Charities Large and Small Carve Out Niches in Katrina Response

Everything about Hurricane Katrina has been huge — its fury, its devastation, and the

relief effort in its wake.

America’s biggest charities, such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army, have mobilized massive efforts to help survivors.

At the same time, countless charities — mostly small, lesser-known groups, with far fewer resources — are responding to the hurricane by helping people in ways that government and big charities often overlook. And some nonprofit groups are reaching out to help charitable institutions that must themselves recover from the storm.

Among the efforts under way:

When officials at the Louisiana Children’s Museum, in New Orleans, reached out to their colleagues at the children’s museum in New York City following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, they never imagined they would face a disaster of a similar scale.

Just days after the attacks, the Louisiana museum turned its 15th-anniversary celebration into a fund-raising event for the New York museum. And a staff member from New Orleans flew to New York to deliver a gift: 800 origami birds made by high-school students, a banner covered with messages from kids, and $5,000.

Now, the New York museum wants to return the favor. The Manhattan institution has promised that, when New Orleans reopens for business, it will send a special traveling exhibit that will run for two years and feature the work of Dr. Seuss. The New York museum will look for a sponsor to cover at least some of the expected $200,000 cost.

“We are all still in shock and we have no idea when we will return to our lives or open the museum,” says Julia Bland, executive director of the Louisiana Children’s Museum, who noted that the museum was undamaged. “But we do now know we have something big to get us going again, for us to offer our kids and families, for us to rally around.”

For some survivors of Hurricane Katrina, living in temporary housing in a time of crisis is not a new experience.

Thousands of women who have been in abusive relationships have sought shelter or received other services from the 20 charities that are members of the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Merni Carter, the coalition’s executive director, says her organization and its member groups are focusing on helping women who may be afraid to register with relief groups or government agencies for fear their abusers will use the lists to find them. In addition, her group is trying to aid women who are unable to separate themselves from their abusers to seek help.

The coalition, which previously relied almost entirely on government grants to meet its $3-million budget, is undertaking its first fund-raising effort to help victims of Katrina. Its newly created Louisiana Domestic Violence Victims’ Hurricane Relief Fund has raised more than $65,000 so far, and has begun handing out money to women in need.

For example, four families evacuated to a women’s shelter in a rural area outside New Orleans decided to stay in the area, and money from the fund has helped them pay the first month’s rent and utilities in new houses.

Another woman who made her way to a shelter in northern Louisiana received $200 from the fund to pay for car repairs. She said that her abuser had found her in the new shelter and that she had arranged to stay elsewhere in a neighboring state.

The coalition is also helping domestic-violence programs around Louisiana get the word out about their services to people who have ended up in local shelters, homes, or hotels.

“We are talking about such a vulnerable population,” says Julie M. Pellegrin, who heads a domestic-violence shelter in Houma, La. “For them, this is a crisis on top of a crisis.”

A woman fleeing Hurricane Katrina ended up in Aiken, S.C., a long way from her 78-year-old, ailing mother, who was evacuated from New Orleans to Houston. But an innovative program that provides free, 24-hour, personalized voice mail to hurricane survivors has made it easy for the woman to get regular updates on her mother’s health, and other information about her now-spread-out family.

Since the storm, Community Voice Mail, the Seattle charity that runs the program, has set up voice-mail accounts for the South Carolina woman and more than 35,000 other displaced people in 22 cities.

After the hurricane, the high-tech company Cisco Systems quickly built an 800-number voice-mail service, and handed it over to Community Voice Mail to deliver accounts to people in need. Even people who had cell phones found that their batteries were dead, they couldn’t pay their bills, or they just couldn’t get service.

Community Voice Mail, which has never before done post-disaster work, was created in 1991 to provide homeless and low-income people with a free and stable way to connect with potential employers, social-service organizations, and relatives. Last year, the charity supplied voice-mail accounts to 44,000 people in the 37 cities where the organization works.

“People need to have a way for Social Security to find them, to make doctors’ appointments, to help normalize their lives even when they are without something as normal as a telephone,” says Patricia Bonnell, a spokeswoman for Community Voice Mail.

The Grantsmanship Center, in Los Angeles, has announced that it will make its training programs available at no cost for up to 100 leaders from charities providing direct relief to hurricane victims in the Gulf Coast region.

The five-day workshops, held at sites around the country, usually cost $825 each, and provide tips for writing grant proposals and identifying sources of funds.

Details for how to apply and a list of upcoming courses can be found at http://www.tgci.com.

The Tipitina’s Foundation was formed three years ago with the mission of uplifting the musical culture of New Orleans. Now, the organization is trying to save it.

“We had to adapt quickly,” says Bill Taylor, the organization’s director. “We are now about resurrecting, preserving, reconstructing people’s lives and the musical life of the city.”

Until a few weeks ago, the charity was running its regular programs, such as one to provide free instruments to local school bands. Now, the charity is solely focused on what it calls “artist relief,” connecting with musicians who have been dispersed around the country and helping them find housing, instruments, and gigs.

Once people start returning to New Orleans, the charity plans to create what it calls a musical community center, where musicians can gather to socialize, jam, and conduct business.

The Tipitina’s Foundation grew out of one of the city’s most well-known and storied music venues, Tipitina’s, a nightclub in New Orleans’s Uptown neighborhood. Both the original club and a Tipitina’s located in the French Quarter sustained little or no damage from the hurricane or floods.

The charity is now working out of an office in Baton Rouge and one in Asheville, N.C., where Mr. Taylor has lived since the hurricane. The group has added to its Web site a database for information about musicians in need and donors willing to help.

Beneficiaries of the group’s efforts include the drummer for the ReBirth Brass Band, a popular band in the New Orleans tradition.

He had evacuated with his family to Alexandria, La., but through the charity’s Web site was able to find his bandmates and a place to stay in Dallas. A donor there gave him a new drum kit, and the band has played gigs, including taking part last week in a benefit concert, called From the Big Apple to the Big Easy, in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Says Mr. Taylor: “We are fighting to put people’s lives back together and to save something we all love and are a part of — the music culture of New Orleans.”