ABSTRACT
A 1978 evaluation done for United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which had given Africare an earlier $608,701 development program grant, added that constituency of black Americans was not organized in way to facilitate fund raising. The goal of Africare from its inception was to be organization financed primarily by gifts from African Americans and it immediately set up arrangement whereby anyone could become member through the payment of $5 annual dues. The imbalance between income from private American citizens and from other sources, especially USAID, indicates the challenge Africare faced in building constituency. As heart-rending as the stories of disease in Africa were, not one was as compelling as that of human tragedy playing out in West Africa because of Sahelian drought. The American response to the Sahelian drought brought not only life-saving measures to millions of people in West Africa, but it brought life to Africare as organization and enabled it to grow institutionally.
