It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. — Confucius
The Climate Resilience Fund came to our community this week to learn, listen and see how our community responded to the 2020 wildfires. It was a sincere privilege to connect Katie Oran to local leaders to share our response and focus on resiliency. The convening kicked off with a lovely reception Monday evening, Tuesday and Wednesday panels and tours.
I had the privilege of being on a panel about local response on the ground, from philanthropy and policy with Representative Pam Marsh and Tucker Teutsch, Firebrand Resiliency Collective. Following are most of the thoughts I shared on philanthropy and community response, as well as my lessons learned.
We have many local foundations and funders. United Way is a bit odd because we’re a grant maker and a grant seeker. The philanthropic community is strong here and it didn’t do advocacy much before the wildfires of 2020. Advocacy matters.
For a community with a population of around 225,000, we have more than 10 local family foundations and receive grants from numerous statewide and national foundations. Foundations showed up immediately and with real money. Two called and said, just go into the portal and sign. We’ll send $100,000.
Media coverage matters. United Way of Jackson County received gifts from every state and 7 foreign countries because of the New York Times coverage.
Many businesses took care of their own which was very helpful. Harry & David and their nonprofit, Teresa McCormick Center, raised almost $1 million for their impacted families. Providence Health Center and Asante Health System both opened RV parks and gave people brand new RVs to live in immediately.
United Way raised over $4 million and we chose to spend $1.5 million immediately by creating a funding grid for anyone in the burn zone including unhoused to middle income families and individuals. We invested $2 million in the intermediate if people could be permanently rehoused and the balance we saved for long-term recovery. We have now invested all our fire fund.
Today, barely fire season, there are 3 active wildfires in Oregon. So, here’s my top ten list of things to do, remember, learn, whatever the right word is…
- Have everyone’s cell phone now. Before a disaster.
- Don’t have a health pandemic at the same time as a disaster. We couldn’t congregate shelter and we couldn’t have large national response groups come to help.
- Dance with whoever shows up not just who brung you. Be surprised and get to work.
- Mutual aid works at the beginning and can become unhealthy after six months.
- Work with, around, besides, over, under government. Reminder, we received $454 million from FEMA. It made a huge difference, and it mattered. Unfortunately, FEMA doesn’t exist the way it did before.
- Focus on emotional/spiritual support of survivors and providers.
- Life is relationship based. So is work. Maintain and nurture relationships all the time.
- Focus on people. Stuff has energy. We kept stuff for some reason. We all had a million conversations about, “When I went down the hall to get my”…and it was nail clippers, a blanket, house slippers. And in some cases, there was no down the hall anymore, much less slippers.
- Don’t be the disaster in the disaster. Do reports, write thank you letters, be clear, concise, and credible.
- Don’t focus on the 30,000-foot level. For fires, all you can see from that level is smoke. The Lakota people believe in the 2,000-foot level. It’s the eagle eye view. They can see the curvature of the earth and the mouse. Keep that focus on the big picture and the person needing help.
In closing, there’s a place for everyone in disaster. Figure out your place and do something.
Onward,
