I think their messaging is spot-on and rings true to their overall mission of addressing health as a human right. One message I received from them really sticks in my mind–what if this was happening here, in the United States? How much more quickly and effectively would Ebola have been contained?
PIH also gets a gold star for retaining me as an annual donor after I initially gave in response to the Haiti earthquake disaster.