International relief organizations are scrambling to get to
devastated areas in the central Philippines to join relief and recovery
efforts after Friday’s typhoon left 10,000 dead, according to news
reports. Many American groups are also raising money to support the
survivors of Typhoon Haiyan.
The Chronicle talked with Robert Ottenhoff, president of the
Center for Disaster Philanthropy about what is happening and how donors
and nonprofits can avoid mistakes.
This is the first big international disaster since your
group was founded in August 2012. What are your thoughts on the
donor-solicitation or giving efforts so far?
Donors are not as quick to respond to international disasters as they
are to domestic. And their interest is in part driven by media
coverage. It was interesting: Several weeks ago, we had a huge storm hit
India, and the Indian government did a fantastic job of evacuating a
million residents. As a result, there were hardly any deaths. As a
result, there was very little media coverage.
So it’ll be interesting to see with the Philippines whether media
coverage continues. You know, media coverage in disasters is what drives
donations.
It is slower than domestic in part because there are a lot fewer
donors who are active in international activities, and those that are
don’t primarily consider themselves disaster philanthropists. What we
often hear is that donors will say, “We don’t get involved in
disasters.” Until donors can draw a direct link to their normal grant
programs, it’s a little bit more difficult for them to get involved in
disasters unless it happens to be a disaster in their community or an
area where they’ve got some direct contact.
So it was easier for donors to make a decision to get involved with
Katrina or Sandy or Moore, Okla., because they had some connections to
that. It’s harder for most of them to make the connection with the
Philippines or Vietnam.
What are relief organizations saying? What are they doing right? Could they do more?
It’s too early to tell. At this point, we know that it has been
extremely difficult for the relief organizations to reach the affected
areas, and so relief supplies are badly needed.
What is your group doing for the typhoon?
We’ve established a
CDP Typhoon Haiyan Recovery Fund.
The goal of our fund is going to be to focus on midterm and long-term
needs. One of the things that’s becoming apparent in recent years as we
learn more about disaster philanthropy is that almost all of the money
is donated within two to three months. And very little comes after 90
days. And yet there are emerging urgent needs. This was apparent in
Katrina, Sandy, Haiti, the [Southeast Asian] tsunami, you name it.
In the Philippines, it’s such basic things—hundreds of thousands are
going to be left without homes, without farms, without other ways for
livelihood. We want to focus our dollars on the long-term recovery
needs. So we’re not saying either-or. It ought to be both for donors.
The Center for Disaster Philanthropy is keeping track of international relief organizations’ response to the Haiyan recovery efforts.