June 2, 2006

Cautiously, World Vision Creates an Endowment

By DEBRA E. BLUM

Daniel Rice has had to reject as many as two dozen big gifts in his more than 20 years of raising money for World Vision, in Federal Way, Wash. The donors, he says, wanted their gifts — many in six figures — put into a permanent endowment, something World Vision, one of America's largest humanitarian charities, did not have.

"I didn't walk around with other groups' phone numbers in my back pocket, but when I've had to tell people no, I assume they went elsewhere