Society's growing needs can exhaust the desire to give

12/12/99

By Karen M. Thomas / The Dallas Morning News

In the newspaper, on the television and even at places of worship, there are daily pleas for compassion during the holiday season.

For some, giving comes easy. It's deeply rooted in their religious beliefs. Others are spurred by a booming economy. And many people say helping those less fortunate simply makes them feel good. No matter the reason, a growing number of Americans are opening up their pocketbooks or trying to steal time from busy schedules to volunteer.

But the demand for help is growing as fast as people can give, and people don't always donate or volunteer where help is most needed, experts say. Such gaps lead to repeated pleas for more help. And for every plea the public hears, there are others falling on deaf ears. Some donors, battered by so many appeals, may find themselves battling compassion fatigue.

"We the public need to connect to stories, and when we do, it helps to circumvent our feelings that we are hopeless," says Susan Moeller, a Brandeis University journalism professor and author of Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death (Routledge, $18.95).

"Very often, compassion fatigue or donor fatigue is the result of the feeling that, no matter what we do, it is ineffectual," she says.

That is why when Cindy Brock, the mother of three, read a recent Dallas Morning News story about an 11-year-old boy left severely brain damaged after a car accident, she decided to take action.

She called a diaper company about donating diapers to the boy's family, since his parents are struggling to make ends meet. She made up fliers soliciting canned-food donations for them. She has offered to do housework or whatever else is needed around Manuel Costilla's home to free his Mexican immigrant parents to care for him and their other children.

"To me, this is family time," says 36-year-old Ms. Brock. She says she has little extra money or time.

"It is a very important thing to teach your children. I could go home and teach them a game, or I could teach them to help other people," she says.

The public, says Ms. Moeller, is willing to dip in its pockets much more readily for natural disasters or other events out of human control. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which compiles contribution statistics, donors gave 16 percent more to charities last year than in 1997.

But when it comes to giving to long-term, stagnant problems that may get little press coverage, such as the war in Congo or the homeless, it's a lot harder to raise dollars.

"Part of it is that when you are sitting at home watching television or reading the newspaper, there is an appeal that you can believe that your $5 sent to the Red Cross may actually help give someone a blanket who is the victim of some local or international disaster," Ms. Moeller says. "But it's harder to believe that that $5 will make a difference for victims of conflicts of war."

That is why, some agencies say, they are trying to rethink charity by better educating the public and to work harder at solving the issues that cause the needs in the first place.

"People want to classify all the homeless as the guys who stand on the corner trying to get drug money, and that is simply not the case," says the Rev. Bubba Dailey, executive director of the Austin Street Shelter for the Homeless.

"We have always tried to educate the community on what is truly homeless," she says. "It's older people, women with children, particularly mentally ill women with children. It's the older men on Social Security and people who simply do not have enough money to live on.

"So I start praying. Everybody wants to do something on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I beg for food, I beg for clothing. I beg for toys. I beg for money to keep the place going. You thank God for the seasons and you say, 'Please get me enough blankets to last the winter,' because they'll forget about you in June and July," she says.

Ms. Dailey says well-intentioned donors sometimes focus on fulfilling their own needs to give without considering what the shelter really needs most.

"Sometimes at Christmas, a car will drive up with a mother and father and three kids with three toys in their hands. They want to come in and hand out these toys, and maybe I'll have 17 kids that day. So how will I choose?"

A tough sell

Because the public sees the homeless in a negative light, say Ms. Dailey and others who work with the homeless, it has been difficult to raise money.

Even those who say they are motivated by God to help those less fortunate find that they sometimes battle fatigue.

"God didn't teach us to be spectators. He called us to get in the game, and part of that is helping to make an eternal difference in the lives of the lost, least and lonely," says the Rev. Ross Robinson, an assistant pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church.

The church has a long list of projects and programs to help others, ranging from mentoring programs to helping less-fortunate families buy Christmas gifts.

But like the rest of society, Mr. Robinson says, the church also encounters what he likes to call "the bondage of busyness."

"I think what we struggle with, what our society struggles with more than anything, is in making time to make a difference," he says. "I think people are busy carving out careers, maintaining family and relationships and, with what little time is left, then hopefully that what they are doing is helping others. That is the challenge we present to members of our church."

Nationwide, while more people may be volunteering, most are doing it in smaller portions and with less long-term commitments, according to a recent study by a Washington, D.C., research group.

Mr. Robinson says the number of members involved in charity work has been growing, and he considers the work part of the church's responsibility.

Need understood

Some long-term community problems are easier to bring to public attention. At the North Texas Food Bank, giving has risen by 5 percent over the past year, in part because of a booming economy, in part because the public can readily identify with hunger and because the agency has strategized how to solicit donations.

"I think hunger is one of those issues that people really understand," says Diane Brandon, a public relations executive who represents the North Texas Food Bank. "Everybody, at the bottom of their souls somewhere, is a little afraid of going hungry. I don't have to spend a lot of time explaining to people why we have to keep people fed.

"The hardest part for us is that, in a place like Dallas with so much prosperity, people don't always realize the need exists. When they do realize it, the phone rings all over the place."

So Ms. Brandon works hard to bring the agency to the public's attention. There are news stories, glitzy fund-raisers and food drives. The idea, says Ms. Brandon, is to strategize how to get donors without overwhelming them with tragedy.

"We can get the messages out about hunger, but it doesn't have to be in a dire way. We do the Taste of the Nation event with [chef] Stephan Pyles. It is a fun event and yet socially responsible. We try hard to vary our message. Otherwise the media will get tired of it," she says.

Each month, the food bank passes out up to 1.5 million pounds of food, Ms. Brandon says. But even if the phones ring off the hook, donations simply haven't been enough to keep up with the need. Requests for help have grown by 12 percent. Experts say the number of the working poor is growing, increasing the number of people who may need assistance.

"In 1986, it was clearly the unemployed, those on drugs, the disabled or mothers on AFDC," says Jan Pruitt, executive director of the food bank about her clients, referring to the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program. "Now it is clearly people who are working, but to do so, you keep the car running, the rent paid and then, if there is anything left over, you buy groceries. If you are earning $6 an hour, chances are there isn't much left. It is really stretching the resources."

So the agency has added yet another strategy. Instead of just asking for donations and applying what Ms. Pruitt calls a Band-Aid to a larger problem, the food bank intends to start teaching kitchen skills to some of its clients to enable them to get higher-paying jobs.

"We have to empower people to change their lives, and I think that is where nonprofits are headed. Nobody wants to come to a food pantry month after month for their food, contrary to what other people think," Ms. Pruitt says.

Appeals to youth

While some agencies are retooling their strategies, other groups are springing up to help them attract younger, spontaneous donors. At Entango, a California-based company, the business is helping nonprofits set up ways for donors to give right at their Web sites.

"Maybe there isn't compassion fatigue as much as it's such a burden to donate," says Richard Cox, head of the company. He says when people hear of a problem, it may take them several days to figure out where to send a donation and then another few days for their checks to actually be processed.

With online access, donors can immediately go to the American Red Cross and make a donation to help victims of the Turkey earthquake within minutes of hearing about the disaster, he says.

Internet donations are also attractive to a younger generation, he says.

"Traditional donors are more established and tend to be older. The new generation is online and coming into new money," Mr. Cox says. "The real benefit is that the dollars are put to use right away when it's important."

Corporations are also trying to attract younger employees to help with donations, and they are also trying to be much more focused in their giving.

"There are so many choices in giving today that we are trying to be much more focused," says Ann Pomykal, director of public affairs and contributions manager of Texas Instruments.

"You have to make sure that what you are doing fits in with the corporate priorities and the community needs. And we are realizing that younger and newer employees need knowledge. They want education about where their dollars are going."

While Ms. Brock, the mom of three who contributed to the Costilla family, has been known to stop senior citizens in her neighborhood grocery store to see if they need help, she sometimes chooses not to give to the United Way at work.

It's not that she thinks the charity is unworthy. She just isn't sure how her dollars will be used and she misses personal involvement.

"You do get a self-satisfaction out of helping someone. It makes you feel like a better person," she says.

In November, Ms. Brock got married. Her new husband, she says, helped her over the Thanksgiving weekend to collect food for the Costilla family. Ms. Brock and her family personally delivered the donations to the Costillas.

"It may seem small or minimal and they do need more help than I could ever possibly give them, but I know it made a difference," Ms. Brock says.

It's made a difference in her household as well, Ms. Brock says.

Before remarrying, she says, "My kids had to do without a lot of things other kids got with two parents. But I feel like I have taught my kids so much more. We may not be rich in money, but we are rich in a lot of other ways."