Category Archives: Disaster Relief

The Struggle is Real: Non-profits in the Wake of Covid-19

Charity Review, Current Events, Disaster Relief, ,

As you know, my day job is at a history museum. We’re an educational non-profit, so we’ve been affected by the Coronavirus shutdowns. In fact, we’ve been declared “entertainment,” and will be among the last things allowed to open. We had to cancel a fundraiser we depend on, and we’ve had to spend more money to adapt and continue providing our research and educational services while we’re forced to be closed.

It’s not all bad news. We’ve expanded and improved our online presence. We’ve caught up on projects that cluttered our desks for months. Stimulus programs have allowed the staff to continue working and getting paid. I’m not commuting so much.

I tell you this today because thinking about our challenges got me wondering about other non-profit organizations. I currently serve on the board at my church and I watch the TV news, so I can tell you that in the social services sector demand for aid is up. People have lost jobs, businesses have gone under, and the needs are great. Meanwhile for the non-profits, fundraisers are canceled, volunteers can’t come in, and donations and distribution may be down. It’s a perfect storm…

Here are a few things you can do, and a few stories I’ve heard from non-profits I follow:

  1. Pray: That’s how it always goes. What I learned in Sunday School and come back to for every crisis, need, or opportunity: Pray, Give, Go. Whether or not you have funds to contribute, you can always pray. Pray for the missionaries, ministries, social service organizations, and non-profits out there helping people. Pray for funding, for safety, for doors to open for them, and for the health and safety of their staff. Pray for people who need jobs, and services to tide them over until they’re working again.
  2. Give – Money: Flexibility has been the theme of surviving Covid. Small businesses that existed only in brick-and-mortar stores have started selling online. Here in Minnesota restaurants have gone curbside, and are now carving out outdoor eating spaces so they can bring back customers. In-person events have become teleconferences. Birthday parties and graduations have become drive-thru parades. We’re making it work, but that’s not always cheap. Churches have had to invest in technology to create online services, and we’re all investing in Zoom memberships (seriously, they have to be VERY profitable right now!)

    One example of this is Feed My Starving Children. I got an email from them yesterday that explained how they’re continuing to feed kids without the volunteer labor they depend on. They’ve started using some machine labor, put some of their staff to work packing, and even hired inmates to pack meals (the human labor under VERY careful and stringent limitations). The email said that they’re only able to pack HALF of the meals per month that they planned for this year, and it’s costing them $750,000 more per month. Ouch! But kids around the world depend on FMSC’s Manna Pack. If you can afford to give, please do.

    Kiva and other microfinance organizations are also in need of donors. They’re trying to help small businesses stay afloat as they try to adapt, or when don’t qualify for some of the programs out there. Microfinance allows small businesses and individuals who struggle to get access to credit with small loans on fair terms. What I like about “giving” to this program is that I (almost always) get the money back to invest again and again!

    Mail in your tithe checks to your church (or give online if your church offers that), give to your favorite non-profits, buy from your favorite fairtrade retailers. It’s just like ordering carryout from local restaurants or buying from local businesses. Every dollar you spend or give is a vote for the kind of world you want to live in!

  3. Give – Non-monetary: A lot of people are using their stay-at-home days to FINALLY go through their closets and things. Purging is good for us, but it can also be a boon to non-profits. Did you find something cool your local history museum might like? Take some pictures and send them an email. Cleaning out cupboards? Donate to a food shelf. Sell more valuable items on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace and give away the proceeds.
  4. Go: According to AgingPlace, people over 55 make up 35 percent of volunteers in America. I honestly thought it would be higher. Retirees have daytime availability and tend to have a good work ethic that doesn’t make them comfortable with idleness! Unfortunately, they’re also the most vulnerable right now with Covid-19. If you are healthy and have time, check with your favorite non-profit. They might need your help right now! Offer your IT or social media skills if you have them. Like and follow on social media and share their posts to increase their visibility. Do what you can!

One last tip: If you want to do double-duty with your gifts, buy fairtrade or from local small businesses when giving to non-profits. If you’re buying things to donate to a food drive, get it at a locally-owned market. If you want to bless workers with a free lunch, order it from a local restaurant. As John Wesley said, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

Hunger History Lesson – Celebrity fundraising during the 1980s famine in Ethiopia

Disaster Relief, Hunger History Lesson, , , , , , , , ,

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a historian. Like an actual, two degrees in the subject, works at a museum historian. And I seriously never know what will come up in a given day at the museum. Once I had someone call to ask me what the phone number for the police was before 911 because he was restoring a vintage police car and wanted to put the original number on it. Once I spent an afternoon watching Nazi propaganda footage. Yesterday I spent time going over satellite images of a prison yard looking for an old cemetery. It’s always old, but it never gets boring…

So when I was thinking about a new topic to bring to Food Shelf Friday, I quickly thought of history. I love all the where did this come from and whatever happened to… Right away I thought of a hunger issue from my childhood – the 1980s famine in Africa and the celebrity fundraising response.

Check out this gem – We Are the World by USA for Africa, 1985. Just take the seven minutes and giggle at the ‘80s fashions, try to identify all the celebrities, and get this song firmly lodged in your head for the day (sorry not sorry).

Do you remember it? I do! I remember singing that song in school music class and seeing the video on TV. The famine in Ethiopia was all over the news from 1983-85. It was the worst famine in that region in a century, caused by drought and coupled with civil war and human rights violations, it resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. When the Ethiopian government failed to adequately respond to the crisis, international aid organizations and foreign governments began to pour into the region with funds, supplies, and aid workers to try and alleviate the crisis.

In 1984, after seeing a BBC story on the famine, a group of British and Irish musicians got together under the name Band Aid to record a song to raise money for the crisis. Do They Know it’s Christmas hit the airwaves in December of 1984 and raised millions for dollars for the cause.

Inspired by the Brits, a group of American musicians calling themselves USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa, recorded their own single, We Are the World (hyperlinked again because I KNOW you want to watch it again…). The song was released in March of 1985, and it also brought in millions of dollars.

Inspired by their success, the musicians decided to keep the momentum going and planned a huge, world-wide concert and telethon event called Live Aid. On July 13, 1985, concerts were held simultaneously in Philadelphia and London, while other performances went on in countries across the globe. Pulling it off involved satellite feeds, multiple media organizations, venues, performers – barely controlled chaos! But the publicity and fundraising stunt worked in spite of the big egos and technical chaos. Between the initial event, and the books and recordings sold later, Live Aid eventually raised over $125 million for famine relief in Africa. It also inspired musicians to hold similar events for other causes, including Farm Aid for American farmers losing their family farms, and Live 8 for global poverty relief.

I hope you enjoyed this blast from the past! Follow the hyperlinks to check out YouTube videos, org websites (yes, some of them are still around and raising money for today’s crises), and a History Channel article. If you love the celebrity gossip stuff, check out the Wikipedia pages, especially for Live Aid. Wikipedia isn’t the most reliable source, so I didn’t include it here, but if you want all the dirt and gossip of who was invited to perform, who was left out, who failed to show up, and who dropped the f-bomb on live TV, Wikipedia has all that. Share your memories of these star-studded relief efforts in the comments!

watw-album-cover

Responding to Disaster

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The last couple weeks have been heavy, with constant news stories of hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires ravaging parts of the world. Countless lives have been altered by these natural disasters, and millions are in need of emergency aid. So for those of us not directly affected by the crises, what can we do to help?

Of course, the first thing I’m going to suggest is prayer. We serve an all-powerful God. He is not surprised by these disasters. He cares deeply, and his heart is broken for those who are suffering. He welcomes a dialog with us about our needs and our feelings. Prayer changes things, and it changes us. Spend some time talking to God about these crises and the many people who are in need of a miracle right now.

Secondly, don’t start sending boxes of junk to the disaster areas. Every time a catastrophe like this happens, people gather boxes of useless junk and ship them off to the disaster area. Their hearts are in the right place, but overwhelmed locals end up with warehouses full of stuff that needs to be sorted and cleaned before it can be distributed, and they have to dispose of landfills full of stuff that no one needs. You would be better off holding a garage sale and sending your profits to a reputable non-profit organization.

The best thing you can do (other than praying), is to give to a reputable non-profit organization providing disaster relief in the area. They have trained, dedicated staff who deliver things like clean water, medical supplies, and food where it’s needed most. Be careful when you select your non-profit. Some of the big guys that get a lot of publicity have tremendously high overhead, and only a fraction of your donation ever makes it to the disaster victims. Use a website like Charity Navigator or GuideStar to help you find an organization that keeps their overhead low and uses best practices of accountability.

Finally, think local. If you have friends or family members dealing with the tragedy, ask them what they need. I was surprised last week to find out that in the wake of Hurricane Harvey there is a need for bug spray in parts of Texas. I never would have thought of that. They are far enough into the cleanup effort that most of them are getting mail service again, so Amazon can get supplies to your loved ones in just a couple days.

And on the topic of thinking locally, don’t forget the small charities and churches local to the area in crisis. Donating funds to local churches or local food banks will put your dollars to work in the local community quickly.

Some links:

GuideStar

Charity Navigator

Convoy of Hope – Convoy is my charity of choice for giving to the hurricane relief effort. I’ve blogged about them before. Check out my previous posts here and here.

Food Bank Locator