Veterans Day is the annual kick-off day for Fisher House Foundation’s year-end giving, says David Coker, its president. The charity is having a good year. So far it’s on track to see roughly the same 15 percent increase in donations as last year, he says.
“This is still a grateful nation,” says Mr. Coker, who has led the charity since 1994, following his retirement from the Army.
In 2014, Fisher House Foundation’s assets went from $45.4 million to $52.3 million. The 25-year-old charity, which builds housing for military families to stay in while a member is hospitalized, is expanding. It has 66 houses around the country and plans to add five more by January. The houses are donated to U.S. military branches and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which run them.
Another charity that serves veterans, the 12-year-old Wounded Warrior Project, is doing even better with fundraising. Among all the social-service groups on The Chronicle’s latest Philanthropy 400, a ranking of the organizations that raised the most in private support, it saw the biggest increase in donations. Its gifts spiked 51 percent in 2014, from $225.4 million to $340.5 million.
And this year looks good, too. The charity’s chief executive, Steven Nardizzi, says he expects private support to jump about 20 percent in 2015.
Visibility for a Cause
More than 45,000 organizations that serve military veterans and their families are registered as nonprofits with the Internal Revenue Service, according to a new report by GuideStar. Nearly two out of three of those are chapters of membership groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, venerable organizations now serving a new generation.
While most groups that serve veterans are tiny operations, with two out of three receiving $50,000 or less in donations a year, 16 percent bring in more than $1 million annually.
But a select few, like Wounded Warrior and Fisher House, reap tens of millions each year, maintaining a national profile as they seek support for returning veterans of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of previous conflicts, and their families. Both groups have seen success by trying a variety of channels to keep their cause in the public eye, and they offer a glimpse at how American donors are continuing to respond to their cause as servicemembers return from the Middle East and Central Asia.
“As we get further away from the conflicts, we have not seen a drop-off in support,” says Mr. Nardizzi. “Where we have seen a drop-off is in some media coverage.”
A $500-Million Campaign
The leaders of Wounded Warrior have been thinking big. Last year they launched an endowment campaign to raise $500 million over the next three to five years to help take care of the long-term needs of wounded veterans; thus far, it has raised more than $100 million, Mr. Nardizzi says, focusing on major donors.
The charity can point to a multipronged strategy that has made it successful with donors: direct mail, television advertising, and corporate sponsors like Under Armour, Bank of America, Nissan, Harley-Davidson, and Southeastern Grocers. (The latter three were added to the roster this year.) Nissan recently underwrote a national ad campaign for the charity.
At the same time, the group is looking to spark more support from smaller individual donors. It will raise money for its general fund through a variety of crowdfunding events this year-end season. And it plans to put more energy into fostering peer-to-peer fundraising on social media, which Mr. Nardizzi calls a “growth area” for the organization.
Hybrid Tactics
Aside from Fisher House’s easy sell mission — “We serve the best people in the world,” Mr. Coker sums up — a hybrid fundraising strategy held the secrets to its success. Fisher House combines some traditional and newfangled methods while ignoring other strategies that many charities rely on.
“We don’t do all the things charities traditionally do,” says Mr. Coker. For instance, it largely eschews direct-mail appeals. It uses print advertising sparingly, mostly for the Combined Federal Campaign, the workplace-giving program of government employees, including military personnel. The campaign, also a key source of support for Wounded Warrior, has been lucrative for Fisher House. Though the leanly run Fisher House has fewer than 30 employees, Mr. Coker notes, “we’re traditionally in the top 10 percent of organizations receiving contributions from CFC.”
The group keeps an active social-media presence, which helps keep its profile high with the public. Testimonies from people who have stayed in Fisher Houses can be particularly effective. “It’s word of mouth,” Mr. Coker says. “It’s people putting it on Facebook: Hey, here’s a group that helped me.”
Another tactic the charity employs is a throwback to a time decades before the Internet.
“I believe in the power of radio,” Mr. Coker says. “People who listen to radio have a relationship with the personalities on that station.” To use that bond to reach donors, the charity produces a three-hour special that it offers to country-music stations as year-end programming. The talk format lets Fisher House tell its story and those of the people it has served, he says, and “it puts us on people’s minds at a time when they’re trying to decide where to make a gift.”
This year’s host will be the singer Kenny Rogers; next year, husband-and-wife singers Garth Brooks Trisha Yearwood. Aside from the star power, there’s another attraction for the stations.
“If you look at the radio markets, that’s when their people want to go on vacation,” he says. “So they’re either going to put in a ‘best-of’ tape or they would also like to have fresh material. And we give them fresh material at the perfect time of year for us to have maximum impact.”
Crowdfunding for Veterans
A number of other efforts are under way to raise more support for the nation’s 22 million former servicemembers and their families.
#DayfortheBrave, a daylong crowdfunding event by Razoo, looks to raise money for charities that serve military veterans, active-duty personnel, and their families. More than 330 charities — including Wounded Warrior Project and Fisher House Foundation — have thus far signed up and will compete for prizes based on their fundraising success. Razoo gave $25,000 to start the prize pool and has raised another $7,000 for it.
The Home Depot Foundation is winding up a giving drive Wednesday that it began September 10, when it pledged to donate up to $1 million to selected charities that serve elderly or disabled veterans. The corporate donor is giving $1 for every photo that people post on Twitter or Instagram of themselves, using the hashtag #ServiceSelfie, that shows them volunteering or honoring a service member. It will also give $1 for every time a Facebook user “likes” the weekly nonprofit spotlights on the Facebook page of Team Depot, the company’s employee-led volunteer force.
Among the nine charities that stand to benefit are the Gary Sinise Foundation, Meals on Wheels America, and Operation Homefront. So far, the group has racked more than 907,000 likes and selfies, and the money will be divided evenly among all nine beneficiaries, says Bradford Walton, a Team Depot spokesman.
Bruce Richards, chief executive of Marathon Asset Management, a hedge fund, and his wife, Avis Richards, head of Birds Nest Foundation, a nonprofit that provides media content for charities, have given $1 million to the University of Maryland for scholarships for veterans. In addition, they have pledged $1 million to match other donors who contribute to the Veterans Education Challenge, which will support scholarships at institutions that participate in the government’s Yellow Ribbon program, the modern-day G.I. Bill. Donors can contribute to the challenge on Crowdrise through Veterans Day 2016.
“Veterans are so loyal, hardworking, and dedicated. But they so often have such a difficult time when they return from duty. College is really expensive, and some of it is prohibitive,” says Ms. Richards. The goal of the Maryland gift and the fund, she says, is to cover “what the G.I. Bill doesn’t cover.” She cites statistics that paint a picture of veterans as nontraditional students: About 85 percent are older than 24 when they enroll in college, and 62 percent are the first in their families to attend. About half have children and spouses.
While no one in her family has served in uniform, she and her husband feel a strong sense of gratitude to veterans, which spurred their decision to support the cause.
Ms. Richards and her daughter, along with two of her husband’s siblings, graduated from the University of Maryland. She and her husband serve on its board, and she approached the university about making the gift. Crowdrise got the nod for the challenge gift after she researched crowdfunding platforms and came away from a meeting with its CEO impressed with its operations. “They built the page for us overnight,” she says.
Though the country is turning the page on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ms. Richards says she doesn’t worry that donors like her will forgot about the needs of returning servicemembers.
“I think Americans will always support our veterans,” she says. “We pray for peace and at the same time realize that a strong military will always be needed to keep our country safe.”
