CARE USA shifts into fundraising overdrive when disaster strikes, but its day-to-day development plan keeps it at the forefront of humanitarian-aid organizations.

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

After Sept. 11
CARE USA is the founding and largest of 11 CARE chapters around the world, each of which raises money in its own region for ongoing humanitarian-aid programs that span the globe. As such, it’s not directly involved in the Katrina relief effort. It isn’t programmatically operational in afflicted areas and isn’t raising money in connection with Katrina. It has, however, invited organizations that have people and programs “on the ground” along the Gulf to request specific information and expertise if they feel they need it — helping, without forcing itself into the middle of an operation where it doesn’t have a pre-existing presence.