About the CFC

With the federal charity drive declining since 2010, is it worth it to promote your charity’s work among potential CFC donors? 

Two similar charities have answered this question in different ways since 2010, one continuing and expanding its CFC-focused promotion, the second cutting back to the point where it now appears to do little CFC promotion. 

The two are Food For The Poor and World Vision. Both are large Christian charities with strong brands that work internationally. 

An Analysis by Charitable Choices

            On April 8, 2013, the Office of Personnel Management released proposed rules for the Combined Federal Campaign. The rules call for some major changes, changes that could force many charities out of the CFC and cause giving through the CFC to plummet. 

         There are times when you wish you hadn’t been right.  Unfortunately, those who predicted the negative impact of many of the federal charity drive’s changes could not have been more right. 

          Last fall -- the year these changes were finally implemented – saw the CFC experience by far its biggest decline ever, both in total dollars given and number of donors. 

The long-awaited national CFC giving website – in many ways the centerpiece of the huge changes being made this year in the federal charity drive -- opened Monday, Oct. 16,

This fall’s Combined Federal Campaign (2017) will be run in a completely different way, the biggest change in the federal charity drive in 30 years. These big changes are why this year’s CFC is starting late and will run into January.

For donors, the biggest changes involve ways to cut the CFC’s costs.  The local organizations that used to run the 126 local campaigns (mostly United Ways) will no longer do so.  Instead there will be 37 regions, thus many fewer staff.

          The federal charity drive, already delayed, won’t open its website for collecting online donations until “late October,” according to an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) press release issued Friday, Sept. 29. 

          Officially, the CFC campaign began Monday, Oct. 2, about a month later than normal.  But there is still no official list of eligible charities. 

          The OPM release states that some charities responding to the hurricanes “will require additional time before they may accept solicitations.” 

                Several charities have told us that they are receiving significantly less of the donations pledged to them during the 2016 campaign.  One charity reported receiving just 57% of their pledged amount, far less than normal. Why is this? 

                Charities have never received all the CFC donations they are pledged, for two reasons. 

                This fall’s CFC campaign will be starting about a month later than normal and run into early January for the first time. The official start date is October 2.  The actual start date in at least some of the CFC’s 37 regions may be later than this.  Normally the campaign starts right after Labor Day.