National Reports

...And they'd have the immense satisfaction of knowing that a much larger share of the money was going to the cause for which it was intended—the prevention of disease...

...We can't afford to delay much longer...

...While many of the workers are dedicated volunteers who donate their services, there are still full-time, year-round employes whose salaries must be paid and whose work is necessary...

...This is because the multiplicity of appeals results in the money being collected in a helter-skelter, hit-or-miss fashion which precludes thrift in an area where it is desperately needed...

...Some people just don't care to support certain causes...

...It's going to take a truly mammoth publicity campaign to set the stage—and it will have to be done over the rigid objections of the existing individual agencies...

...It is this very factor of emotional appeal, however, which presents one of the strongest drawbacks to the NHF plan...

...They'd be forced to open their books and give an accurate picture of their resources and expenses—and many of them are more than a little reluctant to do this...

...He has been pushing the plan during the past 14 years, but it got what has been perhaps its biggest shove last January when the AFL-CIO Executive Council adopted a resolution favoring "the establishment by the voluntary health agencies of a National Health Fund for the purposes of fund-raising, budgeting and program coordination...

...The people who...

...These reasons, however logical they may seem to the agencies, can't override the crying need for some better way to raise money to fight disease than we now have...

...This is a point which well might be investigated by those who have inaugurated the science of motivational research...

...None of the foundations like to talk about the tremendous sums they spend raising money...

...It would still cost money to run such a campaign, of course, but since the element of competition with other campaigns would cease to exist these costs could be held to a reasonable minimum...

...For that reason, a council representing labor, industry, government, the professions and individual agencies willing to cooperate should be set up immediately to work toward the establishment of NTTF...

...One of their principal objections has already been noted...

...If Perlis's prediction is to become fact, a great deal of groundwork must be done in the next two or three years...

...for so many years, have poured their money into the fight against disease deserve the opportunity to indicate their preference for the unified approach...

...Surely the people, weary of endless appeals on their doorsteps, at the movies, in their offices and on street corners, would welcome the opportunity to give once at a national level as they have welcomed it at the local level...

...They'd prefer contributors to think that every single dollar donated goes toward the cause for which it was contributed, but this is a long way from the truth...

...The resolution took note of the worthwhile purposes oi the various fund-raising agencies but opined that some of their methods of operation could stand improvement and that a fund such as the one proposed could eliminate many of the objections...

...Past experience shows that a considerable portion of this total— much too large a portion—will be earmarked not for research, not for the cure of disease or the alleviation of suffering, but to pay campaign costs and to meet payrolls and expense accounts...

...The pattern seems to be that inevitably local groups begin, after two or three years, to insist that larger and larger shares of the money given remain under local supervision, although it's pretty obvious to the most casual observer that research must be done where the facilities exist for it and where there are trained people to carry it out...

...Knowing that further appeals wouldn't be forthcoming in ensuing months, they'd probably give more generously than they ever have to the individual campaigns...

...over and over again, the fund-raising costs of individual campaigns when these costs, in themselves, contribute nothing whatever to the basic purpose of the campaign...

...It's possible that the costs of running a single national campaign might be that much—or even more —but at least there would be the satisfaction of knowing that the costs wouldn't be repeated with each individual effort...

...Another is that they feel their identities to be so important that they won't survive if they use the mass approach...

...This year, the eight giants in the field asked the American people for more than $210 million...

...Yet enormous sums have been collected to fight polio in each March of Dimes campaign...

...People give money to fight all these diseases for a variety of reasons, among them fear of catching the disease, the emotional appeal of the campaign, social pressures and personal aggrandizement—the picture of the donor in the local paper, for instance...

...Another strong point in favor of NHF is the prospect of the allocation of funds on the basis of need rather than on sheer emotional appeal...

...There is always strong community resistance to shipping money out of a locality even though it may not be possible to set up a research laboratory there and, even if it were possible, no qualified scientists would be available to man it...

...And it goes without saying that the books of NHF would be open at all times for inspection by responsible, interested persons and that annual reports would be made public and given the widest possible distribution...

...The national council of NHF would be charged with seeing that fair salaries were paid to the necessary full-time workers but that expense accounts were held to the lowest possible point...

...A man who has been close for many years to one of the largest fund-raising agencies calls it "axiomatic" that such groups quickly fall into opportunistic hands...

...In 1954, for instance, a footnote in the hard-to-come-by NFIP annual report reveals that these costs amounted to more than $7 million...

...Mental illness and alcoholism have many times as many victims as polio, but it would be pretty hard to work up much emotional appeal around the picture of an alcoholic derelict or the longtime inmate of a mental institution...

...NHF seems to be the most workable alternative to the individual approach which has yet been devised...

...As one top labor leader, who feels great caution must be used in setting up NHF and who has serious reservations about the AFLCIO blanket endorsement of the project, put it recently: "There are social and personal values to be maintained...

...Then, too, there is advertising: While much of the space is donated by the publications or paid for by civic-minded firms, the preparation of the ads costs money...

...NHF will mean adding to the current United Fund and Community Chest quotas to raise them to a goal of about $650 million a year, of which approximately a quarter of a billion would go to NHF...

...During the 20-odd years between the founding of NFIP and 1954, that agency contributed the handsome sum of $25 million to polio research...

...And there's another reason: They realize the budgeting committee of NHF wouldn't be nearly so lenient with them in the matter of financial records...

...Establishment of NHF should result in a more equitable and sensible method of distributing the funds...

...For this reason the idea of a National Health Fund, which would correlate the major fund campaigns under one roof on a national level as the United Fund correlates them on a community level, is gaining increasing momentum...

...Leo Perlis flatly predicted that NHF will become a reality within five years "to avoid wasteful duplication of effort, to eliminate the multiplicity of fundraising campaigns, to permit the allocation of funds on the basis of relative needs and, most important, to permit coordination in basic medical research...

...They just won't give in without a fight...

...Add to that figure the amounts asked by United Funds, Community Chests and the literally hundreds of minor appeals and the total becomes astronomical...

...Another drawback which certainly must be considered by those charged with setting up the mechanics of NHF is the trap into which some United Fund and Community Chest organizations have fallen...

...As a case in point, consider the huge National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis...

...And there are campaign posters and stickers to be printed, lapel gadgets and buttons to be manufactured— they cost money...

...Every year that the solution to the problem is put off means that additional money is going down the drain—money which might be finding the solution to cancer, developing new techniques in the management of heart disease, or developing drugs to help relieve crowded conditions in our mental hospitals...

...A little deeper digging into foundation figures, however, shows that in just two recent years NFIP spent a total of $12.5 million on the mechanics of fund-raising...

...It's nothing short of ridiculous for the American people to pay...

...Although polio is a disease which, for years, has struck terror into the hearts of parents, statistics show it to rank 22nd as a killer and 11th as a crippler: In 1954, six times as many people died as a result of homicide as died of polio...

...If the emotional factor is completely exorcised, NHF might find itself dying on the vine for lack of contributions...

...This emotional factor has worked to make polio—never a great medical problem—a top money-getter because a great and popular President was one of its victims and because it tends to strike the young: The picture of a winsome child whose legs are weighted down by ungainly braces is a standard feature of every polio campaign...

...His point is well taken, of course...

...Almost without exception, the largest agencies have resisted the united approach to giving...

...NHF was the brainchild of Leo Perlis, now director of Community Services Activities for the combined AFL-CIO, back in 1943...

...It all adds up...

...But, he warned, it won't be easy...

...In a speech made in June in Dayton, Ohio, before members of the Campaign Leaders' National Conference, United Community Funds and Councils of America...

...Furthermore, he stressed, the program must retain enough flexibility to provide for emergencies, either through a substantial disaster fund or through special emergency appeals...

...These objections are valid...