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Federal employees wanting to support charities that protect endangered species and their habitats now have a single place to go. Wild Animals Worldwide is a new federation created for this year’s Combined Federal Campaign.

Twenty-one charities are included in the federation, which is an umbrella organization that represents like-minded charities participating in the CFC. Most of the charities included in Wild Animals Worldwide came from two other CFC federations: Animal Charities of America, and Conservation and Preservation Charities of America. A few are new to the campaign this year.

The board that runs Animal Charities of America came up with the idea of creating the new federation, said Patrick Maguire, who manages business operations for 16 of the federations participating in this year’s fundraiser, including the new Wild Animals Worldwide.

By splitting off charities that focus on wild animals and their habitats, Animal Charities will be better able to target its message to employees interested in supporting domestic issues such as guide dogs or pet rescues, Maguire said. Likewise, employees interested in donating to charities supporting elephants, gorillas, polar bears and other wild animals now have a single place to search.

“They realized that if there could be a group broken up just for those wild animals, that would help donors find the kinds of animal charities they were looking for,” Maguire said.

With 2,352 national and international organizations participating in this year’s Combined Federation Campaign, in addition to thousands of local charities, federations make searching for a particular charity easier, he said.

“Instead of looking and trying to go through a list of 4,000 charities in that book, they can go through a list of 15 charities,” Maguire said.

Splitting off charities from a larger federation into a smaller one benefits both federations, since it’s easier to locate underlying charities within each federation, he said. A few years ago, the Children’s Charities of America Federation spun off a group of its charities into the new Children’s Medical Charities of America Federation. The result was a $1 million increase in giving to all of the charities, both those that moved to the new federation and those remaining in the older one, Maguire said.

The International Crane Foundation previously was a member of the Conservation and Preservation Charities of America Federation. But that federation currently has 94 charities, making it difficult for employees to navigate through even that list, said Ann Burke, director of public relations for the charity.

“The broad base of conservation cuts across so many animal types, people were left with this big list,” Burke said.

“I think that this new federation ... just makes it clearer and easier for prospective donors to find us.”