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The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION

Admin costs, logistics, bookkeeping mean some donations better than others

By: Jonathan Montpetit, THE CANADIAN PRESS

7/02/2010 1:10 PM | Comments: 0

MONTREAL - As Canadians continue to donate tens of millions of dollars to relief efforts in Haiti, aid organizations are scrambling to ensure as much money as possible finds its way into the devastated country.

With the federal government's window to match donations set to close Friday, charities and NGOs are hoping the incentive will give one final push to their fundraising campaigns.

But administrative costs, logistical challenges and in a few cases shady bookkeeping mean some donations are more likely than others to end up helping survivors of last month's earthquake.

A survey of several leading aid organizations in Canada revealed that while some guarantee every dollar of every donation will be sent to the country, many take a percentage in order to process the funds.

The percentages vary between two and 10 per cent and are aimed at covering such expenditures as advertising, manning call centres and maintaining website servers.

Comparisons among the six groups questioned by The Canadian Press can be misleading, given there is no uniform way for calculating administrative costs.

-World Vision Canada aims to keep administration and fundraising costs at 10 per cent or below of all incoming donations.

-International Development and Relief Foundation keeps 8.5 per cent of all donations for administrative costs.

-The Humanitarian Coalition (which includes OXFAM-Canada, OXFAM-Quebec, Care Canada and Save the Children Canada) says currently eight per cent of the donations it has received is given over for administration.

-UNICEF Canada is anticipating its costs will represent between two and five per cent of donations.

-Plan International Canada says 100 per cent of the money it receives for Haiti is sent to the country.

-Adventist Development and Relief Agency Canada is also committed to using 100 per cent of donations for project funds in Haiti.

Once on the ground, there is still no guarantee a dollar donated will end up buying food, water, shelter or medical aid. Aid groups acknowledge enormous sums must first be spent on logistics.

For example, it can cost as much as US$2,000 per day to hire a truck to bring potable water from the Dominican Republic into Haiti.

"The necessity for the money really is in the transportation because everybody is squabbling over trucks and drivers," said Jane Connolly, director of programs at the International Development and Relief Foundation.

"That's one of the supply chain issues you get with disasters."

Now that almost one month has gone by since the earthquake, and survivors are no longer being pulled from the rubble, aid groups are in the process of re-evaluating whether to spend their fundraising windfall on short-term emergency relief or long-term reconstruction.

The Humanitarian Coalition had raised more than $10 million as of last week, but is shifting where that money will be spent.

"That's more than is needed for the immediate relief," said Kieran Green, a spokesperson for the coalition and Care Canada.

"Probably the largest part of that money is probably going to go to a long-term, multi-year reconstruction effort, which we will be involved in."

Others are still focused on the immediate needs of Haitians.

The Canadian branch of World Vision is contributing to the international group's US$30-million fund for the 90-day period immediately after the earthquake. As much as 65 per cent of that money will go to shelter and non-food items, such as hygiene kits.

"Canadians need to understand just how challenging the situation is in Haiti," said World Vision Canada's executive vice-president, Michael Messenger.

Haitian banks have only recently re-opened to make it easier to transfer funds to staff and local partners in the country. Before that, Messenger said, World Vision was working to move supplies from Canada into Haiti, a task complicated by Port-au-Prince's suddenly heavily congested airport.

"The economics of it are a function of the need," he added. "We're able to get the material down there, but certainly it's often more effective to source things locally."

Aid groups have, in recent years, striven to be more upfront with their donors about how their money is being spent.

Following the Asian tsunami of 2004, many donors were surprised to learn some larger aid groups couldn't spend all the money it had raised, while smaller ones struggled to fund their projects. Much of the money earmarked for tsunami relief never made its way to victims of the disaster and was used for other projects instead.

"When you give to an organization, you should be able to hold their feet to the fire in terms of accounting for the funds that have been given," said Rosemary McCarney, Plan Canada's president and CEO.

McCarney said while tighter accountability measures have become more popular since the tsunami, some groups still fail to be transparent about where donations are going.

Several fundraisers echoed McCarney's concerns but refused to single out any particular organization. They say the best way to ensure Canadians get the most from their donation is to give to groups that had a presence in Haiti before the earthquake.

"You have to ask what is (the aid group's) capacity to work in the emergency," McCarney said. "Canadians should ask: 'Have they got long roots in the country where they actually know how to be effective?"'

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