Disaster Relief

The African Union has announced that during its first-ever African Pledging Conference, member countries committed more than $350 million for relief efforts that are assisting millions of people in crisis due to the extreme drought and famine conditions in the Horn of Africa.

Commitments announced at the conference include $300 million over five years by the African Development Bank, $10 million each by Algeria and South Africa, and $5 million each by Egypt and the Democratic Republic of Congo ($5 million). Another nine countries made pledges ranging from $1 million to $3 million.

ART FOR JOPLIN: Show Me Art; Show Me Hope, a fundraising campaign created by Moosylvania, the digital, branding, promotion and experiential agency, has raised $15,000 to benefit small businesses impacted by the May 21, 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri.

People expect nonprofits that provide disaster aid to use social networks to communicate, according to a new survey by the American Red Cross.

Eighty percent of Americans said they expect national relief groups to monitor their social-media feeds and websites where disaster victims might make urgent requests for help. And they expect those groups to act quickly. About 35 percent of respondents said that it is reasonable to expect assistance to arrive within an hour after a request for help is posted online.

Help, and a lot of cash, is on the way to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill victims in North Florida. Catholic Charities of Northwest Florida, a social ministry of the Catholic Church, has been selected by the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors to administer a $3.5 million fund that will assist local residents who were financially, emotionally or physically injured by the spill. The fund was created by an anonymous donation to the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Ted Hart discusses government funding with Mark McIntyre, senior vice president of federal funding and advocacy at Russ Reid, on the Nonprofit Coach.

Relief organizations often have their biggest fundraising successes during major humanitarian crises like the famine in east Africa.

The Center on Philanthropy estimates that American nonprofit aid groups received $1.9 billion after the Asian tsunami of 2004, and $1.4 billion in 2010 after the earthquake that decimated Haiti.

But aid groups say that raising money to address the famine has been more like that for the flooding in Pakistan last year, when dollars trickled into nonprofit coffers slowly and never came close to reaching the amounts donated to address other disasters.

Continuing our four-part series on successful fundraising campaigns from the past year, here are case studies on Stop Hunger Now's Haiti Relief campaign and the Salvation Army's annual Red Kettle Drive.

Relief operations have been constrained by the security situation in Somalia. But Islamist militant group al-Shabab last week announced it was lifting a ban on foreign aid organizations because of the severity of the drought.

The U.K.'s Disasters Emergency Committee has launched an appeal after severe drought in the Horn of Africa. The Disasters Emergency Committee said Somalia, where there has been no national government for 20 years, was one of the hardest places in the world to deliver aid.

Los Angeles-based Brewer Direct has inked agency of record agreements to manage direct response fundraising programs for the Kansas City Rescue Mission and Gospel Rescue Ministries of Washington D.C. The additions bring the agency’s roster of Rescue Mission clients to 18 nationwide.

Work for the Kansas City Rescue Mission will focus on developing a new, fully integrated donor acquisition strategy. For Gospel Rescue Ministries, Brewer Direct will design, implement and manage end-to-end direct response fundraising campaigns across multiple channels.

Confronted with an unprecedented string of tornadoes, floods and wildfires, the American Red Cross and other relief groups are scrambling to raise money fast enough to meet the demand for help.

“The disasters just keep coming,” said Red Cross spokesman Roger Lowe, reporting that the organization has spent $41 million thus far responding to the seven-week onslaught while raising $33.6 million to cover the costs.

Many other national and local groups also are facing fundraising challenges as they respond to the recent calamities.