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

That thread was vital in helping CARE transition its donors, and the rest of the donating public, out of a general disaster-response mode and back into ongoing giving.

CARE’s involvement in and response to what are perhaps the three most cataclysmic events of the past five years varied greatly — the tsunami required almost 100 percent of the organization’s attention, while Katrina and Sept. 11 affected it only peripherally. But each event in its own way helped to bring CARE’s work into focus for donors and non-donors alike.