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Observations on New Orleans Nonprofits: Introduction
Rick Christ In August I had the opportunity to return to New Orleans for several days. Though my primary reason for returning was the biennial conference of my college fraternity, I took the opportunity to connect with some of the New Orleans firefighters that I met when I as there last October, searching the lower Ninth Ward for Katrina victims. I also scheduled some time to visit with nonprofits in the region. Putting that meeting together was difficult until I sent an email to NTEN's Katrin Verclas, who put me in touch with John Kimble, New Orleans Public Policy Director for the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations (LANO). John hosted a meeting at Nonprofit Central, a converted furniture store just outside of the central business district that houses office and meeting space for area nonprofits. John sent an email to area nonprofit executives and about a dozen took advantage of the opportunity to discuss how they could use the web to enhance their mission. I reviewed their web sites prior to my arrival and made some observations about these nonprofits. First, it's clear that many of them did not exist a year ago. They were created in direct response to the hurricane's damage. They are collections of individuals who have banded together to help their community cope with rebuilding. Those nonprofits who were in existence before the storm have re-defined their mission in light of the reality that everything in the area has changed after the storm, that everything is harder to do since, and that their constituents are always and primarily concerned with rebuilding. The lack of progress in the New Orleans area is hard to fathom. When I was there in October, leading a strike team of search dogs from Virginia and Maryland, I saw the poorest part of a poor city at its very worst. I also saw devastation in the better-off parts of the region, like Slidell. Ten months later, I came back to see a city a little bit cleaner, but hardly recovered. The lower ninth is still devastated, with hardly any rebuilding. Much of the debris is cleaned up, but some of the gray mud, ubiquitous in October, was still present. The only color I saw this time was grass growing abundantly where houses once stood. Ray Nagin may take credit for the grass growing, but I bet it is result of, so much, shall we say, organic fertilizer (I hear that the crabs in the Gulf have never been so plentiful and large. Has their diet been, in part, the victims our search dogs didn't find?) The formerly upper-middle Lakeside neighborhood is hardly better. I worshipped at a church that was in the midst of rebuilding, and barely had enough electricity on Sunday to power the new organ and air conditioning. Most homes in the area still had the FEMA X's spraypainted on them and no one living in them. One nonprofit executive lives in St. Bernard Parish, just east (downstream and downhill) of the lower Ninth Ward. It's an area that was flooded by the levee breaks, and I'm told every building was damaged. Only about five percent of its residents have returned. The nonprofit executive I spoke to lives in a FEMA trailer, in a neighborhood of FEMA trailers. As we discussed one problem of using the web here – internet access – she told me that she expects to get her landline phone service restored, to her trailer… on November 18th! That reminds me of the old joke about the Soviet Union's inability to delivery goods and services. Now, the Soviet Union has been out of business since 1991, so let's say the story takes place in 1989. The joke goes like this: A man walks into a car dealership and wants to buy a new car. The salesman goes through the list of options with him, fills out the paperwork, and then announces that the car will be delivered on June 5, 1997. The customer asks if it will be the morning of June 5, or the afternoon. "That's eight years from now! How can you possibly care?!" roars the salesman. "Because," the customer replies calmly, "the plumber is coming in the morning." This is part of the recommendations made to New Orleans area nonprofits in August of 2006 by Rick Christ, a managing partner in NPAdvisors.com. Rick also volunteers as a Search and Rescue Field Team Leader and instructor with the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. See also: "Basic Web Recommendations to Small Nonprofits" "Ten Free (or almost free) Web Tools and Ideas" October 2006 | ||
