Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 1, No. 4 | Nonprofits its at Ground Zero Struggling To Survive, Their Missions Point The Way, page 5 (low bandwidth)

Right now, we are able to pay our bills, but, we will soon be on shaky ground financially. We will try to sell more books, do another fundraising appeal and hope writers continue to support our various projects. I may have to cut back on staff and devote more of my time to teaching to earn money-and that will take me away from my duties with the press.

Running a nonprofit has always been "If, if, if, and who knows?" But now it's totally unstable, with the economy so shaky and people so frightened and upset. But Jean doesn't want me to close the press and neither do I. We are going to try to make it work. I don't know what's going to happen-and I now realize that I never did.

Barbara Christen,
Futures and Options

You can't imagine how important it is to provide these internships to the students. Getting a $7-an-hour job is important to them, but even more important is having a supervised internship that enables them to make the transition from school to work and higher education. Their schools no longer have resources for extracurricular programs. If you think back to your own high school, it probably had an orchestra, band, choir, a literary magazine, newspaper, clubs and dozens of activities through which young people learn to work as a team, take leadership roles, exercise initiative and responsibility. These activities, by and large, no longer exist in the public schools here. The money isn't there. So the internships help fill the vacuum. Listen to what some of these students have written about their internships: "I became a critical thinker"; "I learned how to appreciate and interact with all kinds of people"; "I acquired computer knowledge"; "My experience helped me understand what's required of me to apply for a position"; "It made me realize that I do have the potential"; "I became open minded and outspoken"-a girl wrote that, and for a girl to become outspoken, that's great!

Gordon Campbell,
Safe Horizon

One of the ways nonprofits collaborated was to create the 911 United Services Group, which collectively represents over 90 percent of the nonprofits in the city. We are working on several issues. We are creating a uniform database, working very closely with IBM. As we speak, the files for Safe Horizon, the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross are all in the new database and other organizations are feeding their information into it. We are also developing a more uniform application process for clients and discussing how to create a clearinghouse for managing cases as they come in.

Since the beginning of the new year, we have been moving to the next phase, with support from the Robin Hood Foundation. We have a phone bank-thanks to GHI, the health insurer-that volunteers are using to call each of the 27,000 people we have served so far. We are finding out how people are doing and letting them know that we have created Trauma Support Centers in each of the five boroughs. The centers provide a wide range of assistance, just about everything September 11th victims may need. Our staff and public agencies' staff will be there as well as people skilled in job training programs, job placement, legal issues and investment planning. We've got to help people move forward. Do we know this will work? No. But Safe Horizon has a 23-year history of creating programs that help people, and if this isn't effective, we'll build on it until it is. We're optimistic.

David Saltzman,
Robin Hood Foundation

To plan ahead, we brought in some folks who led the relief effort in Oklahoma City. Far and away, they said, their biggest issue has been mental health. They are still dealing with suicides. Clearly one of our biggest efforts going forward will be to deal with mental-health issues, which will continue for years and years and years if not decades.

We've got a lot of work to do for the children, as well. While a great deal of money has been set aside for college scholarships for the children of people killed on September 11th, we know from our work that it is not enough to offer someone a scholarship-you have to offer them supports all along the way to help them get there.

There are so many issues: Jobs, healthcare and even financial planning for families of victims who died in the tragedy. Many people may find themselves in charge of their family's finances for the first time and others may have to manage a huge amount of money they receive from the government or insurance. In Oklahoma City, where there was much less money, an awful lot of people spent it on fast cars, drugs and booze. We're going to try to help people avoid that.

Working to help people affected by the attacks has been an extraordinary honor for us. I hope it is never repeated.

Michael deCourcy Hinds is the Corporation’s chief writer. Previously, he was a national correspondent for The New York Times and he also wrote citizens’ guides to social issues at Public Agenda, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization.

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