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

CARE USA, which recently was named 2005 Nonprofit Organization of the Year by the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation, raised $44 million for tsunami relief between Dec. 26, 2004, and March 31 of this year — without any significant disruption to its regular fundraising programs. The organization had set a tsunami-related fundraising goal of $50 million in the United States, which it eventually exceeded by more than $6 million — $10 million of which was donated online via www.careusa.org.