Feature Follow-up

— Tom Harrison, President and CEO, Russ Reid

Author's response: It is a double-edged sword — people tend to favor brand-name charities over local ones, but they also like to give locally where they can see the effects. They also tend to give to what is in the news.

Your experience that local rescue missions do very well in hard times is contrary to my experience where local groups in response to surveys done in December said they were off one-third or more, while national groups were either dead even or up or down [just] slightly. Thus, I wrote that national groups do better and that publicity for the cause helps — both of which I thought were true. Your experience regarding local may be more accurate, since I have no local clients at all. All of mine are national, and I was relying upon some surveys done of nonprofits.