For some inside perspective on farm-animal giving, see this comment from Devin Hermanson, the director of the World Vision Gift Catalog:
Hi Jeannette,
I am the Director of the World Vision Gift Catalog and I wrote the Donor Promise that you refer to. I think it’s an important issue and I’m glad to address it.
We’ve put a lot of effort into making sure that donors’ money is used as they’d wish even when it’s cost us donation dollars. While we do maintain the need for some flexibility, as you mentioned, we’ve also taken steps to ensure that we will rarely need to exercise that flexibility by only including offers in the catalog that are needed across a large number of countries.
For example, for years, the camel was a top offer. However, as the catalog grew, the donation dollars brought in far exceeded the need in the communities we served. While we could have invoked the flexibility in our donor promise and diverted the money to other animals, I felt that it violated the spirit of our promise to donors and chose to remove it from the catalog.
At the time, it was a real blow (the camel was our second most popular item) but we felt it was the right thing to do for exactly the reason you mention – if I were to sit down with a donor, how would they feel about the use of their donation? The answer was clear in my mind.
And I have sat down with many donors and journalists and had this conversation. The truth is that at most, a small percentage of a donation might be used for a similar item, and anyone I’ve ever discussed this issue with has understood the need for that flexibility, the degree to which it is used, and our disclosure of the possibility.
Thank you for raising the issue! If you or your readers have any questions, please feel free to email me.
Merry Christmas!
– Devin
After reading Devin’s missive, some other questions occurred to me: Assuming Bill’s mom’s donation really does go toward a donkey, would we be able to visit it at some point? How do charities decide where to place these animals? What are the survival rates for the animals? And does World Vision plan to bring back the camel anytime soon?
UPDATE: For Devin Hermanson responses click on comment below.
Hi Jeannette – sorry for the delay. I’m currently traveling with the Gift Catalog team to five countries where we provide items from the catalog so we can share the full impact of those gifts with our donors.
We’re in Zambia right now and the internet connection isn’t always so great!
I wanted to make sure I responded to your questions because these are questions we often hear from donors, too.
Unfortunately, Bill’s mom won’t be able to visit her donkey after she makes the donation. The cost required to report on each individual gift would be significant, and donors have been clear that they want as much money as possible going to actually helping kids. Keeping that focus has allowed us to achieve an overhead rate of just 13%.
A lot of thought goes into deciding what countries we work in, but the simple answer is that it is a combination of where the need is greatest and where we think the potential to effect substantial, lasting change exists. As for the actual decision of who gets an animal, that is left primarily to the community themselves. The beauty of our model is that the community is empowered to make their own decisions.
I don’t have an actual survival rate, but having visited a family today who received goats, I can tell you that the rate is probably very high. All of our programs include training on how to care for the animals and ensure they thrive. These animals are often the only assets a family has, and they are prized possessions. We’ll be posting our interview with the family we visited today in the next 48 hours, and you can hear from the family themselves just how important their goats are. You can see the interviews on our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/truespiritofchristmas
As for the camel, sadly, he will not be back. Believe me, I wish we could, but we still have the same problem we had before. Far, far more people wish to donate a camel than are needed by the communities we serve. I don’t see that changing anytime soon but I’m hoping people will be satisfied with a cow, a pair of goats, or maybe a donkey or two.