Giving to charity is a rational act that is often carried out irrationally. As individuals we are more likely to give reactively in response to an emotional appeal for donations than to proactively seek out causes to support based on need, urgency, or the scale of the problem for which funds are being raised. There is often little correlation between the potential impact of our donation and our decision to give. We are more likely to donate if we do not feel so overwhelmed by a problem that we believe our contribution will be too insignificant to accomplish much.
Here are some disaster statistics from 2013. According to The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED):
*There were 334 natural disasters
*22,616 deaths related to natural disasters
*$118 billion in damages
Much of the success of fundraising for a disaster depends on how the narrative of the disaster is crafted by the governments and charities responding to it, and how the story unfolds in the media. If it's personal-- if the story is told in a way that provides a clear beginning point for the crisis and also allows us to imagine ourselves being in the desperate situation at hand--our empathy gene is activated. If on the other hand the narrative becomes too impersonal--too many statistics; too focused on intellectual public policy discussions; too generalized and focused on the otherness of far off problems in far away places--the story falls flat. We don't feel involved. And when we don't feel involved we don't give.
As this applies to the Ebola outbreak:
*Many people in the U.S. have the perception that needs are being met by local governments, in the way we might expect the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to contain a disease on our home soil. In the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, many needs are being addressed not by government agencies but by charities on the ground, such as Doctors Without Borders.
*The problem is too overwhelming. The World Health Organization (WHO) is involved. The problem is big and is expected to get worse. The WHO reports it as the biggest ebola outbreak on record, with 5,800 people having contracted the disease since March 2014, resulting in upwards of 2,800 deaths. As reported by the New York Times, according to scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, the outbreak could last much longer (12 to 18 months more) than originally predicted and infect hundreds of thousands of people. Potential donors can feel deflated. Can my little $50 donation really make any difference?
*It's too impersonal. The problem is reported in the media from a generalized perspective rather than a personal one. Quantifying the problem in terms of number of infections, number of deaths, and predictions as to how far it could spread, how many more people may be infected, and how long the epidemic is expected to last is a critical aspect of reporting on the problem. However, reporting it this way makes it less likely for an individual donor to empathize with victims, to feel a personal connection to the problem, and to open their wallet. What the ebola outbreak needs is the face and the voice of an individual victim to personalize the problem and make us think, "Hey, she's just like me. She works and cooks and cleans her house and sends her kids to school. She had a normal life caring about most of the same things I care about. Suddenly her husband and kids contracted ebola and her whole world fell apart." We need someone to make us imagine what it would feel like if this happened to us or someone in our family. Or perhaps we just need a West African woman to dump a bucket of ice over her head (tongue planted firmly in cheek).
*It's too far away. Ebola is a third world problem (or a developing world problem, to be more politically correct). It affects people who we perceive as being so different from ourselves that watching the news about it fails to spark a connection. After all, people who are so superstitious and uneducated that they would kill the very doctors and journalists trying to help them are not people like me or my friends or colleagues or neighbors. They are not in my culture. They are the anonymous other. Perceiving the people affected by ebola this way dehumanizes the disease and the people affected by it in a way that can make potential donors feel like there are more important causes to care about and donate to than this one. The chances of someone in the U.S. contracting ebola is thought to be extremely low, and we are already so fatigued by U.S. involvement in foreign wars and affairs, it's tough for us to want to take personal ownership of a disease affecting people thousands of miles away.
As reported in a recent article in TIME, a billion dollars will be needed to fight ebola, but less than one-fifth of this amount has been funded, according to the WHO. The Financial Tracking Service (FTS) reports that, as of last week, $155 million in aid has been collected. The Obama Administration committed an additional $500 million last week, and another $183 million has been pledged by other governments and organizations. If every dollar pledged for the ebola outbreak is actually delivered, this totals to $838 million to fight the ongoing ebola crisis so far. Donations from private individuals and organizations account for more than one-fourth of total pledges, or 26.7%.
If we can hold ourselves to a higher standard than emotional appeal, see beyond the statistics and numbers, and understand that a bunch of little donations from a lot of people in a country thousands of miles away really can make an impact, each of us can contribute in a small way to resolving this crisis. We can provide comfort to the dying, and care to those who can be saved. Rating organization, CharityWatch, provides a list of highly rated nonprofits that are providing "emergency relief and life-saving prevention education" in the West African countries affected by the deadly ebola virus.
For more on the topic of how the narrative of the ebola outbreak has affected the needs of its victims, listen to this NPR story on Planet Money, "Why Raising Money to Fight Ebola is Hard."
Laurie Styron