Not too long ago, the headlines of American newspapers were dominated by stories about the devastating earthquake in Haiti, as well as the unprecedented outpouring of support from people across the globe. A significant portion of these contributions came from ordinary Americans – on January 17 ABC World News reported that in the five days following the earthquake, Americans donated $150 million to relief efforts.

It is clear that the American public cares about helping those who lack the resources required to help themselves, even when those requiring help are people who we never have, and never will, meet in a country that most of us would be hard-pressed to locate on a map. The question is what can we at StepSafe learn from the response to Haiti and apply to our fundraising efforts in the United States.

It has been said that Americans, as a whole, are unparalleled in responding to a crisis but that, absent such a unifying cause, we are hard-pressed to accomplish anything. There is an element of truth to this statement, which is borne out by the clear response to the situation in Haiti. Does this mean that we should position and market each fundraising opportunity StepSafe elects to take on as an “emergency”? Of course not – doing so would quickly exhaust and annoy our universe of donors, leading to StepSafe being labeled as the proverbial “boy who cried wolf”. However, we can structure our fundraising efforts to tap into the “crisis” mentality of Americans by emphasizing and leading with our unique funding strategy. By first identifying specific opportunities where a relatively small amount of money can provide outsized returns in the form of either allowing for the deployment of larger sums pledged by other NGOs or filling smaller, but still crucial needs, such as working capital, and then raising targeted funds, we can appeal to the ingrained mentality of many Americans. This strategy allows us to “market” specific opportunities to specific groups of donors. These donors have the ability to then track their contribution, seeing the results that the deployment of this capital actually has on a particular population.

The success of fundraising efforts is inexorably linked to the attitudes, beliefs and norms of those individuals being targeted. The upshot for StepSafe is that, given our global footprint, no “one size fits all” approaches can be taken. In order to maximize our fundraising efforts we must specifically tailor each initiative to the particular country in which it is being implemented. Doing so will require an analysis and understanding of various populations which can be assisted through a focus on events such as the response of the American public to the earthquake in Haiti.