As Wars Drag On, Founders of Grass-Roots Groups Fight the Good Fight

Kathy Buckley never set out to create a charity. In early 2003, the Army sent two of her sons to Kuwait in

advance of the invasion of Iraq. Ms. Buckley, who lives in Melrose, N.Y., began shipping them homemade cookies to share with their fellow soldiers.

She and her husband, Ken, were interviewed on a local television news show about their views on the war and how it affected their family. They mentioned the care packages they were sending, and talked about why it was important to show support for the troops.

“People watching that station started sending us money,” Ms. Buckley says.

Goods came pouring in, too: drink mixes, chewing gum, granola bars, and candy. People also sent her the names of deployed soldiers, which she added to her rapidly growing list.

Ms. Buckley wanted to be sure the donations were handled responsibly, so she applied to get charity status for her fledgling group, Military Mom in Action. With the help of volunteers who work in her basement, she now sends monthly packages to 1,200 troops in 16 countries.

‘It’s My Third Job’

Like others who started support-the-troops efforts shortly after the war in Iraq began five years ago, she has sometimes struggled to keep the project afloat.

“I didn’t expect to be doing it this long,” says Ms. Buckley, who works in a bakery and does sewing and alterations. “It’s my third job.”

In November, Ken lost his job as a driver for a propane company, and she had to pick up extra hours at the bakery.

“I was thinking, ‘How am I going to do this?’” she says.

For a time, she hoped that someone else would volunteer to take over, but no one has. She says she has difficulty turning down new requests — in April she will expand her mailing list to 1,700.

Although people keep telling her to slow down, she has no plans to do so. “I feel this is a calling right now,” she says. Her sons are still overseas — one currently stationed in Germany, the other on his third deployment in Iraq.

Soldiering On

Other all-volunteer groups have faced similar strains — their leaders toiling long hours with no end in sight, sometimes dipping into their own pockets to pay administrative and other costs.

“Running a nonprofit is hard work, and most of our groups are doing this in addition to their full-time jobs,” says Allison Barber, a Defense Department official who created the America Supports You network, an online clearinghouse of military and veterans’ charities.

Some grass-roots groups have grown into large national charities. Many more are run by just a handful of people, often military parents or spouses, who didn’t plan to create permanent organizations. “These are in-the-moment groups that want to respond to a need today,” says Ms. Barber.

The high demand for services and the diversity of needs put a particular strain on the smaller groups, Ms. Barber says. “People who are passionate give and give and give,” she says. “There’s a fatigue that sets in.”

Mike Cash established Operation Family Fund in 2003 to provide wounded veterans and their families with financial grants.

But working full time at a day job while also running a nonprofit organization takes a toll, says Mr. Cash, a program manager for the Navy in China Lake, Calif.

“You put in 10 hours a day at work, and then you put in a couple of hours at night and on weekends,” he says. “It is very, very hard.”

Still, as the father of a Marine, he says, he hasn’t considered stepping down: “That passion helps drive you.”

Dan Shannon expected that Operation Homelink, a charity he founded in 2003 to provide families of deployed troops with refurbished computers, would face demand for its services for a long time. Like Ms. Buckley, though, he too hoped to pass the baton at some point.

“I assumed that once I got it going there would be a veteran who is retired who would say, ‘This is a great idea, let me take it over for you,’” says Mr. Shannon, who owns a commercial real-estate company in Chicago. “I’m still waiting for that guy.”

‘They’re Stuck With Me’

In 2004, Ginger Dosedel co-founded Sew Much Comfort, a national charity with headquarters in Burnsville, Minn., that creates and distributes clothing adapted for the needs of soldiers recovering from injuries. She had hoped that someone with more management experience would take over for her as chief executive. “No one is stepping up to do it, so they’re stuck with me,” she says.

But, she acknowledges, it would be hard for her to quit. She was recently offered her dream job, teaching at a school near her home in Beavercreek, Ohio. “That’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” she says. She turned down the job — without regrets — to continue running Sew Much Comfort.

For others, the choice of whether to keep going is more complicated.

Michelle Foster, an air-traffic controller in Fort Worth, Tex., started an organization called Operation Candy Cane in December 2004 with her friend Susan Conley. In a way, the project was a victim of its own success.

Ms. Foster and Ms. Conley started with a plan to send 100 care packages during the holidays, but collected so much money that they sent 300 instead. “It was almost like people were just waiting for us to ask them to help,” Ms. Foster says. The next year, they planned to send 600, but ended up shipping 1,200.

The project became overwhelming in 2006 when Ms. Foster and Ms. Conley began accepting donations of batteries, disposable cameras, candy, drink mix, and other items from two corporate sponsors, which meant they had to inventory the items and put them in storage. They also started sending packages throughout the year, instead of just before the holidays.

Ms. Conley and her husband, who helped run the group, were parents of a young child and had recently purchased a home. They couldn’t keep up with the project’s demands, and Ms. Foster knew she couldn’t manage it alone. The charity founders decided to use the remainder of their cash and inventory for a 2007 holiday mailing and then dissolve the organization.

“It left a void for me,” Ms. Foster says. “It’s not something I wanted to end.”

Richard Arsenault has fewer regrets about shutting down KIA Kids, an Atlanta charity he helped found in 2003 to raise scholarships for children of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“There were others that came and took our place that can do a much better job,” he says. “We were doing things in our spare time and as we could.”

The group held a motorcycle ride and attempted to sell T-shirts, but sold only a handful. “It just wasn’t coming together,” Mr. Arsenault says. In four years, the organization raised approximately $4,000, then shut down and gave the money to the American Legion Legacy Scholarship Fund.

Still, Mr. Arsenault says, “it was a good experience.”