Struggling Toward Recovery

Even the $3.7-billion charities raised after Katrina may not be enough

In response to Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it caused in the Gulf Coast and surrounding

areas two years ago, the nation’s largest charities have raised nearly $3.7-billion in cash donations, and have spent or earmarked more than $3.4-billion of that money for relief and recovery efforts so far.

A Chronicle survey of 55 charities that have raised money to aid the storm-tossed region and its people found that the groups have committed a median of 91.1 percent of the cash they have raised, meaning that half of the groups have allocated a higher percentage of their money, and half have committed a smaller share.

The 24 groups in the survey that assigned a dollar value to their noncash donations reported raising a total of $614.6-million in products and services such as medicine, building materials, food, and water.

The amount of cash raised exceeds that raised by American charities in response to any other crisis, topping the more than $2.2-billion donated in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

However, officials at charities who are still working with storm survivors say even the unprecedented outpouring of charitable giving may not be enough to meet the continuing housing and social-service needs they see in the Gulf Coast — needs, they say, that may worsen in the coming year as federal support for survivors decreases and many of the poorest evacuees, lacking the resources to return home, settle permanently in the cities to which they originally escaped the disaster.

The chasm between need and government resources is “a Grand Canyon,” says Ashley Tsongas, a policy adviser at Oxfam America, in Boston. “Nonprofits are never going to be able to fill that gap.”

Emptying ‘Buckets’

Adding to the pressures on charities: a slowdown in fund raising and in volunteerism to bolster recovery and rebuilding efforts. In the Chronicle survey, the 48 groups that reported how much they took in both this year and last had raised a median of 93.5 percent of their total funds by the storm’s first anniversary.

And while several groups are still bringing volunteers to the Gulf Coast to rebuild the region’s devastated houses, what was once a steady stream has slowed to a trickle, say several charity leaders.

Next year at this time, “we’re going to be three years after Katrina, and the volunteers are going to just about dry up,” says Denise C. Galatas, special assistant to the president of the Southern Mutual Help Association, in New Iberia, La., which focuses on housing and economic-recovery efforts in its state’s rural parishes.

The American Red Cross, in Washington, which stopped actively raising money for the crisis in February 2006, is among groups that still have cash to spend on recovery efforts: It told The Chronicle that it has raised $2.2-billion to date for Katrina response efforts, and has committed more than $2.1-billion thus far. The Red Cross is still spending a remaining $36-million in its Katrina fund. Last year at this time, the fund held $197-million.

But the remaining money won’t last long, says Jeanne Ellinport, director of communications for the charity’s Hurricane Recovery Program. The Red Cross’s new leader, Mark W. Everson, has just visited New Orleans to consult with organizations collaborating on recovery efforts, and the group will be announcing specific plans for the remainder of its donations for storm victims around the second anniversary of Katrina.

Of the $80-million budgeted for helping displaced individuals get back on their feet, $39-million is earmarked for Means to Recovery, a program introduced last October, in which families work with a case worker to figure out a recovery plan, and are then eligible to benefit from up to $20,000 in assistance for housing, job training, used vehicles, and other needs. (The money, Ms. Ellinport says, goes directly to providers of the necessary goods and services, and not to the families themselves.)

The program, which is thus far paying on average $8,700 to $10,000 on behalf of each applicant, is designed to aid 4,000 families. But it has generated criticism that it is excessively bureaucratic and has been insufficiently advertised to storm survivors.

The charity has countered that it has responded to complaints by trimming some red tape, but has said it needs to ensure that money is not being used fraudulently.

Means to Recovery’s budget will shortly be spent, says Ms. Ellinport: “We expect those funds to be gone by December or January.” And sometime next year, so will the rest of the Red Cross’s Katrina money, she notes.

Southern Mutual Help, which reported raising $7.3-million so far, has tried to make its money stretch to meet local needs, says Ms. Galatas. It has spent $3.9-million, and has worked closely with other groups and with volunteers to help with the 600 homes it has built or restored.

And it’s carefully parceling out the rest of its resources, she says, because it sees at least another year left in its recovery work — and possibly another seven for the charity’s efforts to help economically redevelop rural regions decimated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The group continues to raise money, and points to the $1.5-million it received from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in Battle Creek, Mich., and the $1.25-million it received from the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, in Philadelphia, as key forms of support. But, Ms. Galatas says, she’s worried about the calls she’s received lately from other charities and grant makers alerting her to the fact that they have “a little bit left” from the money they have raised or set aside for hurricane aid.

“What that tells me,” she says, “is that those buckets are emptying, and they’re not going to be filled back up.”

Planting Roots

One group that usually works overseas has spent the past two years establishing roots in Louisiana and Mississippi. Until Hurricane Katrina, Save the Children, in Westport, Conn., had no presence in the region, except for a few programs in northern Mississippi. But now, says Mike Kiernan, the charity’s communications director, the charity is digging in for the long haul: “We will not be leaving the Gulf Coast.”

In January, Save the Children opened several new programs in the area: activities to help schoolchildren up through the eighth grade learn to read at their grade level; after-school programs to improve children’s nutrition and fitness; and Early Steps, an early-childhood-development effort that uses home visits and programs at schools and community centers to reach new parents.

Save the Children has leaned heavily on corporate donors for its recovery efforts. The insurance company New York Life is supporting its literacy-education projects aimed at Gulf Coast kids, and in April the television show American Idol gave $1-million to support the charity’s work in the region, part of the $8.2-million it has taken in so far.

The charity is optimistic about its efforts on behalf of youngsters affected by the storm, says Mr. Kiernan, and confident it can quantify results in a way that will appeal to corporate donors as it continues to raise money: “If we can get more of these kids to read at grade level — because so many of them don’t read at grade level — then we would consider that a success.”

Shoring Up Local Groups

Other charities that are still raising money for, and still working on, Gulf Coast recovery, are finding tough challenges ahead as they struggle to meet local needs.

“One of the biggest needs is rebuilding the nonprofit infrastructure,” says Ms. Ellinport of the Red Cross. “The social-services industry was really wiped out.”

This past winter, the Capital Area United Way, in Baton Rouge, La., provided grants to local charities to enable them to send representatives to a training session on fund raising, sponsored by the umbrella group the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations. “What we were trying to do is rebuild capacity, and prepare organizations to reach out for national grants,” says Georgeann Chaffee, the Baton Rouge group’s planning director.

Those small groups are key to bringing the Gulf Coast back, says Ms. Tsongas of Oxfam America, whose organization has been focusing on aiding grass-roots groups that serve poor, minority, and immigrant residents of Louisiana and Mississippi.

This spring, the organization received a $7-million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support its work.

“We really have been seeing from the very first days that it has been the community-based organizations that have been driving the recovery,” says Ms. Tsongas. “If you go into communities of color, and you see any progress, nine times out of 10, it’s grass-roots groups that have gotten things done.”

And much of this work, she says, has occurred in spite of a chronic lack of communication on the part of government agencies about what federal and state recovery funds are available, and how they have been spent. Also, too many programs, she says, are not focusing on the most needy: “We’re not seeing a lot of resources put into getting people out of FEMA trailers and into affordable rental housing.”

The lack of permanent housing is also fomenting social problems that often land in charity’s laps, according to Donna Alexander, executive director of the United Way of South Mississippi, in Gulfport, who says United Way’s member charities are coping with spikes in mental illness among children and the elderly. (A study released this month by researchers at Louisiana State University of 321 residents in 10 federal trailer parks found high levels of depressive symptoms among respondents. Only one in three of the adults surveyed were employed — compared with 70 percent who said they had jobs before Katrina.)

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced that it will begin working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in January to move storm survivors out of the latter department’s trailers and into rental housing. In March, federal housing subsidies to renters will begin to decrease incrementally over the next year.

The end of the trailer parks, Ms. Alexander says, is “a double-edged sword” for evacuees and the charities that serve them. “You have the minimum protection from the elements, and many think it is better than nothing,” she says. “But the environment in these trailer parks is awful. It would be better if we can get these people living farther than 15 feet apart.”

Setting Priorities

To help prepare for the work ahead, the United Way of South Mississippi is starting a new capital campaign, with a goal of $1.5-million, or more than twice the amount the group raised in 2005, the year of Katrina.

“But I think another $300,000 is doable,” says Ms. Alexander, citing increasing generosity by local donors over the past two years. The group is also aggressively applying for foundation grants, she says, which is a new strategy for the organization.

For the charities serving the Gulf Coast and its people, Ms. Chaffee, of the Baton Rouge United Way, advocates “training ourselves away from fund raising around Katrina, but instead fund raising to bulk up the sector. At some point, people affected by Katrina are still going to be special, but they are quickly becoming a fact of our local community. They’re assimilated.”

And that may mean charities and donors will need to realign their philanthropic priorities, supporting basic needs like food and shelter over other programs.

“We need to learn what is necessary, and what can be let go,” says Ms. Chaffee.

On the other hand, she says, “You don’t want to not fund things like battered-women’s shelters, or substance-abuse clinics, when you have a population as marginal and as stressed as the one we’ve inherited.”

Ms. Chaffee sees hard choices ahead, “and they’re not going to be popular. We’re going to walk a tight wire between what the average person supports and what the need is.”

Carrie Levine contributed to this article.