Disasters stretch charity dollar
Sun Herald
Sunday March 20, 2011
QUEENSLANDERS have dug deep to donate to those affected by natural disasters over the past few months but it has come at a cost to other charities.While hundreds of millions of dollars have been given to flood-related and earthquake-related appeals, convincing people to hand out even more money to charities not involved in the natural disasters has become "extremely difficult".A spokeswoman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Queensland said there was an element of "charity fatigue" and there had been a marked drop in donations in the past few months."It's difficult because people have been giving money to so many people in need lately with the floods and earthquakes. There's been so much unprecedented devastation," she said. "As well as that, times are tough in general."She said there had been an obvious drop in donations as people pledged funds to the likes of the Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal and the Red Cross."We've struggled a bit, definitely. We've been quite worried," she said."It's been a much harder sell - we've had to push twice as hard to get any coverage from the media to get our name out there and get the awareness up."However, she said the amount of funds raised also depended on how they were being pitched. She said people were still very willing to make small donations in the way of gold coins, as shown by the success of MD's bow day last week.More than $16,000 was raised in only two hours when a group of All Hallows' School students took to the central business district to sell bows at a cost of $2 each.David Barbagallo, chief executive of the Endeavour Foundation, said the decline was inevitable in the light of recent natural disasters and that even Endeavour's hugely popular lotteries were suffering."We've definitely seen a drop in the prize home lottery ticket sales," he said."The GFC didn't affect us as much as the natural disasters have. Having said that, we're confident it will bounce back and the fact is the drop in lottery sales has come from a very high base."Mr Barbagallo said that, anecdotally, disasters such as the 2004 Asian tsunami and the Black Saturday fires in 2009 had caused an initial drop in donations to Endeavour but they had then bounced back to an even higher level."I think at times like this, people become more aware of the need to be charitable. Over the past 10 to 15 years, Australians [have been] consistently giving more and more, so while we might see a drop at the moment, I'm confident we'll come back even stronger and with more support than ever."Peter Johnstone, chief executive of the Leukaemia Foundation of Queensland, said it was on track to meet the $3.5 million fund-raising target set as part of the World's Greatest Shave 2011."People dig deep to support the foundation and when natural disasters happen they dig even deeper to maintain their support for us while also helping those impacted by tragedies at home or overseas," he said.
© 2011 Sun Herald