March 12, 1998 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Fargo-Moorhead Area Foundation, in North Dakota, is using a World-Wide Web site to help stem the tide of problems that continue to surface from last year’s flooding in the upper Midwest.
The clearinghouse was started in November with the help of a $75,000 grant from the Bush Foundation in St. Paul. More than 100 donations have been made so far, bringing in about $1-million for the flood-ravaged region.
Jan Ulferts Stewart, executive director of the Fargo-Moorhead Area Foundation, says that the Web site has been helpful in coordinating quick responses from donors spread out over a large geographic area. “The region affected by the floods is vast,” she says. “A number of funders were concerned about duplicate funding.”
Donations have ranged from $210,000 from the St. Paul Foundation to help Lutheran Disaster Response salvage homes in the Fargo area, to $500 from a St. Paul resident to purchase Christmas trees over the holidays for flood-affected families in Breckenridge, Minn.
There are more than 100 needs listed on the Web site that have not yet been met by donors.
Even though the floods subsided almost a year ago, “new needs are surfacing all the time,” Ms. Stewart says. “We’ll be around as long as this disaster needs us to be.”
For more information: Contact Deb Gebeke, Project Manager, Fargo-Moorhead Area Foundation, 6091/2 First Avenue North, Suite 205, Fargo, N.D. 58102; (888) 696-3623; e-mail fmaf@rrnet.com.
To get there: Using World-Wide Web software, type http://www.floodclearinghouse.org.
