Recession Has Varying Effects on Charities Across Europe

October 23, 2009

Recession Has Varying Effects on Charities Across Europe

The recession has had a widely varying effect on charities in Europe, said speakers at this week’s International Fundraising Congress in Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands.

Among them:

Adrian Sargeant, a British researcher at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy summarized recently released data from the United Kingdom’s annual survey by the Charities Aid Foundation and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. Based on a poll of 3,316 British adults from June 2008 to February of this year, it found that donations had declined by 11.4 percent from the previous year.

A fund-raising consultant from Greece who helps organizations obtain corporate sponsorships said such payments have declined by 10 percent this year.

Amanda Seller of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that currency exchange rates have proved to be a “nightmare” for many international relief organizations. She described a $1-million gift from a donor in the United States to provide aid in Africa that, because of dollar’s declining value, turned out to be worth 11 per cent less. “The money doesn’t go as far, but we felt we had to deliver the same services,” she said.

Ms. Seller and other conference attendees from charities such as Unicef, which rely heavily on government aid, said that they are concerned that such support will be reduced in 2010. “Next year will be really tough, because they are digging out and are in big debt,” said Ms. Seller of the governments that cover the bulk of her organization’s expenses.

“My government aid colleagues are very worried,” she added. “Anxiety is a bad place from which to fund raise.”

But fund raisers from other countries reported some hopeful signs. A Unicef affiliate in Iceland reported a dip earlier in the year, but said that giving was still above pre-recession levels.

Daryl Upsall, a fund-raising consultant, said that many of his charity clients in Spain were doing well, despite unemployment rates that have reached 20 percent in some pockets of the country. The middle class, he said, is relatively unaffected and, because interest rates have gone down, many households are paying less on their monthly mortgages. As a result, he said, they have more disposable income and are giving more.

Another consultant from a Canadian company that processes credit-card donations for 9,000 nonprofit clients said that donations in late 2008 and early this year had “gone off a cliff,” but had rallied since September with a 10-per-cent increase. “We’re moving out of a rocky period,” he said.

— Holly Hall

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Recession Has Varying Effects on Charities Across Europe