Ten Years Later, Raising Money for September 11 Survivors Is a Tough Task

Read more news and opinion about the 10th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Some nights, Kelly Green Grady doesn’t allow her children to turn on the television.

Dylan, 14, and Kayla, 12, were just toddlers when their father was one of 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees killed when American Airlines flight 11 slammed into One World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And as the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack nears and the news media start replaying the horrific images of airplanes exploding into the twin trade towers, the Cranford, N.J., resident says it’s easier to avoid them than to deal with an emotional crisis.

“They are experiencing hormones, trying to find their place in school, and this anniversary comes at a very precarious time,” she says. Losing their father, she adds, “would be hard even if they didn’t have something so public in their lives.”

But if a meltdown does occur, she will call Tuesday’s Children, a nonprofit founded the day after September 11, for support. There, she says, she knows that she will be able to find help through a crisis.

As the decade after the milestone approaches, Tuesday’s Children, in Manhasset, N.Y., stands as one of only a handful of organizations still left to help her. What remains now is a smattering of small-budget groups that provide specialized aid to help families and first responders to the attack cope with the lasting effects of the tragedy.

Those groups that still exist say they see decades more work to be done, as the needs of survivors and the families of victims evolve and in some cases grow more acute. Leaders of the charities say they hope the 10th anniversary of the attacks will bring an increase in both public interest and donations.

‘Last Man Standing’

In the months following the terrorist attacks, more than 300 charities were created to help victims and their families. Together—along with established groups like the American Red Cross—they raised more than $2.2-billion to help survivors and victims’ families and provided what seemed at the time like an endless flow of resources. But by the fifth anniversary of the event, in 2006, most of those organizations had spent all of their money and disappeared.

“We are literally the last man standing that is providing significant support services,” says David Weild IV, chairman of Tuesday’s Children. He was vice chairman of Nasdaq when the terrorist attack occurred, and he lost many friends and colleagues when the World Trade Center collapsed.

Along with Tuesday’s Children, which provides monthly activities and mentors for children of September 11 victims, and support services for the first responders who helped in the rescue efforts, only a few significant organizations remain that provide direct services for what social-service groups and survivors of the attacks call the “9/11 community.”

Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund, in Saint Peter, Minn., administered by Scholarship America, controls the largest pool of money still available—slightly more than $100-million, from which it distributes several million per year as children of the attack victims reach college age. During the 2010-11 academic year, it awarded $13.7-million in scholarships.

The Twin Towers Orphan Fund, a program of the Children’s Fund of America, in Bakersfield, Calif., also provides scholarships, distributing about $300,000 a year for education needs as well as physical- and mental-health care for survivors of the attacks and relatives of people who died.

And Voices of September 11th, in New Canaan, Conn., connects survivors and families of victims with resources to deal with the after-effects of the trauma. It is also helping the families and friends of victims create digital memorials for their fallen loved ones and is collecting the stories of survivors.

Each runs on a shoestring budget augmented by relatively small fund-raising efforts. Tuesday’s Children raises about $2-million per year, Voices of September 11th about $1 million, Families of Freedom about $100,000, and the Twin Towers Orphan Fund less than $100,000.

Economic Woes

In fund-raising intensity, September 11 has taken a back seat to more recent tragedies, such as the Haitian earthquake.

But Mr. Weild says individuals donors’ interest in supporting more recent disasters, or donor fatigue about September 11 causes, hasn’t been the real challenge. Instead, he points to two bigger fund-raising hurdles.

First, money from major foundations and corporations, which provided 80 percent of all donations, all but dried up in 2006, as the fifth anniversary of the attacks passed.

“As you get further and further away from the date of the event, it becomes harder to sustain the charity,” says Mr. Weild. “That is unfortunately true of all charities formed after disasters.”

Then the financial crisis in late 2008 wiped out many of the organization’s biggest and most-regular donors. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers—two major Tuesday’s Children supporters—were erased, and many of the financial-industry workers who supported the charity suddenly did not have the discretionary income to give, Mr. Weild says.

The organization’s budget yo-yoed with the market. From a peak of $2.1-million in 2007, it dropped to about $900,000 in 2009 and is now back up to slightly more than $2-million, says Terry Grace Sears, executive director of Tuesday’s Children. The charity decided it had to spend more time attracting money from individuals and less from corporations and now counts on corporations and foundations for only about 20 percent of its budget.

Twin Towers Orphan Fund and Families of Freedom say they have essentially given up on fund raising: Because most of their money was raised in the aftermath of the attacks, they now operate on the interest and yield on their investments. “We are basically on autopilot,” says Michele Ritter, the Twin Towers Orphan Fund’s CEO.

She describes the early years after September 11 as something of a mad dash for cash, as organizations fought over money from the American Red Cross, the Robin Hood Foundation, and other groups that supported charities like hers.

Her group raised $2.5-million in 2001, $3.65-million in 2002, and $1.75-million in 2003, but its collections dropped to $50,000 to $70,000 by 2004 and have remained there.

Families of Freedom was started immediately after the terrorist attacks with a $3-million gift from the Lumina Foundation and then raised another $100-million in the six months following the event through the efforts of President Clinton and former Sen. Bob Dole.

Today all of its money comes through unsolicited gifts, mostly small ones.

Grieving for the First Time

Many people still need help, albeit a very different type than they did a decade ago. As the children of September 11 victims—like Ms. Grady’s kids—hit their adolescence and start to comprehend what happened to their parents, they are starting to grieve for the first time.

“The population has needs,” Mr. Weild says. “There are some kids that are doing very well. But some kids go off to college, seem to be fine, then start having problems because they never grieved the loss of their father.”

The “9/11 community,” says Mary Fetchet, the founder of Voices of September 11th, is much like the generation that survived the Holocaust and their children.

“We continue to address what will be intergenerational issues with thousands of people,” she says. “When you have a tragic event, there are organizations that come in for a year or a month, but then we see grief is not linear. People are coming forward on the 10th anniversary for the first time.”

The number of people who need support is growing, she says. It is now clear that many of the first responders who helped in the rescue operations have suffered long-term physical and emotional problems—and they will compete for scarce private and government aid.

Last year, Tuesday’s Children received a $750,000 grant from the federal government to start a program to provide support for them, but Mr. Weild says that budget cuts have put that money—and the program—in jeopardy.

“A lot of people feel the 10th anniversary is a milestone, and when we get beyond the 10th there won’t be a need,” Ms. Fetchet says. “When someone calls us and has a very complicated situation, the organization that may have provided financial help is not in existence today.”

A Bump in 2011?

The anniversary has, however, raised hopes for fund raisers. Ms. Ritter expects the Twin Towers Orphan Fund to triple its donations and hopes to take in about $200,000 in 2011.

Most of that will come from grass-roots fund-raising efforts; her group, like Families of Freedom, doesn’t have any fund raisers on its staff.

Ms. Ritter is working with about a dozen individuals who have started projects to raise money. For instance, a supporter in Corona, Calif., Jessica Azbell, is now creating personalized football jerseys, each with a patch that bears the name of a victim of the terrorist attacks. She plans to sell 2,982 jerseys in total—one for each victim—and donate 80 percent of the proceeds to causes such as the Twin Towers Orphan Fund.

In Dallas, John Barrett, a firefighter, is organizing a stair climb at the 55-story Renaissance Tower. Some 343 firefighters—each of whom will carry the picture of a firefighter who died on September 11—will climb the tower twice, for a total of 110 stories, the height of the World Trade Center. He hopes to collect about $5,000 from local Kohl’s department stores for the Twin Towers Orphan Fund.

Tuesday’s Children, on the other hand, hopes to raise several hundred thousand dollars at a gala event in Lower Manhattan on September 10, Mr. Weild says.

Nonprofit leaders worry that after the anniversary, fund raising will continue to be tough.

“It has been reinvigorating,” Ms. Sears says of the increase in interest Tuesday’s Children has seen in recent months. “We are getting all sorts of interest and requests to help. There is just a lot of focus on how the families are doing from a PR standpoint. The real question is what it will be like September 12.”