Precious Eyes

Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times

Igloo is being trained at the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation in Bloomfield, Conn., to give a blind person more independence. More Photos »

JENNIFER MURRAY woke after a night out with friends and thought her husband was playing a trick on her. She could not see anything and did not believe him when he said it was daytime.

"It was like a light switch had been shut off," she said. "I shut my eyes, and I blinked. And I tried it again several times. Then I realized the sun was in my face, and I said, now what?"

Ms. Murray had been battling to keep what little vision she had since her premature birth in 1978. She had a bit of peripheral vision in one eye but nothing else. A few years before the day when she lost her eyesight for good, she had an operation to implant a permanent contact lens in her right eye. It gave her sight such as she had never had before.

"I was giddy for weeks," she said. "I could see everything, and everybody was beautiful. I remember thinking life is so colorful and so pretty, and I wouldn't have taken that back for the world."

With her vision gone again, Ms. Murray said she began to withdraw from the world. Her husband, an Iraqi war veteran, was going through a difficult time, and life was a struggle. With the birth of their son, Liam, who is now 2, Ms. Murray said she realized she needed to become more independent to care for him.

"I realized the white cane wasn't cutting it," she said. "I was putting a lot of unspoken pressure on my husband and my son, which isn't fair to them."

That was when she decided to try to get a guide dog.

The mission of all guide dog schools is to create a team, pairing a blind person and a dog to give the person greater freedom and independence. It would seem to be an easy cause for fund-raising.

After all, most people melt when they see a puppy — a big marketing tool for these schools — and helping blind people lead better lives seems to be an unqualified good.

Yet if the cause is an easy sell, the work is not cheap. These schools need to raise money and engage volunteers on a very large scale to ensure they have enough resources to pay for the long, costly and often unsuccessful training of dogs. One guide dog takes about two years to train and costs a total of $45,000 to $60,000, covering everything from boarding a dog to extensive drilling by professional trainers in serving the needs of the blind to a weekslong period acclimating dog to recipient. And about 45 percent of dogs bred by the schools do not make the grade. Those that do are provided free to people who need them.

Beyond this, guide dog charities must compete in the wider contest for dollars among nonprofit organizations. The Urban Institute, a research organization that focuses on social and economic issues, estimates that 1.6 million such groups operate in America today, a 25 percent increase in the last decade.

"We're in competition with every charity and cause that's out there," said Eliot Russman, chief executive and executive director of Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation, in Bloomfield, Conn. "American Cancer Society, American Heart Society — everyone is out there telling compelling stories. There is a finite pool of money."

"We've got puppies, but Hole in the Wall Gang has dying children," he said. "What's more compelling? Our donors have to have confidence in management."

Mr. Russman came to Fidelco from the advertising world, where his clients included McDonald's and Xerox. And that experience has helped him sell potential donors on Fidelco, known for its German shepherds.

Bob Forrester, president and chief executive of the Newman's Own Foundation, which receives its money from the line of foods created by Paul Newman in 1982, and gives money to the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, said the school fit with the foundation's mission of empowerment. "We want to help people to rise to whatever their potential might be if that potential is being thwarted by circumstances beyond their control," Mr. Forrester said.

Paul Sullivan donates to charities for the blind, including guide dog schools.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 9, 2013

 An article on Friday about guide dog charities misstated the given name of the wife of Michael Malarsie, a guide dog recipient. She is Jesse Malarsie, not Julie.

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