Is anyone else getting tired of "compassion fatigue"?

It happens every time there's a disaster: The press comes up with the same old "compassion fatigue" story, where they interview "experts" -- often psychologists, strangely -- about the incredible new spirit of stinginess that's sweeping the land.

Here's one, an AP story, widely published, here on MSNBC: 'Disaster fatigue' blamed for drop in giving. The hand-wringing goes like this:

... disaster fatigue -- the sense that these events are never-ending, uncontrollable and overwhelming. Experts say it is one reason Americans have contributed relatively little so far to victims of the Myanmar cyclone and China's earthquake.

It's true that donor response to disasters is not always proportional to the seriousness of the disaster. It's often unfair and baffling.

But I don't think lower response to any given disaster can be blamed on "fatigue." The problem is this: Donors don't necessarily have the same sense of what a disaster is as we do. Response is lower to disasters that have these characteristics:

Too obscure. Media coverage of disasters is uneven. Some places are just too far away, hard to get to, hard to file stories from. That means less coverage. And sadly, media coverage tends to be driven by body count. A disaster doesn't really get all over the US media until tens of thousands of people have died. When the media aren't telling the story, it's just not going to move that many people to action.

Too complex. When a disaster's cause and/or solution is hard to grasp, fewer people grasp it. You can at least partly overcome this by stripping your description of a disaster down to its bare and simple essentials.

Too intractable. Nobody likes the sense that they're throwing away their money. So when it seems that responding to a disaster isn't going to change anything, many would-be donors turn away. That's why man-made disasters are harder to raise funds for. And in the days after Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar, when news got out that the regime was turning away help, many organizations saw a steep drop in donations for that disaster.

If you go by numbers, the crisis in Darfur is easily the biggest disaster in the world today. But funds raised for Darfur are far below what it "should" be. Sadly, Darfur is obscure, complex, and intractable.

What can you do about it? Not a lot But you can find and cultivate donors who can see past these things and respond when others don't.

Technorati Tags: disasters, compassion fatigue

Comments

[Jason Dick]

Inspiring words. I have found that same problem frustrating myself. I agree all we can do is work with the relationships and donors that we have now.