Grant Makers Stand Up to Support Military Veterans

When the Child Crisis Center of El Paso sought money from the Wolslager Foundation, in San Angelo, Tex., the center made sure to highlight the work it does to assist military families from nearby Fort Bliss.

“It is a very critical part of what we do, and funders should know that,” says Alfonso V. Velarde, executive director of the crisis center, which provides emergency shelter to abused and neglected kids.

The strategy paid off, says Stephen J. Wolslager, the foundation’s vice president. The Wolslager Fund awarded the center $50,000 last year and expects to give even more this year when it makes its grants decisions in December.

The center, Mr. Wolslager says, distinguished itself because of its work with dependents of military personnel.

As the Iraq and Afghanistan wars drag on, a growing number of grant makers around the country, like the Wolslager Foundation, are paying closer attention to the vast and escalating needs of service members, veterans, and their families. Even with the government’s considerable support, many needs, like child care and job training, are falling through the cracks. And the economic downturn has aggravated matters for new veterans, who have higher rates of unemployment and homelessness than other Americans.

But experts working to shape and expand grant making to help service members and their families say the philanthropic response has been too small, slow, and piecemeal. They say reluctance to get involved with military causes and ignorance of the immense needs are among the reasons too few grant makers are getting involved.

“It’s taking philanthropy a long time to gain traction on these issues and figure out the best response,” says Jack Amberg, senior director of the veterans program at Chicago’s McCormick Foundation and a retired U.S. Army officer. “These wars and these veterans are different than we’ve ever seen before: more deployments, more physical and mental traumas. And we have a responsibility to come together as a community to help them continue to contribute to our communities after their service.”

The topic was front and center in October at a meeting of donors and veterans charities organized by the San Antonio Area Foundation and will be spotlighted again next month at a conference in Arlington, Va., organized by the Philanthropy Roundtable, a group of grant makers and philanthropists.

James Carafano, a security and defense expert at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, says the key message the Philanthropy Roundtable hopes to send to donors is that helping service members make a smooth transition to civilian life will benefit not only the veterans and their families themselves but also the whole country.

“Investing in veterans is investing in America,” Mr. Carafano says. “If you look back into the generations, veterans are some of our country’s greatest leaders and innovators. This is not about handouts, this is about philanthropy recognizing that it has the opportunity here to serve veterans and to serve America.”

Greater Awareness

In recent years, a handful of foundations have taken on veterans affairs as a new grant-making priority, and at least a couple of brand-new grant makers have been created that focus on military causes.

More commonly, though, grant makers that support organizations fighting an array of social problems, like homelessness or domestic violence, are starting to recognize that service members, veterans, and their families are often a critical and distinct part of the populations they serve.

And with this year’s start of troop withdrawals from Iraq, it appears that more and more grant makers are beginning to take notice of the many health, financial, and psychological challenges service members face returning to their families, jobs, and neighborhoods.

But they’re not taking action fast enough to suit experts already working in the field. Nancy Berglass, director of the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund, a program of the California Community Foundation, in Los Angeles, is especially disappointed that more grant makers have not made a more concerted effort to focus on the issues facing service members and returning veterans.

“The thousands of Vietnam veterans that still struggle today with deployment-related needs offer important insight into our nation’s failure to address the impact of war on those who serve,” she says. “It is frustrating that we may be repeating those mistakes by not coming together as a field to identify the problems and the opportunities and mitigate the impact on our communities as the troops return.”

The fund Ms. Berglass runs was created in 2006 by David Gelbaum, of Newport Beach, Calif., and has given a total of $246-million to nonprofit organizations around the country to provide such services as counseling, child care, and emergency financial assistance to soldiers, veterans, and their families. It was one of the first and biggest funds to focus on the needs of troops, veterans, and their families, and it has sought to persuade other grant makers to undertake similar work.

Special Grants

Philanthropy leaders aren’t the only ones hopeful that more donor organizations and charities will step up to better serve members of the military, veterans, and their families.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been making the rounds this year, including at the Council on Foundations annual conference in Denver last spring, asking Americans to help create educational and job opportunities for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And the first lady, Michelle Obama, often makes a point in her speeches of championing veterans causes.

But despite the growing concern about the needs of military members and their families, many grant makers simply do not have veterans affairs on their radar screens or have purposely steered clear of giving money to support such efforts. Some grant makers say they are confounded by the alphabet soup of new and old charities working with or in a military culture not always easily understood by civilians.

Others contend that the military should be taking better care of its own. News reports and congressional inquiries in the past few years that have questioned the financial practices of veterans groups have made some grant makers wary of entering the arena. And others, already stretched thin by the tight economy, say they are reluctant to start making grants to new causes.

Many of the grant makers that have recently started supporting organizations aiding military families have done so not by creating new grant-making programs but by expanding the groups eligible to apply for specific types of grants.

For example, Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash., this year added a special component to its philanthropic jobs program, supporting charities that provide technology-skills training to military veterans and their spouses.

The Blue Shield of California Foundation, in San Francisco, whose giving focuses on domestic-violence issues, last year started to pay special attention to the needs of military families. And the Eleanor Foundation, in Chicago, which helps female heads of households become economically self-sufficient, is considering ways to assist returning female service members.

“Every foundation can have its own entry point into the military and veterans issue,” says Bess Bendet, director of Blue Shield’s domestic-violence program. “Nobody has to solve this on their own. We each need to take our sliver—ours is intimate-partner violence, but there’s child care, employment, housing—and do our part and look for the connections.”

Learning to Tell Stories

Charities that serve service members, veterans, and their families have to do their part, too, to identify and reach out to grant makers, says Sandie Palomo-Gonzalez, a program officer at the San Antonio Area Foundation.

Her group’s Center for Nonprofit Support is helping to train local charities to raise money and improve their business skills.

“Nonprofits have to learn where to look and how to tell their stories,” Ms. Palomo-Gonzalez says. “Even though they are serving vets, they are part of a larger community. Which means, for example, if you provide family retreats, look at the funders who support stronger families, not just those that support vets.”

Over the past three years, the San Antonio Area Foundation has awarded $12-million from the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund to local groups, including the Child Crisis Center of El Paso. Nearly one-third of the kids who receive emergency shelter at the center are from military families.

“This is one of our major justifications for support,” says Mr. Velarde, the Child Crisis Center’s leader. “We include a narrative in every grant application about it, and while we don’t always know for sure, we think that more than before, this is what is catching the attention of funders. We think they understand what we are doing for these families at Fort Bliss, and they want to help.”