Mennonite Weekly Review

The woman on the Winnipeg radio station call-in show was upset. She had just discovered that the agency she donated to for Haitian earthquake relief charges an administration fee. How could they do that when so many people are suffering?

John Longhurst is director of marketing and sales for Mennonite Publishing Network and a member of River East Mennonite Brethren Church.

I’ve got news for her: Every good relief agency charges an administration fee. It’s called the cost of doing quality relief work.

What is the money used for? Among other things, it’s used to pay the salaries of the workers who fly to the scene of a disaster to assess the needs in places like Haiti, or that supervise the staff working on the ground.

It’s used to pay for the rent, heat, electricity that makes programming possible, to properly account for money that is received and spent, and to create procedures to ensure donations aren’t misused, lost or stolen.

It’s also used to pay the salaries of the people who take the calls or open the mail when people want to make donations.

The truth is that it costs money to do good relief and development work. The best agencies know that you can’t scrimp on things like hiring and training quality staff, or paying decent wages to keep them.

They also need to spend money to create and maintain the infrastructure that makes emergency responses like in Haiti possible — things like buildings, computers, travel, logistics and fundraising.

Ah, yes — fundraising. Some people may be surprised to learn that relief agencies don’t normally have to add extra staff to answer phones, stay open longer to receive calls or fix crashing Web sites because so many people want to give them money.

Most of the time the opposite is true. Agencies have to beat the bushes for funds. For that they need fundraisers and communicators, plus money to print and mail appeals or to buy advertising. They usually aren’t fortunate enough to have the media getting out the word for them.

When I started out in the relief and development business in the 1980s, it was common to have an overhead of 10 percent. Today that figure can be 20 to 25 percent at some agencies. This isn’t because of high salaries. I don’t know anyone who is getting rich serving the poor or needy. Simply put, things cost more today.