After the late summer hurricanes roared across the Gulf and devoured the landscape like a platter of hors d'oeuvres, images of the remnants sent us to our phones, reciting Visa numbers to relief groups whose names relentlessly flashed onscreen between newsclips of weary reporters in waders pointing to havoc and shellshocked Louisianans.

Days after Katrina hit, the pipeline was gushing, not with floodwaters but with cash, a surge of dollars committed to rebuilding towns and lives and homes and businesses. By mid-October, with Oregonians well numbered among the generous, the Red Cross alone had garnered nearly $1.5 billion in donations.

For one subset of individuals, however, the storms' destruction provoked complex emotions. These are people whose work is thwarted by such calamities, people who lead nonprofit organizations that rely on money you and I give — money now shipping out in great quantities to Mississippi and Louisiana.

Nonprofit leaders are masters at the art of making do, used to managing budgets with no wiggle room. But timing can be brutal. If in the thick of a fundraising campaign an earthquake flattens Pakistani villages, a tsunami bashes Asia, a plane topples a New York tower, all bets on the homefront are off.

Even in the best of times, fundraising is not for the faint of heart. It can be exhausting and demoralizing, a zillion calls yielding a tally always too light on the yeses. A friend of mine who has to raise 400 grand this fall to keep his Oregon nonprofit going told me gravely, "I don't know how I'm going to do it."

Mother Nature is a tough competitor. In the face of very visible, very televised distress, humdrum malaise — hunger, illiteracy, homelessness, mental illness — doesn't stack up. To a donor, it's an instinctive choice: Like watching the breakup of two friends, you know rationally both are in pain, but you embrace the one that comes to you weeping inconsolably.

Giving to hurricane relief is not a bad instinct — you could do worse than aiding people who've lost everything through no fault of their own. But keep your check- book open. You've thought global, now think local: Choose a favorite cause and give again.

Of course, it's not simple. But put yourself in the shoes of the director who's got to scale services up and down with every perturbation of the market, politics and nature. That's not simple.

Where might you find the extra cash? Well, the state of Oregon, for one. With the kicker law triggered for the first time since 1997, Oregon corporations will receive gifts themselves next month, as the state returns $101 million in "surplus" revenues.

What fortuitous timing — the very year in which need is doubly great. Don't think twice about the many ways you could spend your windfall. Kick back the kicker. Pass it on, so that old-timers stay warm, battered women get safe shelter, children learn to read, the hungry have food to eat and the homeless roofs under which to sleep at night.

Acts of nature wiped out the homes and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Louisianans and Mississipians. Let's not let them wipe out the small hopes of thousands of Oregonians as well.

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Copyright 2005 Oregon Business magazine