Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 1, No. 4 | Nonprofits its at Ground Zero Struggling To Survive, Their Missions Point The Way, page 4

Martha Rhodes,
Four Way Books

Our donations in 2001, which represent a significant portion of our annual budget, are about 30 percent below what they were in 2000. Our contributors say that their gifts would continue to be smaller, if anything at all, no matter how much they love us, because of the stock market, the ongoing war and their support of charities that are helping with the disaster relief effort. We knew that would happen, and we didn't want to compete with those organizations that are helping the disaster relief. But the arts are important. We can't forget them, and not everyone has. I saw an announcement in The New York Times that the Mellon Foundation wanted to help arts organizations. I called, and they very graciously said, by all means, apply. Whether we receive any help or not, it was so heartening to know that there was an organization doing this.

Barbara Christen,
Futures and Options

By October we finally had our phones working and we had put Futures and Options, Inc. back in operation-with a great deal of help from many other organizations. A nearby nonprofit on Exchange Place loaned us a temporary field office. Another organization, NPowerNY, provided us with a desktop computer, two laptop computers and a printer.

We are still looking for a permanent home, as well as financial support to help us reconstruct the database, and to rent and furnish and operate the new office. I'm optimistic because several organizations, including the Nonprofit Finance Fund and one appropriately called ReStart Central, have offered us a great deal of support.

Gordon Campbell,
Safe Horizon

We were staffing the Family Assistance Center at Pier 94 from 8 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week. Our people were working 12 to 16 hours a day for weeks and months at a time. We got so focused on providing assistance to victims that we weren't adequately addressing the emotional health of our own staff who, apart from the long hours were also grieving and suffering from the disaster. We got better at it as we went along. I had to tell certain staff members, "You are taking a day off or you need to leave at midnight." For me it was a real challenge, because I had to push the organization to respond, but you can only push so much and then you have to back off.

On our September 11 Hotline we mostly receive calls from people who need information and referrals or who want someone to talk with at 3 a.m. on a sleepless night-or they need someone to manage their case. These are the callers who say, "I'm so overwhelmed, there are all these forms and applications."

As you may recall, every day the media was publishing all these toll-free telephone numbers for people to get help from a lot of different programs and opportunities. But in many ways, it was like applying for public assistance. People were told, call this number, go to this office, get those documents, have this form notarized or sorry, go someplace else. Some people are sophisticated enough or have the emotional wherewithal to do very well. Other victims, understandably, are totally overwhelmed.

Starting on September 17th, we tried to help clarify the process by publishing a guide to all the programs and distributing it to 3,000 social services, public agencies and downtown companies and updating it three times. Even so, there has been a lot of confusion. There is no single organization prepared to meet the needs of all of the victims. Some people have advocated for one super-agency, and yes, in some ways, it would have been easier. But at the end of the day, I don't think it would have been as effective. Some people already had relationships with certain organizations, and different organizations provided different types of support, based on their experience.

The disaster required those of us in the nonprofit world to work together and collaborate more than we ever have before, which is good. But we've had to create this relief response as we go. It wasn't as if we were able to turn on some ready-made program for responding to a major terrorist attack. In a collective sense, beyond Safe Horizion, I think nonprofits have done a very good job.

Obviously we could have used some additional funding up front, but it's wrong to say that the money wasn't being spent fast enough, I don't think that was the case. I am much more concerned that two years from now-when there will still be needs-the cupboard will be bare and people will have moved on. We can learn lessons from Oklahoma City. Six-plus years after the bombing, their family assistance center is still open.

David Saltzman,
Robin Hood Foundation

Just after the concert, at the end of October, we were told that we had to leave the Post building. As luck would have it, some extraordinary people from a company called Wit Soundview called us up, out of the blue, saying they wanted to give us more than a million dollars to help people affected by the attacks. They casually mentioned they had just moved from New York, leaving behind some office space at 12th Street and Broadway. When they heard Robin Hood was about to become homeless, they said, squat in our place rent free. The office was fully wired, ready to go with telephones, computers and everything.

On December 10th, we realized an awful lot of families who lost somebody on September 11th were going into the holidays without any help. We knew that many people hadn't received money from the relief organizations providing direct aid, so the Robin Hood Relief Fund board voted to send a $5,000 gift to each of the victims' families. But we quickly found out that the lists were just in terrible, terrible shape. So we had to set up a de facto detective agency, with about 20 people-about half our staff-working around the clock. We got help from volunteers and hired five or six new staff members and some temps. Just before Christmas, we were able to get more than 2,900 checks out to families who had lost someone.

Next page: Running a nonprofit has always been “If, if, if, and who knows?” I don’t know what’s going to happen—and I realize that I never did.

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