Gulf-Area Charities Still Need Your Help

When the hurricane season kicked off last Thursday, all eyes turned to the Gulf region. Newspapers, magazines and cable news shows were full of stories about whether FEMA and state governments’ emergency operations teams were adequately prepared to deal with potential disasters.

But what about the charities in the region – many of which were swamped with donations in the immediate aftermath of Katrina but saw attention drift elsewhere by the end of 2005?

Many of the charitable groups, non-profit foundations and hospitals based in Louisiana and Mississippi don’t seem prepared for the coming season – in our survey of a dozen groups, most of them didn’t have adequate resources and had seen donations slow to a trickle in recent months.

There were a few exceptions and some generous donors still paying attention to the region – when Rudy Giuliani recently gave a speech in New Orleans during the PGA Tour, he donated his entire speaking fee (usually $100,000) to a few local charities - Friends of New Orleans, St. James AME Church, Catholic Charities of New Orleans, St. Dominic’s Church, Fore! Kids Foundation and Dillard University.

As one example, The Blood Center for Southeast Louisiana (800-863-5663) keeps running into roadblocks in their effort to raise $4 million to build a new laboratory 36 feet above sea level (their first lab was swamped by Katrina, which left them with $2 million in uninsured losses) and to purchase medical equipment such as a blood mobile. After nine months of efforts to reach out to FEMA, the center’s community development manager, Suzy Potter, says that she still has not received any funds from the federal agency nor does she have any idea when she can expect it. Potter says that she wrote to 100 of the Fortune 500 companies – “90% of them said that they only give to corporate entities like the American Red Cross.” Though they received some donations last fall, the level has dropped off steeply in recent months. “I’m not getting any yeses – I’m just getting nos.”

Brian Landry, the vice president of marketing at The Children’s Hospital of New Orleans, describes the situation as a “two-edged sword” – the devastation of Katrina forced them to “cancel several fundraising events.” The hospital was shut down for about a month after safely evacuating 100 children and their families. Though Landry says they’re operating at 100%, the hospital is experiencing significant losses and anticipates losses of $30-40 million by the end of year. One bright spot has been a $5.3 million donation from the nation of Qatar, $5 million of which will directly benefit patients and the rest will go towards the restoration and renovation of the hospital’s Kids First primary care clinics.

But officials at the Greater New Orleans Foundation and the Community Foundation of Greater Jackson say that the level of donations has remained consistent since the post-Katrina surge of giving last fall. “It’s tough work,” says Linda Montgomery, president of the CFGJ.

Here are some other foundations and groups which need your help:

Baton Rouge Area Foundation
Common Ground Collective
Food Bank of Central Louisiana
Gulf Coast Community Foundation

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 4th, 2006 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Hot Stories!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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