Givers keep up donations and volunteer time amid hurricanes, wildfires and more.
Jeanne Tedrow understands natural disaster firsthand.
Decades ago, her family was displaced by a tornado. Yet out of this disaster came a sense of wonder at human generosity. Help coalesced from a number of sources – her neighborhood, a homebuilders association, schools and churches – to help her family get back on its feet. Tedrow was touched, and she credits that experience with leading her to her 30 years with the Wake County poverty alleviation nonprofit Passage Home, where she was co-founder and director. Today, Tedrow is president and CEO of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits, which provides resources and advocates for nonprofits statewide. Indeed, Tedrow has made a career out of giving back.
“I would say that to me the very best way to handle misfortune or crisis or feeling vulnerable is go find someone that you can help and help them,” she says. “It is definitely in the giving that you will receive.”
Maybe it’s coincidental and maybe it’s climate change, but 2017 seems to have been particularly lousy with disasters. Right in a row, powerful hurricanes hit Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. California saw lethal wildfires; Mexico, an earthquake.
Often when disaster follows disaster, people worry about fatigue – that the people who give money and time to recovery-oriented nonprofits will burn out. This year, that has been an unfounded fear. Like the people who helped Tedrow’s family recover from that years-ago tornado, donors and volunteers are still filling this essential need.
“The United States generally is one of the most generous countries in the world. It has always risen to the cause,” Tedrow says. “[Look] at five former presidents standing up onstage together, across political lines, urging people to continue to give. I think that’s testimony to the continuous call to generosity among our people.”
She doesn’t think that the disasters themselves lead to giving fatigue. What’s more likely is that donors and volunteers burn out when they don’t feel appreciated by a specific nonprofit. If donors are constantly asked for money, Tedrow says, they’ll wear out and be less likely to work with the offending organization.
“Donors don’t want to feel like ATMs. They want to feel like a meaningful part of the experience of making a difference in our world,” she says. “When donors are meaningfully appreciated, they’re not going to get tired of being asked.”
Amber Smith agrees, adding that it’s important that donors know their contributions are making a difference. Smith is executive director of Activate Good, a Raleigh nonprofit that works to match volunteers with opportunities at other nonprofits in the Triangle. If donors don’t feel like their donations or volunteer hours are having a positive impact, they can feel overwhelmed and discouraged from continuing their support.
“Sometimes it can feel frustrating to not know if you’re moving the needle very far each year,” Smith says.
It’s hard to objectively tell if 2017 is a particularly disaster-heavy year, Smith says, but she admits it can feel overwhelming in the moment. From working in the nonprofit field, she knows that compassion fatigue is a recurring topic among her peers. When people feel overwhelmed by negative news, they can get to feeling that it hurts too much to care because another bad thing is just going to happen tomorrow.
“It’s really depressing and sad and somewhat cynical,” Smith says. “What organizations that work in the nonprofit space are able to do is offer an avenue for hope on that, and I think that when they do that well, they can combat that compassion fatigue.” Appropriately, when Smith feels overwhelmed, she closes her computer, rolls up her sleeves and finds a way to do some good in the world. It’s a guaranteed fix.
Indeed, donating and the actual work of volunteering can replace exhaustion with hope, sometimes for months after the disaster that motivated the effort in the first place. Virginia-based nonprofit Islamic Relief, for instance, has been part of a coalition of nonprofits rebuilding homes in Princeville ever since the Eastern North Carolina town was flooded by Hurricane Matthew in October 2016. It’s physically hard work, team leader Hani Hamwi admits, but Islamic Relief sees some volunteers return to Princeville again and again. Yet they don’t burn out. More often, in fact, the opposite is true.
“We are essentially working there to rebuild the homes of families and individuals who did not get the support that was necessary for them to rebuild on their own,” Hamwi says. “We’re essentially using our volunteers from really all around the country, volunteers that are willing and able to come out to North Carolina, and we are rebuilding homes.”
When Islamic Relief’s volunteers work on a house, Hamwi says, they’re at it from 8 a.m. until 4 or 5 p.m. Yet during this strenuous work, the volunteers are getting to know each other. Many come from cities, and they get a taste for small-town life. Since volunteers come from all over the country and have different backgrounds, they learn about each other as well. On Wednesdays, Islamic Relief has a standing invitation to a Tarboro Methodist church’s weekly potluck, which has become part of the volunteers’ routine.
“We have dinner there and we meet people and have great conversations and have a great time,” says Hamwi. “Then [we] go back to our base and wake up and go to work the next morning.”
It takes a long-term commitment to help people recover from a disaster, Hamwi says, yet months of strenuous, sometimes repetitive work hasn’t affected his staff and volunteers’ commitment. On a broader scope, the organization as a whole has not experienced any downward trends in financial gifts this year, says Islamic Relief USA spokesperson Minhaj Hassan, and has been able to help victims of the hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires of 2017, to name a few.
Indeed, if people know their donations or time can help someone in need, it seems they’ll continue to give charitably, even in a seemingly rough year. Sometimes they’re driven to work hard, to feel like they’re doing something physical to help. Sometimes they like to “see the needle move,” as Smith puts it, and understand how their donations are affecting people in need.
