Untold Stories of the Recovery: The Power of the Nonprofit Effect
As we mark the fifth anniversary of Katrina, we need to acknowledge the role that nonprofit leaders have played in the region’s recovery. They helped save their neighbors and their neighborhoods. They’ve marshaled armies of volunteers to help rebuild the fabric of our city. Five years later, they’re still at work.
Cindy Nguyen, Vietnamese Initiatives in Economic Training (VIET)
When the post-Katrina levee failures inundated the Vietnamese community, Nguyen helped thousands of evacuees meet their basic needs and assisted them with navigating the complexities of the FEMA and Road Home programs. VIET is now focused on its children’s programs and has formed partnerships with organizations within and outside of the Vietnamese community.
Patricia Jones, Ninth Ward Empowerment Association (NENA)
Jones was a tax accountant who had never thought of starting a nonprofit organization. After Katrina she set up shop in a heavily damaged building and helped elderly residents register online for Road Home funding. When a funder approached her about forming an organization to help the Lower Ninth Ward, Jones was everyone’s choice to run it.
“The day after Katrina, every person in New Orleans became an entrepreneur,” says Williamson, co-founder of the Idea Village, an organization that promotes entrepreneurism in New Orleans. “MBAs used to come here to help New Orleans, but now they come here to learn and to look for opportunities.”
Martin Guitierrez, Catholic Charities
“We have a level of civic engagement in the community that I don’t think we ever saw before Katrina,” says Gutierrez, Executive Director of Neighborhood and Community Centers. “If we play our cards right, if we do what we need to do, I think New Orleans is going to be a very exciting place to be.”
Jeff Schwartz, Broad Community Connections
How do you create a place where people want to be? Schwartz, founder and executive director of Broad Community Connections, believes it’s tied up with simple things, like garbage cans, trees, bike lanes, and benches. Broad Community Connections is working to shape a commercial corridor in New Orleans that fosters economic, residential, and cultural development.
Carol Bebelle, Ashé Cultural Arts Center
“Artists and culture bearers are some of the best neighbors,” says Bebelle, executive director of the Ashé Cultural Arts Center. The Ashé Cultural Arts Center has ensured artists’ places in Central City by creating permanent affordable housing for them, in addition to hosting cultural workshops to help the community heal after the devastation of Katrina.
The Greater New Orleans Foundation has been supporting nonprofit organizations in the New Orleans area since the 1980s, but after Katrina, the Foundation’s role expanded almost overnight.
“National foundations, corporations, and individual donors came to us for advice on how to best direct philanthropic dollars,” said President and CEO Albert Ruesga. “We became the conduit through which funders were able to channel precious resources to those organizations and projects that would best support the recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans.”
According to the Urban Institute, there are 4,007 nonprofit public charities in metro New Orleans, up from 3,562 in 2004.
The Greater New Orleans Foundation has tripled its grantmaking from $6.1 million in 2005 to $18.6 million in 2006, and averaged $17.7 million in grants per year since then.
