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How will charities fare in the recession?

An impromptu topical session at the International Fundraising Congress in Holland attracted over 100 delegates wanting some reassurance about how the current recession might affect their organisations and what, as fundraisers, they should be doing to minimise the impact.

Sean Triner of Pareto Fundraising pointed out that evidence from past recessions showed those charities that held their ground and continued to invest in fundraising were the charities who survived in a better shape than those who panicked and immediately cut budgets.

Pareto has set up a blog – recessionwatch.blogspot.com- to catalogue data and information from charities all over the world. Triner said data was more valuable than opinion, but all information is useful.

Bernard Ross of the Management Centre in the UK conducted a Global Fundraising Confidence Survey over the five days of the IFC. The survey explores the implications of the global financial crisis for fundraisers. It acts as a guide to fundraisers now on how their preferred strategy compares to global expert views.  It will provide data for 12-24 months time on how accurately fundraisers predicted the impact of the crisis. The results can be downloaded by clicking here. www.managementcentre.co.uk/survey report 

Elsewhere at the IFC delegates were fairly buoyant about how the recession might affect them in their countries.

Dr John Silva, a senior consultant at the National Museum in Manila, Philippines, thought that those seeking grants from trusts and foundations will have to either produce slicker applications or change course to apply for more urgent projects. “Charities will have to have a sense of urgency and show trusts that their project doesn’t just relieve or alleviate, but is one stop further towards elimination of the problem,” he said.

In Jordan Ehab al Deeb of Tkiyet Um Ali, an NGO set up to fight hunger and provide food security to the poor, said the recession had so far had little effect in the country, although income from trusts and foundations was down. Fundraising income for his organisation was up 40 per cent this year, but research had shown that more people were giving smaller amounts.

Past recessions in Australia have made little difference to giving patterns according to Jeremy Bradshaw, editor of Fundraising and Philanthropy Australasia. He feels that corporate giving will probably be adversely affected but that trusts and foundations should not decline significantly.

The charity in Russia is a very young sector, but Arina Gaba, of WWF in Russia thinks that there is a lot of hysteria surrounding the recession which will calm down. She specialises in corporate fundraising and feels that corporates will use the recession as an excuse to cut back in different areas such as staff, marketing, PR and charitable giving. But she also stressed that this could be a great opportunity for those prepared to stick their necks out a bit and do something new. “This is a good chance for us as fundraisers to be innovative and different,” she said, “but I don’t think we will feel the real situation until the beginning of 2009.”

Global Connections will be keeping an eye on the situation worldwide and hopes to bring you helpful stories on surviving the recession each month. If you have any stories to tell, or comments to make, please email Penny Stephens at penny@resource-alliance.org