Will we no longer give and forget?

FOR 20 years, it has stood as the high-point of charity fundraising: a global appeal which saw a human catastrophe meet with an unprecedented response. The £80m raised over 12 months by Live Aid dwarfed all previous and subsequent appeals, both in the amount raised and in making charity a matter of public concern.

But now Live Aid has itself been overshadowed by the appeal for victims of the Asian tsunami. In just over three weeks, around £150m has come in, with the final total expected to top £200m.

From children donating their Christmas presents to Sir Paul McCartney pledging £1m, both the speed and scale of the response has overwhelmed the charities involved, in some cases almost literally. The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), co-ordinating the British response on behalf of 12 charities, had to reconfigure its website to cope with the huge volume of online donations.

But now the tragedy's dominance of the television news and newspapers is at an end, and the number of donations has slowed, charities are judging whether the massive outpouring of sympathy will have any long-term effect, whether it is a one-off, or if it heralds a complete change in our approach to giving.

Past experience is not promising. Live Aid may have had a huge impact, but it failed to make any long-term difference to how much we donate. Similarly, the 9/11 appeal in the US raised an astonishing $2bn, but there was no significant rise in the overall level of donations. Instead, money which would have gone to other charities was often diverted into the fund for victims of the World Trade Centre attacks.

A report by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) late last year found that the average UK household gave £1.70 to charity a week, just under £73 a year. Although six out of ten people said they would give more to charity if there was an urgent need, two out of five said they could afford to give an extra £20 a week, but chose not to.

Substantially more of those in the lowest income groups said they would give it to charity, compared with those in the top income bracket, 44 per cent to 28 per cent.

But there is a growing optimism that the tsunami is different from previous appeals, that it provides an opportunity to make a dramatic difference to the lives of millions of people. While talk of abolishing world poverty may be taking it too far, there is hope that, aided by a fortuitous conjunction of events, the appeal may have an impact even beyond those whose lives have been devastated by the catastrophe.

The CAF has just commissioned a report into what prompted the British public into responding to the appeal on such a massive scale, and whether it will affect their attitude towards charity in the future.

But two distinguishing features of the appeal have already emerged. One is in how much of the response came through the Internet; the other is in the first large-scale use of tax-efficient giving.

"People saw the news and looked online to find out more and they wanted to respond immediately," says the CAF's Vicki Pulman. "Five years ago, they would maybe have put a cheque in the post, but people wanted to do something straight away."

The extent to which people now feel comfortable using the Internet - spending £3bn online in the run-up to Christmas - lies behind this change, but it has the result of ensuring that an initial impulse translates into a donation, and does not end up being overtaken by subsequent apathy.

The tsunami appeal is also the first to have seen widespread tax-efficient giving, where UK taxpayers can make their donation worth more. For every £1 donated, the Government will add another 28p, the equivalent of the income tax on the donated sum.

And whereas in the past this meant filling out forms, now all the donor has to do is confirm they are a taxpayer. Now, one of the first questions charities ask callers to their donation hotlines is whether they are a UK taxpayer.

Much of the reason for the huge public response lies in the amount of information available about the disaster, with coverage beginning slowly and then escalating as the extent of the tragedy became apparent.

The sheer amount of coverage, and the speed with which it was delivered, fed that immediate demand to know what was going on, which in turn prompted a desire to respond immediately. The involvement of tourists also meant it was brought home to people in Europe in a way that it would not have been otherwise.

But the issue for charities now is how much of this goodwill can be carried over to effect lasting change for the world's poor.

"Certainly, in the past it has dropped off. It is quite difficult to sustain that level of response, and there comes a point where people just can't absorb the information, it stops having the same impact that it did initially," says Ms Pulman.

"Once people have made a donation they feel they have done their bit, and the level of giving tends to flatten off and then fade away."

But some charities are hopeful that this will not happen this time.

Kim Tan, Oxfam campaigns officer for Yorkshire and the North-East, believes the tsunami appeal marks both a departure from previous attitudes towards giving, and an opportunity to make significant strides in the battle against world poverty.

He points to the way the appeal has reached far beyond those who are normally interested in international development as evidence of its capacity to bring out significant change.

"What I would hope it that this tsunami, horrific though it was, may have put international development issues in front of a lot more people," he says.

"We have so many people keen to help, and maybe the difference between this and Live Aid is that public understanding has moved on: just giving people money and feeding them is not enough; poverty in Africa has not been fixed by giving £80m.

"The message has got across that it is not just about giving a few pounds to charity, we have got to address really important structural issues, but this is a fairly minority interest until something like this happens."

The tsunami appeal is unusual in being one where the public response led the Government reaction, rather than the other way around, and Mr Tan also detects signs that international development is becoming a significant political issue.

All three major party leaders have made it the subject of set-piece speeches this year, an election year. While cynics may see this as no more than trying to identify themselves with the issue of the moment, Mr Tan sees it as something more.

"In the past, a lot of people had the attitude of 'What can I do about it?', or 'What can Britain do about it?', but that was all forgotten in this emergency," he says.

"Suddenly people realised that they were making a difference, that if we act together we can change things, and that might be the most important thing we take from this disaster. I think we're seeing a sea change here, and it is the first time all three parties are talking about ending world poverty."

While that may be an ambitious challenge, a rare conjunction of circumstances offers an unprecedented opportunity. In an election year, when politicians are at their most responsive to public opinion, Britain has the presidency of the G8 group of the world's richest nations, and, for the second half of the year, the leadership of the EU, the world's second biggest trading block.

If ever there were a year for getting international development on the agenda, and for bringing about changes in the trading and debt imbalances, th is is it.

"The rich countries of the world have more than enough money to address issues of people living in poverty and without clean drinking water, it is about finding the political will and getting people interested enough," says Mr Tan.

"We have got to make sure that we keep our promises and that we stump up the money and we meet our aid targets and we tackle the issues of trade and debt. But politicians will only do this if they think it's something the British public is concerned about."