日本国際交流センター
JAPAN CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE

International Philanthropy and Disasters in Developed Countries
The US Response to Japan’s 3.11 Disaster*James Gannon
July 2014
I was still fumbling with the lock on the office door when the phone started ringing. It was
already late but I had spent the first two hours that morning calling around Tokyo to make surethat my brother and my colleagues were safe after the day’s massive earthquake. When I finallymade it inside and picked up the phone, a Congresswoman was on the line to ask for the latest
report from Japan and to express her sympathy for the victims of the unfolding tragedy. She wasclearly shaken and struggled to maintain her composure. As soon as I put the receiver back in thecradle, it rang again. This time it was a schoolteacher who saw that our organization’s namebegan with “Japan” and wanted advice on things that her students could do to support relief
efforts. By the time that call ended, several of our other lines were lighting up. The ringing wasto continue nonstop for weeks to come with calls from hundreds of concerned people around thecountry from all walks of life who wanted to help Japan in some way.
In retrospect, it seems remarkable that the trends that became evident that first day—March 11,
2011—would hold true throughout the American public’s response to the disaster that became
known in Japan simply as “3.11”—the 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the towering tsunami, and thechilling crisis that unfolded afterward at
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
The response was overwhelming, highly
diverse, and largely based on people’s
personal connections to Japan, whether
through travel or work, participation insome Japan-related activity, or memories ofa Japanese exchange student they had
known as a child. Moreover, the intensityof emotion and the compassion that many
Americans felt toward Japanese victims
seemed to be magnified by the shocking
footage they saw on television and theInternet and then further amplified bysocial media.
In a pattern that was to be repeated aroundthe world, Americans in all corners of the*An earlier version of this working paper was published in Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters in
China, Japan and Beyond, edited by Adenrele Awotona (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014).

country mobilized to demonstrate their solidarity with Japan and raise funds for the disaster
response. In the end, they donated nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars for a broad range ofrescue, relief, and recovery efforts—the greatest outpouring of charitable donations ever for an
overseas disaster in another rich country.1 Remarkably, this ranked as the fifth most generous
incidence of private giving in US history for any disaster, trailing only the responses toHurricane Katrina, the 9/11 attacks, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and the 2010 Haiti
earthquake. The story of how this extraordinary response played out reveals a great deal about
the trends that have been reshaping disaster philanthropy in recent years and yields vital lessons
for future responses to megadisasters, especially in other developed countries.
The	
  Growing	
  Roles	  of	
  NGOs	  and	  International	
  Disaster	  Philanthropy	  The story of the response to the Great East Japan Earthquake is a profoundly human one, and onethat encompasses the experiences of millions of people. The mayor who spent a snowy night
stranded on the roof of city hall watching his city be swept away, then felt compelled to workaround the clock for weeks to direct rescue operations without taking time to grieve with his twosons or to search for his wife who went missing in the waves. The young woman who accepted
her colleague’s offer to cut in front of him on the stairs while fleeing the rising waters and now
struggles with guilt after being the last person to make it out alive. The volunteer who gave up a
comfortable job in Tokyo to find new meaning in life running a nonprofit aid center in thedisaster zone. The California couple who were so moved by the suffering that they decided torefuse wedding gifts and, instead, urged their guests to make donations in their honor to a relief
fund.
But it is also part of a larger story about the globalization of disasters and the growing role ofnongovernmental actors in disaster responses. The massive outpouring of US giving for Japan isimportant not just as a reflection of the goodwill that one country’s people harbored towardanother’s, but also because it signifies how the nongovernmental sector’s response increasingly
has the capacity to alter the course of a disaster recovery half a world away. While the public
perception is that national governments and UN agencies lead the international response to
megadisasters, the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and private donations has
been expanding for some time. This trend was already apparent in the international response to
the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, when nearly 40 percent of the $14 billion in pledged overseas
aid came from private donations (Flint and Goyder 2006, 15). Similarly, data from the UN Officefor Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs indicates that nearly 40 percent of all overseas pledges
after the Haiti earthquake—and 50 percent of commitments disbursed to date—were fromprivate donors, although this likely undercounts total private giving for the disaster (UN OCHA,“Haiti Earthquakes” 2013).2 But the role of private giving became even more pronounced in theoverseas response to 3.11, as private sector donations have quietly outpaced official government
aid for Japan.3
Of course, any retelling of the American response to 3.11 must start with the rapid militaryresponse, one that was brilliantly named Operation Tomodachi, incorporating the Japanese termfor “friend.” US forces stationed in Japan began mobilizing within hours; 24 naval vessels,
including an aircraft carrier, were positioned off the Tohoku coast while US spy planes flew
data-gathering missions over the nuclear plant; and 24,000 American service members became
involved in the relief efforts, many of them working alongside Japanese Self Defense Force2troops in the disaster zone, clearing rubble, transporting emergency supplies, and aiding
survivors (Feickert and Chanlett-Avery 2011, 1). Stateside in Washington DC, a broad range ofgovernment agencies sprang into action to coordinate government agencies’ provision of aid,
support US residents in Japan, and undertake the increasingly critical task of advising theJapanese government—and pressuring it to move more decisively—in its halting response to the
nuclear crisis.
Still, the nongovernmental response from the United States was equally impressive and, in someways, even more astounding. The $730 million4 in US private donations dwarfed the $95 million
that the US government is estimated to have spent in helping Japan, although it bears noting thatthe specialized capabilities that the US military and other government agencies brought to the
response cannot be quantified solely in financial terms (JCIE 2014; Feickert and Chanlett-Avery
2011, 1). The prominence of nongovernmental actors on the donor side was matched by the
expanded role that Japanese NGOs played in the response, filling the gaps in the national andlocal governments’ provision of services essential for relief and recovery to an extent that isunprecedented in Japanese history. This helped to make 3.11 one of, if not the, first majordisasters in modern history when the nongovernmental sector played as crucial of a role in theinternational response as governments and international organizations.
The	
  US	
  Nongovernmental	
  Response	  In the initial days after 3.11, a diverse range of American groups began weighing how they could
help without placing a greater burden than necessary on local authorities and frontline responders.
The fact that the disaster had struck such a rich country with considerable resources andextensive experience dealing with large-scale disasters made it even more challenging to identify
precisely what they should be doing. While a few of the NGOs that normally respond to disasters
scrambled to put staff on the Friday morning flights to Japan—even with little idea of how toproceed once they landed in Japan—most of the major humanitarian assistance organizations
took a more restrained posture of monitoring the situation and consulting with Japanese
authorities about what gaps they could fill. A handful even debated whether it was appropriate toraise funds for the response, and Doctors Without Borders and a few other groups initiallydeclared that they would not accept donations specifically earmarked for Japan until they had aclearer picture of how much need there would be for their assistance. However, for many groups,
especially the major humanitarian assistance organizations accustomed to raising large amountsof funds in the immediate aftermath of disasters, the default stance was to start a relief fund.
Within the week, hundreds of major organizations were launching fundraising drives, eventhough many had not decided whether to use them to support their own relief activities or toregrant the contributions to Japanese groups.
In those chaotic first days, it became apparent that there were at least three distinct sets oforganizations active at the national level in the United States, and while there was some overlap,
by and large, the groups that fell into one set had little awareness of what others in different
circles were doing. One set consisted of the professional humanitarian assistance and disaster
relief organizations that are accustomed to mobilizing rapidly to dispatch assessment teams anddeliver aid for crises around the world. These included, for example, the American Red Cross,
World Vision, and Mercy Corps. A second, smaller set involved international philanthropicintermediaries, organizations that specialize in collecting donations and then regranting them3overseas. This encompassed more
traditional groups like the UnitedWay, as well as some new, techsavvy organizations such as Global
Giving that have sprung up to
facilitate online giving. The thirdset, meanwhile, consisted of Japanrelated organizations in the UnitedStates, ranging from the national
network of roughly 40 JapanAmerica Societies to policyoriented institutes and charitablefoundations that support US-Japan
exchange.
Each of these groupings had their own particular strengths and short-comings. The professional
human-itarian assistance organizations had a deep understanding of what was required torespond at the different stages of disasters. They had a playbook for what to do on Day 1, Day 3,
and Day 10; knew how to anticipate the transitions from rescue to relief and from relief torecovery; and had a good feel for how needs were likely to change at each stage. They also hadmechanisms in place that allowed them to launch major fundraising appeals on a moment’s
notice—website templates, lists of major donors, and what can be called brand name recognition
among the general public.
However, most of these groups also had limited knowledge of Japan and few connections to theJapanese government officials and humanitarian aid groups that were taking the lead in the
response. Things proved particularly challenging because these organizations were accustomed
to operating in developing countries, where donor coordination mechanisms utilized to share
information among groups distributing development aid could quickly be repurposed to facilitate
NGO coordination on the disaster response. In Japan, though, there was no natural contact point
for overseas organizations that needed both connections to other organizations and a crash courseon how to operate in its unique societal milieu, as well as no obvious convener that could
facilitate coordination with the dozens of other Japanese and overseas groups that were rushingto help. While two groups, Japan Platform and the Japan NGO Center for International
Cooperation (JANIC), eventually took on some of these functions, they remained imperfectvehicles for this purpose.
Meanwhile, the second set of organizations that mobilized—the philanthropic intermediaries—
had a strong grasp on what was required to raise funds that could be regranted to overseasorganizations and how to do this in a deliberate and sustainable manner. This made them
particularly well suited to support the Japanese nonprofit organizations that would be relied upon
to play key roles in the long-term recovery process. Also, they had a good understanding of theoften undervalued art of grantmaking, meaning that they recognized the importance of working
in a collaborative manner with funding recipients to encourage them to formulate viable projectplans, structured the funding process in a way that did not test the limits of already overstretched
Japanese groups, and insisted on injecting appropriate accountability and transparency
requirements into funding proposals and grant agreements.
4However, while they had a deep understanding of international grantmaking—as well as theintricacies of domestic tax law that pertain to it—they had a much weaker comprehension of thepractices commonplace in Japan’s nonprofit sector, which was far less professionalized than inother developed countries. Fortunately, though, the three key philanthropic intermediaries thatwere most active in the disaster response—Global Giving, Give2Asia, and United Way
Worldwide—happened to have special ties to Japan. Global Giving, which heretofore had
focused on supporting development projects in poor countries, was headed by a dynamic
Japanese expatriate, Mari Kuraishi, who had a personal stake in helping her country. Give2Asia,
meanwhile, had been spun off of the Asia Foundation and was designed to channel funds tononprofit initiatives in Asia, so it had historic ties to Japan as well as staff members withexperience living in the country. Meanwhile, United Way Worldwide, the Virginia-based parent
organization for the United Way affiliates in the United States and around the world, had longcooperated on small-scale initiatives with the Central Community Chest of Japan.
For their part, the third set of organizations that became particularly prominent in thephilanthropic response, a broad mélange of institutions dedicated to various aspects of US-Japan
exchange, had hard-earned insights into the dynamics of Japanese society and strong networks at
the national and local level in the country. Their staff also had a deep personal commitment toworking with Japan, they tended to have language skills that enabled them to go beyond Englishspeaking circles to access a much broader range of information and people, and they often had abase of constituents with a deep interest in Japan and a desire to donate money and time to help.
Yet they, too, were forced to grapple with serious shortcomings. Their intimate knowledge ofsome aspects of Japanese society did not necessarily extend to a deep understanding of how
Japan’s nonprofit sector operates. Moreover, with a few exceptions, they had little experience
with international grantmaking and were forced to spend valuable time on basic steps such aslearning how to create application forms that would elicit crucial information from potential
grantees but avoid burdening them during a time of crisis, consulting with lawyers about how
grant agreements could be structured to meet US tax requirements and post-9/11 anti-terrorism
mandates, and creating orderly processes to evaluate potential funding recipients. They also had
to learn the basics of disaster responses on the fly. In some instances, decisions that groups madein the initial hours and days—for example, to announce that they would not set aside
management fees from incoming donations and would channel 100 percent of funds raised into
the disaster zone—later created significant burdens for them when far more money than
anticipated flowed into their coffers. Finally, since they were, by and large, small organizations
with tight budgets and limited staff, their institutional capacity was strained by the added burdenof managing disaster funds, a particularly ironic development since one of their major concernsin evaluating candidates for funding was the limited institutional capacity of the Japanese NGOs
working in the disaster zone.
Who	
  is	
  Coordinating	  This	  Thing?	
  Even though the disaster dominated national news for weeks and hundreds of groups werelaunching major disaster responses, there was no concerted effort to forge a coordinated national
response in the way that had been done for other recent megadisasters. After the 2004 Indian
Ocean tsunami, former presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush famously stood at a5

White House press conference alongside President George W. Bush, where they urged
Americans to give generously to US humanitarian groups involved in relief efforts. A similar
tack was taken for the 2010 Haiti earthquake, when Clinton and George W. Bush were asked byPresident Barack Obama to play a leading role in mobilizing Americans to support the response,
inspiring them to launch the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund and keep the issue of Haiti relief in the
public spotlight by taking several high-profile trips to the country. In the case of Japan, however,no national figures were tapped as focal points for mobilizing the philanthropic response, no real
attempt was made to organize a national benefit concert, and no comprehensive informationsharing effort succeeded in reaching the full range of nongovernmental organizations launching“Japan funds” and pledging aid.
Part of the reason for the lack of coordination at the national level can be ascribed to the sheer
number and diversity of organizations that mobilized in an organic fashion for the response. One
stunning statistic that illustrates the diversity of efforts is the fact that 46 different nonprofit
organizations each raised more than $1 million for relief and recovery efforts. More than 120
gathered over $100,000 a piece—notably, only a small portion of them specialized inhumanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and over one-third had no prior experiencefundraising for disaster responses (JCIE 2014).5
But the sheer number of players was not the whole story. While American humanitarian groups
have considerable experience responding to disasters in developing countries, there was norecent precedent for assisting a developed country with such a massive disaster. This sparked
debates over whether it made sense to try to aid another rich country and, if so, how to best do
this. A spate of articles penned by commentators who were perhaps well intentioned but
woefully uninformed about Japanese society and the real needs on the ground came out
cautioning Americans against donating for the disaster response in a country that arguably had
sufficient resources to take care of itself. 6 While this provoked considerable handwringing
among the groups working around the clock to support their Japanese compatriots, thesearguments ultimately had less impact on the response than the lack of clarity about who, if
anybody, should be taking the lead in responding.
Ultimately, the coordination that did take place on the national level ended up happening within
the distinct circles of groups and not between them. The US Agency for International
Development (USAID), the lead government agency for overseas humanitarian crises, andInterAction, the Washington DC–based umbrella organization for US humanitarian assistanceand disaster relief NGOs that work internationally, quickly began sharing information with eachother, as well as with the US Chamber of Commerce Business Civic Leadership Center. These
three organizations formed a hub that relayed information among the US government, big
business, and the major humanitarian assistance groups. However, there was no effort to reachout to the US-Japan organizations, at least those outside of the Washington DC area, or to mostof the philanthropic intermediaries.
Simultaneously, there were multiple efforts to share information among US-Japan exchangeorganizations, Asian-American groups, and a handful of organizations for Japanese expatriates.
These included initiatives spearheaded in the first week after the disaster by the Japan Center forInternational Exchange and by the US-Japan Council to convene meetings and disseminate
information online for NGOs involved in the philanthropic response. There were also a number6

of more discrete efforts; for example, the National Association of Japan-America Societies
regularly kept its member organizations informed, the Japan Society of New York periodicallyconvened a small set of NY-based organizations for roundtables to share information, and local
initiatives emerged in Seattle, New Orleans, and elsewhere around the country.
Even though some of the efforts among Japan-related groups grew to be quite large, involving
dozens of organizations, they tended to operate in an ad hoc manner, depending heavily on
personal connections. And there was no systematic exchange of information with thehumanitarian groups that were having separate discussions among themselves, although, bychance, some of the major philanthropic intermediaries, namely Give2Asia and Global Giving,
were eventually brought into the Japan-related organizations’ coordination efforts. The lack ofcommunication between the circles of humanitarian assistance organizations and Japan-relatedgroups was not because either side wanted to exclude the other but simply because they werehardly aware of what each were doing.
Unsurprisingly, this lack of awareness about what other groups were doing extended to theinternational realm as well. Even before American groups started trying to bring somecoordination to their efforts, internationally minded Japanese NGOs in the disaster relief field
had started meeting in various forums in Tokyo and elsewhere, most notably under the aegis ofJapan Platform and JANIC. Yet most American groups were barely aware that these discussions
were taking place and, even after the first several months had passed, there was little flow of
information across the Pacific about what was being discussed in the various forums.
A	
  Grassroots	  Phenomenon	  While the larger humanitarian groups, philanthropic intermediaries, and Japan-relatedorganizations were working to formulate their responses, a more organic movement was brewing
at the grassroots level. In the initial days and weeks after the disaster, the media had started
reporting on the reluctance of Americans to donate generously to help Japan, contrasting it withthe outpouring of giving after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
USA Today blared “US Donations Not Rushing to Japan” and ABC News asked “Americans
Less Generous in Disaster Relief?” Of course, the circumstances were very different. Japan wasa rich country that was well prepared to deal with disasters while Haiti and the Asian countries
struck by the 2004 tsunami were much poorer, so it stood to reason that the humanitarian groups
and faith-based organizations that normally mobilize for disasters in developing countries would
not see the same inflows of charitable donations. But, still, the headlines did not jibe with what
was unfolding around the country.
One of the first hints that something different was happening was the scene that played out in
New York City six days after the disaster, on March 17. Naoko Fitzgerald, a young Japanesemother of two, had emailed a call to action urging her other friends, most of them also Japanese
expatriates, to join her in Manhattan’s Union Square that afternoon to show support for her
country’s people and collect donations. She expected maybe one or two dozen friends to join her
but was taken aback when the square quickly filled up with hundreds of Japanese and American
mothers wearing kimonos, wheeling baby strollers, and carrying signs that read “Help Japan,”and “Pray for Japan.”7

As they stood on the sidewalks with donation boxes, green-clad St. Patrick’s Day revelers who
had been celebrating at the parade farther uptown started to stream down Broadway. That iswhen the second surprise came. What could have been a recipe for an embarrassing alcoholfueled display of cultural insensitivity instead turned into a bittersweet spectacle, as passersby
walked up to the mothers to offer pocket change, words of comfort, and in some cases tearful
hugs. When the mothers and children combined the contents of their donation boxes, it turned
out they had collected more than 30 pounds in coins and small bills in a matter of three hours—atotal of $11,204. Americans really were giving.
Similar scenes played out around the country as thousands of schools, churches, and community
groups conducted fundraising drives. In many
instances, these were inspired by personal ties.
Japanese-Americanorganizations,which
traditionally had kept low public profiles, took thelead in launching fundraising campaigns incommunities around the country. Americans who
had lived and worked in Japan, including the 26,000
alumni of the Japan Exchange and Teaching
Program, could be found behind the scenes of manyof the major fundraising initiatives that were started
at corporations and nonprofit organizations that were
not normally identified with Japan. Meanwhile, atleast 95 municipalities with sister cities in Japanlaunched fundraising drives of their own, collecting
a combined total of more than $2.4 million to
support relief efforts (Menju and Geiger 2012). And
hundreds of anime fan clubs, karate schools,
university Japan clubs, and other small groups
devoted to some aspect of Japanese culture started
their own relief funds. It turned out that thegrassroots ties between the two countries were
deeper and more diverse than most people realized.
However, this upsurge of philanthropy did notregister in the early tallies of US donations, giving
rise to the media narrative that the US public
response was muted. This was because the thousandsof small groups that were at the forefront of thefundraising effort were operating below the radar
screen of the national media, which was accustomed
to surveying the top 10 or 15 humanitarianorganizations that traditionally collect the vast bulkof donations for any given overseas disaster. Thistime, though, people were donating to a muchbroader range of groups, often smaller ones close tohome, and these groups were taking their time todeliberate over how they could most wisely channel
8the funds they had collected to Japan. A remarkable number of groups, more than 330 in all,found ways to give funds directly to Japan, mainly to Japanese NGOs working in the disasterzone (JCIE 2014). The others donated the proceeds of their fundraising drives to other, larger USgroups, which in some case fed them to the even larger organizations that eventually disbursed
them to Japan. (The table to the right shows the organizations with the largest US fundraising
campaigns, although in almost all cases they are the beneficiaries of many smaller organizations
that regranted funds to them.)
The lag time that resulted from this chain of giving meant that sizeable donations were stillcoming into organizations playing major roles in the disaster response six months and even one
year after the disaster. It also obscured the fact that nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars had
been donated, much of it in a spontaneous and organic manner. Fortunately, the grassroots natureof the response had another unintended benefit. The delays in getting funds into the disaster zone
meant that a sizeable portion of the donations raised in the United States could be used for longterm recovery efforts rather than for immediate rescue and relief. The Japanese government andprivate sector had sufficient domestic resources to support much of the initial relief activities thatwere needed, so it was a boon that additional monies would be available for the recovery stage,
when funding often dries up.
The	
  Drivers	
  of	
  American	
  Giving	  The sheer amount of donations raised in the United States for the disaster, at least $730 million
over the first three years, indicates that something important has changed in terms of how
Americans respond to disaster. Of course, this is not merely an American phenomenon. While
the United States has been the origin of the most overseas private donations for Japan, there weresimilarly extraordinary responses from many other countries as well. Taiwanese donors
reportedly made roughly $235 million in contributions, making Taiwan the second largest sourceof overseas private giving for 3.11.7 Despite long-standing historical animosities, South Koreansalso donated record amounts for the relief and recovery efforts (Yonhap News 2011), andCanadians, British, and people in many other countries had similar reactions.
It was not just the amount raised in aggregate that increased; the funds donated to many
individual organizations also far exceeded expectations. For instance, the staff of the Japan
Society of New York created a disaster relief fund after the 1994 Great Hanshin Earthquake
killed more than 6,400 people in Kobe and, when all was said and done, it raised roughly$75,000. Seventeen years later, when they launched their new Japan Earthquake Relief Fund,they anticipated some increase in giving but never expected to raise more than 180 times thatamount—a total of $13.7 million.8
One factor that surely contributed to the extraordinary outpouring of charitable contributions is
the gradual rise of a culture of disaster giving. In recent years, Americans have become
accustomed to making donations to help with disasters that receive prominent media attention. It
is easy to see how this can become self-reinforcing, building up expectations that donations
should be made after subsequent major disasters. Numerous studies show that disaster giving
tends to be made on impulse, so these expectations combined with the increasing ease withwhich people can quickly donate online or through text messages and other media seems to have
driven a shift in Americans’ thinking about what they should do when they learn of a major
9tragedy.9 Therefore, it should be no surprise that four of the five largest outpourings of US
private giving in response to major disasters have all taken place in the last decade and all five
have occurred since 2001.
As noted earlier, a second important driver of the Japan response was the strength of people-topeople connections and grassroots ties at different levels of the US-Japan relationship. A third
was surely the enormous scope of the disaster, which was by far the most devastating to strike adeveloped nation. The magnitude of 3.11 and its superlative nature—the tsunami waves werehigher than people had imagined was possible, the drama surrounding the efforts to prevent a fullmeltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant was more chilling than any Hollywood movie—
encouraged people to donate who may have been less willing to do so for a large but lessshocking disaster.
A fourth major factor appears to have been the advance of communications technology,
particularly the Internet, digital technology, and social media. In addition to increasing the easeof giving, these brought an immediacy to the disaster that turbocharged the philanthropic
response. While personal ties made the disaster significant, the ubiquity of heartbreaking news
and apocalyptic images helped convince people that they needed to do something to help. Being
able to click on YouTube and watch cell phone videos shot from rooftops while the waves rose
menacingly from below gave the disaster a raw emotional resonance that was barely conceivablein the era of print media.
The disaster response was also different because of Japan’s status as another advanced, postindustrial society. On the one hand, this led some to refrain from donating and compelled many
humanitarian organizations to hesitate about launching all-out funding appeals. However, on theother hand, it seems to have encouraged donors who might otherwise not have given tocontribute funds. One reason is that grassroots ties between the two nations were arguably morerobust because of the similar levels of development of both countries. Another equallysignificant factor is the strong economic relationship that has developed between Japan and theUnited States. Thousands of American companies have business ties to Japan, owning
subsidiaries there, serving as subsidiaries of Japanese companies, counting Japanese companies
as important clients, or depending on Japanese suppliers. The human relationships developed
through these business interactions as well as the desire to be perceived in Japan as aiding in the
country’s time of need drove many companies to make the kinds of generous donations that may
not have been forthcoming for a similar disaster in a remote, poor country. In the end, more than
50 US companies pledged over $1 million for the disaster response, a remarkable number by any
measure (JCIE 2012).
Assessing	
  the	  US	  Nongovernmental	
  Response	  First and foremost, any assessment of the American response needs to weigh how much of adifference US support made on the ground. Considering the key role that the Japanese nonprofit
sector has played in the disaster response, the massive amount of US private giving was
guaranteed to have a sizable impact if directed effectively. But the nature of the overall flows
into the nonprofit sector in Japan has meant that this impact has been even more pronounced andbeneficial than one might assume at first glance.

10

This is because, while the nonprofit sector in Japan has been expanding from a relatively low
base, a culture of giving for nonprofit activities has yet to develop deep roots and thus domestic
philanthropy has not kept up with the demand from nonprofit organizations. Although domestic
giving for the disaster soared to record levels, totaling an estimated 600 billion yen (US$6.7
billion) by September 2012, nearly 85 percent went to local government agencies and thecountry’s traditional gienkin funds that distribute cash payments as compensation to disastersurvivors and the family members of victims (Japan Fundraising Association 2012, 22). 10
Japanese companies and individuals are still unaccustomed to supporting nonprofit organizations,
so only a small fraction of donations—less than 10 percent by some accounts—went for
nonprofit activities (Japan Fundraising Association 2012, 22).
In contrast, nearly 90 percent of US donations were earmarked for nonprofit activities, a total ofroughly $660 million (JCIE 2014). 11 While it is difficult to get a clear picture of the overall sizeof the pool of donations available to Japanese nonprofits working on the response, a roughestimate is that, at least for the initial two years, US donors ended up accounting for as much as
one-quarter to one-third of total private giving to support the Japanese NGO response to thedisaster—a remarkable share by any measure.12 Considering the key role that Japanese NGOs
have played, it seems clear that American contributions have helped to fill an important gap.
Of course, a flood of money to NGOs is not always a good thing. After the Indian Ocean tsunami,
the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition criticized the “second tsunami” of aid organizations thatrushed to the scene to implement programs despite having little or no experience or capacity tofollow through on their commitments (Cosgrove 2007, 16). This is always a risk in international
crises, but this time almost all of the US donors sought to disburse the funds they raised byregranting them to Japanese organizations or by working in close cooperation with local partners.
This was not solely because they had learned from past mistakes but also because it was much
more daunting to parachute into a developed country and try to directly implement programs,
especially in a nation like Japan with such high linguistic and cultural barriers. As a result, it
seems that US funding gave rise to few of the negative unintended consequences that are often
seen in other disaster responses.
In a sense, a “second tsunami” did occur but this came in the form of the numerous JapaneseNGOs with no prior expertise in disaster-related issues that rushed to help and the hundreds of
new nonprofit organizations that were established by Japanese volunteers. This had little to dowith overseas funding, however. Given the deep desire of ordinary Japanese to do something to
help, the surge of unskilled domestic NGOs into the disaster zone would have happened
regardless of the availability of overseas funding. While some of these groups launchedoverlapping, and sometimes marginally useful, activities, on balance most managed to play apositive role in advancing the relief and recovery efforts and many proved to be indispensible.
Moreover, being Japanese, they could more easily be brought into local coordination initiatives
and had the linguistic and cultural understanding that enabled them to be more responsive to
local needs and desires than overseas groups could have been.
Another sign that US funding was being directed wisely was the fact that most donations took
the form of cash rather than in-kind goods, which accounted for about 2 percent of total US
giving (JCIE 2013a). In the early days, there was a scramble among some Americanorganizations to ship food, medical supplies, gasoline, and even socks to Japan; however many11

of these efforts were quickly aborted after Japanese government authorities and disaster
professionals stressed that the issue on the ground was not a domestic shortage of supplies but
rather the destruction of the local transportation infrastructure and distribution networks.13
Challenges	
  for	
  Donors	
  and	  Recipients	  While the outpouring of American giving has been overwhelmingly beneficial for Japan and has
filled a critical niche, both US organizations collecting funds and Japanese ones utilizing them
faced numerous challenges along the way. In the early days, it looked as though one major
problem would be the gold rush of concerned groups and individuals that were launching
fundraising campaigns with little idea of how to effectively distribute the proceeds. However,this eventually sorted itself out as many of these groups decided to funnel their funds throughorganizations with greater capacity to direct them to worthy Japanese NGOs.
But even when these funds were handed off to more professionalized organizations, the lack ofunderstanding about the terrain of the Japanese nonprofit sector and the dynamics ofinternational grantmaking was a major hurdle. While each of the major sets of organizations
playing prominent roles in the response—the humanitarian assistance organizations,philanthropic intermediaries, and Japan-related groups—had a good grasp of their own area ofexpertise, almost none of them started out with the whole picture; nor was there sufficient
coordination across the circles to allow them to easily remedy their weaknesses. Instead, eachorganization had to learn, largely on its own, how to best go about providing aid in Japan.
One of the major complaints that quickly arose among US organizations trying to support
Japanese NGOs involved the difficulties they faced in identifying appropriate institutions andsoliciting grant request from them. In a June 2011 conference convening many of the larger
Japan-related organizations and philanthropic intermediaries in the United States, the head of one
major philanthropic intermediary exclaimed that in all of her years of trying to facilitate funding
to nonprofit organizations in countries around the world, she had never before seen a situation inwhich it was so difficult to find organizations willing and able to take their money.14
Part of the problem arose from American organizations’ lack of familiarity with the Japanese
nonprofit sector as well as large gaps in expectations on both sides. But there were also more
complicated issues at play that stemmed from the underdeveloped state of Japan’s nonprofit
sector, at least relative to what was common in other developed countries. Many US
organizations were unwilling to disburse funds—and in fact, they were legally prohibited fromdoing so—without fully vetting the Japanese recipients, receiving a viable project plan, signing afunding agreement, and requiring regular reporting and accountability. In short, they werecommitted to making professionalized grants (or what is called joseikin in Japanese). But many
Japanese organizations had little experience with grants and, with so much domestic funding
with few strings attached sloshing around the disaster zone in the early days, it was easier tofocus on receiving straightforward donations (kifukin) that they could use however they wishedwithout sticking to a predetermined project plan or providing detailed reporting.
In almost all instances, the main issue was not that Japanese organizations were irresponsible ortrying to avoid accountability; rather most tended to be overly diligent in respecting the desiresof the donors. But they were woefully understaffed and the one or two senior figures who could
12deal with overseas organizations—and even Japanese funders—were making heroic efforts,
working 16 to 18 hour days, seven days a week for months on end just to keep resources flowing
to the people carrying out programs on the ground. The mismatch in capacity with US
organizations was stark, even though many Americans were unaware of how just how
unbalanced things were.
To take one example, the Central Community Chest of Japan and its annual “red feather”
campaign is recognized by practically every ordinary Japanese, and the group fulfills a role inJapanese society that is analogous to that of the United Way in the United States. It has longplayed a key role in disbursing funds after domestic disasters, and it has historic ties to United
Way Worldwide, the US-based umbrella group for the United Way network, so it was natural for
United Way Worldwide to channel the funds it raised for the 3.11 response to the Central
Community Chest. But even though the Central Community Chest is one of Japan’s mostestablished organizations in the nonprofit sector, it operates with just 16 full-time staff incomparison with United Way Worldwide’s more than 260 staff. If such vast disparities can arisein the relationship between one of the most established organizations in the Japanese nonprofit
sector and its longtime partner, it is easy to imagine how dealings between other overseas andJapanese organizations could be even more unbalanced and how smaller Japanese groups, facing
overwhelming demands on their time, would have a preference for the funding with the least
paperwork.
The limited institutional capacity of Japanese NGOs was not just an issue of size, and it proved
to be one of the most critical challenges for overseas donors trying to support relief and recovery
efforts. Most of the staff working at Japanese NGOs have limited experience in program
planning, project management, and the other specialized tasks that are essential for major
nonprofit organizations’ operations. This is a product of the underdevelopment of the country’s
nonprofit sector and the weak financial base of most of its nonprofit organizations, which obliges
senior staff to cover a broad range of duties that might otherwise be left to more junior staff were
there funds to hire them. As a result, the people who could otherwise focus primarily on serving
as liaisons with overseas organizations or on devising and drafting sophisticated project plans
tend to be spread far too thin on a broad range of tasks. This problem was further exacerbated bya Japanese work culture that relies heavily on time-consuming, face-to-face meetings and a lackof awareness on the part of US groups of how much of a disruption requests for even relatively
simple documentation could cause for Japanese NGO staff trying to juggle so many other tasks.
Going beyond these more immediate issues, the tenuous financial situation of many JapaneseNGOs and the overall weakness of the philanthropic sector in Japan also called into question thelong-term sustainability of programs, even if they could be launched with overseas money.
In the face of these challenges, one of the keys to the quick and effective disbursement of thefunds was the presence of preexisting relationships between American donors and JapaneseNGOs. These made it easier for overseas organizations to disburse funds in a timely manner andalso helped smooth over tensions when problems inevitably arose. As one program officer at amajor American donor organization remarked, even though their grantee was not providing
timely activity reports as promised, “we have faith in their leadership because we have worked
with them for so many years and know they will deliver in the end.”15

13

However, the number of US donors with prior ties to Japanese organizations involved in thedisaster response was surprisingly limited. A number of faith-based organizations, such as
Catholic Relief Services, Latter-Day Saints Charities, and the Adventist Development and Relief
Agency (ADRA), had longstanding ties to their Japanese counterparts from the same religious
tradition (Caritas Japan, the Japanese branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,
and ADRA Japan), and a handful of humanitarian assistance organizations such as the American
Red Cross, Save the Children USA, and World Vision had affiliates in Japan as part of theirglobal networks. But, outside of linkages with groups that were often perceived as Japanesebranches of Western organizations, there were few strong ties between independent Americanand Japanese humanitarian groups. (The relationship between Mercy Corps and Peace Winds
Japan, which motivated Mercy Corps to raise funds specifically for Peace Winds Japan in theearly days is perhaps the only prominent exception.) This held true for many of the philanthropicintermediaries, too, and even for the Japan-related organizations, which were generally
unfamiliar with the types of Japanese organizations that were skilled enough to carry out relief
and recovery activities. This lack of pre-existing ties led Stacey White, an American expert onnatural disasters, to lament in a New York Times opinion piece five days after the disaster that
Just yesterday, I found myself on a conference call with a group of smart andwell-intentioned people seeking to help Japan at this critical time. At one point
during the conversation, someone asked how she might connect not just with U.S.
aid entities and international nongovernment organizations, but directly withJapanese businesses and civil society groups. There was silence. No one seemedto know (White 2011).
Not only were the networks that could be activated for the disaster response surprisingly thin, but
the strains of responding to 3.11 exposed serious fault lines in many of the partnerships that
predated the disaster and severely tested the new ones that were forged afterward. Wide
expectations gaps, vastly differing communication styles, cultural misunderstandings, a lack ofinstitutional capacity among Japanese NGOs, and the strain of the intense time commitment
needed to maintain strong partnerships fed disillusionment on both sides. This compelled manyof the US organizations attempting to distribute funding for the disaster response to give up on
their initial thoughts of channeling money through Japanese intermediaries or disbursing it solely
to one organization and, instead, to carve out a more active role in identifying and evaluating
grantees. In many instances, they ended up dispatching representatives to Japan on a temporary
basis to oversee the distribution of their funds rather than entrusting this to a Japanese partner. In
the end, while many American and Japanese organizations involved in the 3.11 response
eventually found ways to make partnerships work, the challenge of keeping them effective andbalanced has remained a lingering problem.
A final challenge that US organizations and their Japanese partners are starting to face involves
the funding bubble that has developed in the disaster zone. In the initial months after the disaster,
the outpouring of charitable contributions from home and abroad was stunning. One report foundthat 77 percent of Japanese adults gave funds, an extraordinary rate for a country said to have aweak culture of giving (Japan Fundraising Association 2012, 23). Another revealed that 95
percent of major Japanese companies made cash donations, 72 percent provided in-kind
contributions, and 56 percent had employees who volunteered with relief efforts (Keidanren2012). But as is common in such cases, the funding was frontloaded and, after the massive
14

inflows of 2011, donations started to taper off. By the summer of 2012, nonprofit organizations
throughout the disaster zone were talking about the declines they were seeing in funding and thesteeper drops they expected to come. To their credit, many of the large donors from the UnitedStates and elsewhere allocated their funds for multiple years. However, by the end of the second
year, in early 2013, almost all US groups were facing pressure from their boards, donors, andother stakeholders to finalize the allocation of their funds and prepare to exit the scene. This was
especially true for the organizations that had strayed from their core missions in operating relief
funds for Japan, which entailed virtually every major American group involved in the 3.11
response. These pressures were natural, and even healthy, but they just further steepened the
downward slope on the far side of the bubble, adding to the threat to the sustainability of all the
new programs that had been launched in the disaster zone by Japanese NGOs.
Lessons	
  from	  3.11	
  As with any crisis, there are many lessons to draw from the 3.11 response, about both what toanticipate for future megadisasters in developed countries and how we might react more
effectively next time. Fortunately, this has been a story with no villains, only heroes. All of the
major protagonists comported themselves as best as they could, and many acted with remarkable
compassion, dignity, and wisdom. American organizations typically went out of their way torespect the desires and prerogatives of local Japanese groups, and they adapted their approaches
repeatedly in a highly fluid and complex environment in order to better meet real needs on the
ground. Meanwhile, Japanese NGOs did more than seemed possible given their institutional
limitations, their leaders consistently made extraordinary personal sacrifices to sustain theirorganizations’ responses, and most demonstrated considerable grace and patience in dealing withwell-intentioned foreign donors whose preconceptions did not always align with realities on the
ground.
Surprisingly, although it seems de rigueur for disaster responses, there have not even been any
major nonprofit scandals so far; no NGO executives have been caught lining their pockets and nomajor misuses of charitable funds have come to light.16 In fact, the most prominent “scandal”
involved a Japanese man who was arrested for posing as a doctor so that his grant application toa Japanese foundation would be more convincing. He reportedly had some medical training that
he drew upon in providing basic treatment for disaster survivors in underserved neighborhoodsin the Ishinomaki area, and even the judge who presided over his trial was forced to concede that
he was attempting to help evacuees, even if his behavior was reckless and callous (Japan Today2012).
However, while NGOs overseas and inside of Japan did their best to respond, 3.11 exposed
numerous systemic flaws in how we deal with international disasters in an increasingly
globalized world. One initial lesson of 3.11 is that nongovernmental responses to massive
disasters in other developed countries are likely to involve a larger and more diverse array ofplayers than we are accustomed to seeing when there are humanitarian crises in the developingworld. This is because developed countries tend to have more robust economic linkages and aricher set of grassroots ties to other developed countries. This makes it even more important tolook outside of the ‘usual suspects’ when thinking about what is happening with the overseas
response.

15

Also, 3.11 drove home the point that international responses to disasters in developed countries
are fundamentally about philanthropy, not the direct provision of humanitarian assistance. As
many disaster experts noted in the immediate days after March 11, there is a highly limited rolefor “boots on the ground” in a country like Japan; rather, the most effective thing that NGOs can
do to help is to channel resources to local responders. The centrality of philanthropy tointernational responses to disasters like 3.11 elevates the importance of the craft of international
grantmaking and highlights the value of country expertise, capabilities that were underdeveloped
at many of the US organizations responding to the disaster. For instance, one key element in
grantmaking is an awareness of how to manage grantee expectations. In too many cases, alreadyoverstretched Japanese NGOs have felt that they were led on by US donors who inadvertently
built up their hopes and monopolized valuable time by asking for a wide range of documentation
before eventually turning down their funding requests. A greater knowledge of Japanese
nonprofit culture and a deeper appreciation of the funder-grantee relationship could have saved
considerable time and effort on both sides. Similarly, simplifying application processes—and,ideally, instituting a culturally appropriate unified application format for multiple overseas
donors—could have gone far in lightening the burden on Japanese NGOs scrambling to meetneeds in the disaster zone.
The disaster also highlighted the importance of cultivating cross-border relationships between
humanitarian groups and philanthropic intermediaries before a disaster strikes. To some extent,
the paucity of ties between American and Japanese NGOs in the field of humanitarian assistancecan be seen as a particularly Japanese problem, given the relative underdevelopment of thecountry’s nonprofit sector. Still, it is easy to envision similar issues arising for US-based NGOs
when dealing with Korea’s nongovernmental sector or with various European countries. Thissuggests that more effort needs to be put into building up international civil society linkages andnurturing habits of cooperation among overseas and domestic NGOs likely to be involved indisaster responses in developed countries. There is much that can be done to this end, including
developing stronger ties between national coalitions of humanitarian assistance organizations;encouraging greater involvement by NGOs in Asia, the world’s most disaster-prone region, in
forums for international humanitarian assistance and development organizations; and nurturing
familiarity and habits of international cooperation by engaging NGOs from developed countries
like Japan in small-scale joint initiatives with US-based groups in third countries.
Finally, 3.11 showed that coordination is even more challenging for disasters in developed
countries. It seems natural for groups like InterAction, the umbrella organization forhumanitarian assistance and development NGOs, to play a central role in disseminating
information and facilitating donor coordination for overseas disasters in developed countries, justas they do for crises in developing countries. But given the likelihood that the response will be
more of a grassroots phenomenon with a broader array of players, greater effort needs to bemade to make more information and advice on the response easily accessible to NGO leaders
outside of the field of humanitarian assistance. In particular, more needs to be done to connect
humanitarian groups with the NGOs that have country expertise, especially those outside of the
Washington DC “Beltway” where much of the public-private coordination involving
humanitarian assistance organizations tends to take place. The same goes for philanthropicintermediaries that specialize in overseas giving. Bringing these circles closer together will not
only enhance coordination but also allow each to benefit from the others’ unique insights andnetworks.
16

Similarly, if philanthropy is to be the core of the response, there are many steps that can be taken
to share information on the recipient country’s nonprofit sector: the preparation of background
papers on the national nonprofit system, the dissemination of basic guides to the country’s legal
regulations, and the creation of databases that allow organizations to identify reputable local
NGOs and see what they are doing in the disaster zone. These seemingly obvious resources weredifficult to find in a timely manner in the case of Japan, despite efforts by various groups toprovide them.17
Stronger coordination on the part of overseas donors can only go so far, though, without
effective coordination within the country where the disaster strikes. This is a particular challenge
for developed countries, which are unaccustomed to receiving outside assistance. In developing
countries, donor roundtables that link international development NGOs, bilateral ODA agencies,
UN agencies, and host governments can be repurposed to coordinate disaster aid but, as 3.11
showed, often there are no equivalent mechanisms in place in rich countries. In Japan, the staffof overseas organizations were invited to join discussions convened by Japan Platform and
JANIC, but limited institutional capacity and linguistic and cultural barriers kept these forums
from living up to their potential despite admirable efforts by the host organizations.18 Moreover,the domestic coordination mechanisms needed to bring together Japan’s professional
humanitarian assistance NGOs and local-level groups were sorely lacking. This was exacerbatedby the fact that the Japanese NGOs with the capacity and know-how to provide disaster relief ona large scale were internationally oriented ones that normally worked on disasters outside ofJapan, and thus had few connections to local authorities and limited experience navigating thepolitics of rural Japan.
The experience of 3.11 suggests that there is much work to do in developed countries to build thecapacity to receive assistance from overseas NGOs when a megadisaster occurs. This ranges
from big picture issues to highly technical measures, such as encouraging organizations andcoalitions that would be natural contact points for overseas donors to think through what isneeded to take on the roles of being a neutral facilitator and a clearinghouse for information;
exploring the feasibility of creating networks of volunteer translators that can assist in preparing
documents for overseas organizations, particularly for countries like Japan, Korea, and otherswith uncommon languages; and analyzing whether domestic coordination networks are
structured in such a way as to allow overseas organizations, and even domestic organizations that
normally have an international orientation, to easily take part.
*****In a sense, the US nongovernmental response to 3.11 was a portent of what we are likely to
see in the future when large-scale disasters strike other developed countries. The
extraordinary response by American NGOs and the US public was surprising in its scope andcomplexity, and it suggests that the way we react to disasters abroad is being transformed by
the advance of globalization, the revolution in communications technology, and changes in
the nature of disaster philanthropy. Just as disasters are the sum of thousands of personaltragedies, the US response to 3.11 proved to be the amalgamation of millions of people-topeople ties to Japan. In our increasingly interconnected world, this grassroots reaction is
likely to become one of the defining traits of overseas responses to megadisasters in17

developed countries and it needs to be taken into account when we grapple with one issue
that we have barely begun to master—how to effectively assist developed countries sufferingfrom massive humanitarian crises.

About the Author
James Gannon is the executive director of the Japan Center for International Exchange(JCIE/USA). JCIE works to strengthen the underpinnings of US-Japan relations and it has been
especially active in responding to the March 11 disaster in Japan, operating funds to channel
American donations to Japanese relief and recovery organizations, advising overseas humanitarianorganizations on how to best respond, and facilitating coordination among a wide range ofphilanthropic and nonprofit organizations in both countries. Jim Gannon is co-editor of A Growing
Force: Civil Society’s Role in Asian Regional Security and has written about philanthropy, disaster
relief, US-Japan relations, and Asia’s evolving regional order for a wide range of publications.

18

References
Cosgrove, John. 2007. Synthesis report: Expanded summary. Joint evaluation of the international
response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami. London: Tsunami Evaluation Coalition.
Feickert, Andrew, and Emma Chanlett-Avery. 2011. Japan 2011 earthquake: US Department of Defense(DOD) response, CRS Report for Congress, No. 41690. Washington DC: Congressional ResearchService.
Flint, Michael and Hugh Goyder. 2006. Funding the Tsunami Response. London: Tsunami Evaluation
Coalition.
Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE). 2013a. Database of US giving for 3.11. (accessed March
11, 2013).
———2013b. US Giving for Japan Disaster Exceeds $710 Million, Civil Society Monitor. Tokyo: JCIE.
———2014. US Giving for Japan Disaster Reaches $730 Million, Civil Society Monitor. Tokyo: JCIE.
———2012. US Giving in Response to Japan's March 11 Disaster Tops $630 Million. Civil Society
Monitor. Tokyo: JCIE.
Japan Fundraising Association. 2012. Kifu hakusho 2012/Giving Japan 2012. Tokyo: Japan Business
Federation.
Japan Today. 2012. Man who posed as doctor in tsunami-hit area gets suspended sentence. Tokyo: Japan
Today, June 9, 2012. http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/man-who-posed-asdoctor-in-tsunami-hit-area-gets-suspended-sentence (accessed March 20, 2013).
Kiedanren. 2012. Higashi daishinsai ni okeru keizaikai no hisaisha/hisaichi shien katsudo ni kansuru
hokukusho (Report on the Corporate Sector’s Support for Victims and the Disaster Zone after theGreat East Japan Earthquake). Tokyo: Keidanren.
Menju, Toshihiro and Atsuko Geiger. 2012. Friendship across borders: Nearly 100 US sister city
organizations raise relief funds for Japan. Civil Society Monitor. Tokyo: Japan Center forInternational Exchange.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. 2012. Shogaikokura kara no bushi shien/kifukin (In-kind and cash
donations from various foreign countries. Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, December 28,
2012. http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/saigai/pdfs/bussisien.pdf (accessed March 18, 2013).
Network for Good. 2006. Impulse on the Internet: How crisis compels donors to give online. (Network
for Good report), August 2006.
http://www.networkforgood.org/downloads/pdf/Whitepaper/20061009_crisis_compels_donors.pd
f (accessed March 16, 2013).
The Taipei Times. 2013. Taiwanese urged to keep helping Japanese victims. Taipei: The Taipei Times Co.,March 11, 2013. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2013/03/11/2003556812(accessed March 15, 2013).

19

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Financial Tracking Service. Haiti earthquakes,
January 2010: Total humanitarian assistance per donor (Table ref# R24).
http://fts.unocha.org/reports/daily/ocha_R24_E15797___1303160211.pdf (accessed March 16,2013).
———Japan emergencies for 2011: Total humanitarian assistance per donor (Table ref# R24c).
http://fts.unocha.org/reports/daily/ocha_R24c_C105_Y2011_asof___1303160211.pdf (accessed
March 16, 2013).
White, Stacey. 2011. A Nation’s Personal Journey. The New York Times. March 16, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/15/what-aid-makes-sense-for-japan/a-personaljourney-for-japan (accessed March 19, 2013).
Yonhap News. 2011. Korean Red Cross collects record amount of donations for Japan quake. Seoul:
Yonhap News Agency, March 28, 2011.
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2011/03/28/3/0302000000AEN20110328003100315F.
HTML (accessed March 15, 2013).

NOTES
1Data from a Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) survey of 1,170 American and Japanese nonprofit
organizations and corporate donors covering the two years from March 2011 to March 2014 and reported in JCIE
2014.
2
Data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)’s Financial Tracking Service
website. The service depends on self-reporting by donors, which is less accurate for nongovernmental donors thatfor the governments that are members of the UN system, as indicated by the fact that more comprehensive surveys
of US private giving by the University of Indiana’s Center on Philanthropy have found $1.45 billion in American
private donations for Haiti, considerably more than the $1.27 billion that UN OCHA estimates for all private donors
worldwide.
3
The data collected by OCHA, which normally is biased towards governmental funding, credits private giving withcomprising 80 percent of total overseas aid for the 3.11 response. A better sense can be gained, however, by
amalgamating data from several sources, including Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the analysis of that data
for Japan’s annual almanac of philanthropy, Giving Japan 2012. Taken together, these suggest that
nongovernmental sources provided roughly twice as much aid in monetary terms as governmental sources,
highlighting how large of a role overseas private giving played in this disasterAs background, the Japanese foreign ministry reports that there were 17.5 billion yen (US$184 million at
US$1=95 yen) in cash donations by foreign governments, as well as a number of large in-kind donations. (Thelargest expenditures by foreign governments appear to be 40 billion yen (US$420 million) in oil donated by Kuwait,
the $95 million that the US Congressional Research Service estimates was expended for Operation Tomodachi, andanother 10,000 tons each of gasoline and diesel fuel at a market price of approximately US$25~30 million that was
donated by China.) Combined, the largest cash and in-kind donations from foreign governments total 67 billion yen
or roughly US$700 million, although these figures could be expected to increase by some 20 to 30 percent if thetotal costs of all in-kind goods and technical assistance could be quantified and included in the total.
In contrast, adding up the private giving from major donors surveyed by Giving Japan 2012 and JCIE’s surveyof US donors—US$730 million (69.5 billion yen) from the United States, approximately US$188 million (17.9
billion yen) from Taiwan, US47 million (4.5 billion yen) from Korea, US$26 million (2.5 billion yen) from theUnited Kingdom), and US$252 million (24 billion yen) that was collected by Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
in other countries—indicates that roughly 118 billion yen, more than US$1.2 billion, originated with overseas

20

private donors. As with government funds, these estimates could be expected to increase if more accurate counts
were available.
For further information, see UN OCHA “Japan – Emergencies for 2011; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan,
2012; Feickert and Chanlett-Avery 2011, 1; JCIE 2014; and Japan Fundraising Association 2012, 34-40.
4An earlier version of this paper, which was published in Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters in
China, Japan, and Beyond (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), uses the estimate of $712.6 million in US giving.
This came from 2013 Japan Center for International Exchange survey, and the estimate was later revised upwards to$730 million after more accurate and updated data could be collected in 2014.
5
Of the 120 organizations that collected more than $100,000, more than 40 had no prior experience working on
disasters, and only one-third defined themselves primarily as humanitarian assistance organizations.
6
Two of the most prominent were essays on the Give Well blog (blog.givewell.org) and a widely circulated article
by Reuters commentator Felix Salmon entitled “Don’t Donate Money to Japan” (March 14, 2011).
7
Taiwanese media reports indicate that 90 percent, or approximately US$235 million, of the total US$260.64
million collected in Taiwan came from private donors. (The Taipei Times 2013).
8
Author’s personal correspondence with Japan Society executive, March 15, 2013.
9
See, for instance, Network for Good 2006.
10
While there is an important place for cash grants-in-aid after a disaster, it is worth noting that there were many
problems with these funds after 3.11. Intense public criticism arose about delays in distributing the funds but
perhaps the most worrying phenomenon was the way that funds, which were disbursed as the slow pace of finalizing
local rezoning plans was preventing people from investing in rebuilding homes and businesses, fed an extraordinary
boom in bars and pachinko gambling parlors.
11
Donations for nonprofit activities include giving for religious organizations, educational organizations, and othersimilar organizations in the disaster zone that operate as nonprofit organizations. The Japanese Red Cross Society
operates two major funds. Donations from within Japan and the general public overseas go into the first fund to be
used for cash grants-in-aid for disaster victims, and donations from overseas Red Cross and Red Crescent societies
and a few other overseas groups have been allocated to a second fund for relief and reconstruction efforts directly
implemented by the Japanese Red Cross Society as well as a handful of nonprofit partners. Only donations to thesecond fund are counted as going for nonprofit activities.
12
Author’s estimates based on JCIE’s survey of US giving for Japan. While US donations are estimated to accountfor as much as one-quarter to one-third of all private pledges to Japanese nonprofits active in the disaster zone, one
should keep in mind that they comprise a considerably smaller portion of overall income for these groups sinceprivate giving is just one of several streams of funding and government contracts and subsidies also cover a
substantial portion of many organizations’ budgets.
13
Japanese embassy and consulate requests to avoid sending in-kind donations were initially reported by somemedia outlets as a Japanese refusal of all donations, but this was an obvious misunderstanding that arose out offaulty reporting. In fact, Japanese embassies quickly took the unprecedented of accepting cash donations themselves,receiving millions of dollars which they forwarded on to the Japanese Red Cross.
14
Author’s recollection from the July 21, 2011 “Funding Conference on US-Japan Cooperation on Supporting theJapan Disaster Response” that convened representatives from more than 40 American and Japanese NGOs,
foundations, and corporations in New York to share information on challenges they were facing in their disaster
responses. This was sponsored by JCIE, the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, and the Institute ofInternational Education.
15
Author’s interview with a representative of a US donor organization, March 14, 2013.
16
In contrast, there were numerous embarrassing nonprofit scandals in the United States after the 9/11 attacks andthe Hurricane Katrina response. (See, for example, “9/11 Charities Under Scrutiny for Failing to Raise Money for
Victims,” The Associated Press, August 25, 2011, or Adam Nossiter, “Katrina: US Raids New Orleans Agency in
Scandal Over Housing Cleanup Program,” The New York Times, August 11, 2008.) Likewise, there has been
considerable press coverage of the misuse of funds after the Sichuan Earthquake by Chinese organizations andfollowing the Haiti Earthquake by groups such as Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti. (See Edward Wong, “An Online
Scandal Underscores Chinese Distrust of State Charities,” The New York Times, July 3, 2011, and Deborah Sontag,“In Haiti, Little Can be Found of a Hip-Hop Artist’s Charity,” The New York Times, October 11, 2012.)
In comparison, surprisingly few scandals have come to light in connection with the 3.11 response. On the USside, in the first few weeks after 3.11, fraudsters were reported to have put up fake fundraising websites, most often
claiming to be collecting funds for the Japanese Red Cross Society, but these were quickly discredited. Meanwhile,
in Japan, there have been rumors in nonprofit circles of a few isolated incidents of accounting misconduct by NGOs
21

in the disaster zone, for example, involving the submission of the same receipts to two different donors in order todoublebill certain direct expenses, however this should be understood in the proper context. It appears that much ofthis doublebilling is so that NGOs can cover other expenses necessary to carry out the programs they committed to
implement, such as staff salaries and overhead, because many funders from Japan and elsewhere insist on paying
only select direct expenses and ridiculously small amounts for salaries, plus there are few alternative funding
sources for general operational support. So, while these NGOs are not abiding with the letter of the law, so to speak,what they are doing can be said to be in keeping with the overall spirit in which they were given funds.
17
For example, JCIE worked to create a public, online database (www.jcie.org/311database) that would allow
overseas donors to identify potential grantees working in the geographic and issue areas where they were focusing
their funding and enable Japanese NGOs to identify which overseas organizations were providing funds. However,technical problems with the software design and limited staff capacity prevented the database from being launcheduntil almost two years after the disaster.
18
Within Japan, even the members of Japan Platform and JANIC had considerable difficulty in coordinating withgovernment and local authorities. One illustrative example involved their main channel for consultations with thenational government. They were accustomed to responding to overseas disasters, and had developed a strong
working relationship with the Japanese foreign ministry, which regularly organizes government-NGO consultative
sessions. However, because this was a domestic disaster, a different agency, the Cabinet Office, was mandated totake the lead and it had much less appreciation of the role of NGOs in the response, plus there were no preexisting
coordination mechanisms that could be activated for it to engage with NGOs.

22