It Can Be a Heart-wrenching Process..

Patsy extends her hand. I take it, shake it and say nice to meet you. But she’s already halfway down the brightly lit hall, to where photos line the walls.

Photos of soldiers serving in World War Two. Photos of young girls in flowing prom dresses. And a photo of Patsy as a carefully coiffed, smiling young woman.

“I was Miss North Carolina,” Patsy says. What she doesn’t say is that she recalls those days more clearly than she recalls yesterday. She makes this trip down Memory Lane regularly because, some 50 years after the Miss North Carolina photo was shot, Patsy suffers from dementia.

Patsy is one of 34 patients who spend full weekdays at Alzheimer’s Family Day Center, a $1.2 million-per-year operation located in an office building in Fairfax. At AFDC, patients eat, play, make Christmas ornaments, pass time with each other. All have a fatal illness, but you wouldn’t know it from Patsy’s enthusiasm or the smiles of her fellow late-stage Alzheimer’s patients.

“These people are dying a little bit every day,” explained Nancy Dezan, executive director of AFDC. “But these people have fun. We dance, we sing. They have a very high quality of life.”

AFDC is a longtime partner of United Way of the National Capital Area. During the current calendar year, donors across the Washington area will have given the agency about $44,000. Slightly more than $21,000 will have gone for general operations. The remainder will have gone for physical therapy.

AFDC not only serves as a place for dementia and Alzheimer’s patients to spend the day. It also trains and supports family members, many of whom are dazed by the changes that the diseases cause in their loved ones.

One of the hardest changes for family members to handle, Nancy Dezan said, is the tendency of Alzheimer’s patients to live farther and farther in the past, as Patsy does.

It can be a heart-wrenching process. One elderly woman at AFDC mistakes her husband for her father, because she thinks she’s 14 years old. Another patient has forgotten the names of her children. Still another used to be a physician. Now she sits at a table, staring into space, with a half-smile on her lips.

“I have people here who are at a functioning level of a six-month-old,” Nancy Dezan said. Yet the average age of her patients is at least 65. Although AFDC charges each patient $75 a day, those funds don’t come close to covering the agency’s costs.

If she had additional funds from United Way donors, Nancy Dezan said she’d “try to do more for families,” especially where the patient is strapped for funds, or penniless. In 2006, she said, she budgeted $30,000 to subsidize people who couldn’t afford AFDC’s services. In this calendar year, that figure will have swollen to $190,000.

AFDC would also like to move to a larger space, and do more training for family members who support Alzheimer’s patients. United Way funds would support expanded efforts in both of those areas, Dezan said.

Patsy is back at a table now. She and 11 other patients are coloring Christmas decorations. It’s obvious that all of them are suffering from what Nancy Dezan calls “gentle confusion.” But they are safe, they are dry and they are eating bagels cut into eighths.

“If they stayed at home all day and stared at the walls, they’d go downhill very quickly,” Nancy Dezan says. Thanks in part to United Way donors, they don’t have to do that.

So Begins Another Busy Day...

They're a family of trucks--a tractor-trailer in the first loading dock, a box truck in the second, a van in the third. The first vehicle is delivering food. The other two are picking it up. Three more trucks are waiting in the alley.

Meanwhile, on the warehouse floor, forklifts zoom around and volunteers stack cans of peas. And out front, a hungry man loiters and lingers, hoping for food.

So begins another busy day at the Washington area's largest food dispensary, the Capital Area Food Bank (CAFB).

United Way of the National Capital Area has supported CAFB since it opened nearly 30 years ago. But the need in late 2009 is greater than ever, according to CEO Lynn Brantley.

"I'm worried," she said, in an interview in her office last Friday. "How are we going to meet our ongoing need? People are losing jobs. Our agencies are seeing a 30-to-200 percent increase [in demand for food]. I've never seen a time like this."

According to Brantley, the surge in demand comes from people who have never sought free food before. "We're hearing from attorneys who say, 'I lost my job. I used to contribute to you. Where do I go for help?'," she said. The Food Bank expects to have distributed 25 million pounds of food by the time 2009 ends. That's the largest one-year total in CAFB's history.

CAFB does not hand out food at its headquarters on Taylor Street NE. It collects food from donors and distributes it to more than 700 nonprofit partner agencies around the metropolitan area. More than 380,000 people will have been fed by a CAFB partner agency in 2009, including more than 2,000 children a day.

CAFB is no longer a mini-storefront operation. Its budget for the current fiscal year is $10.8 million. It employs more than 80 people at its warehouse. It expects to move to a new headquarters on Puerto Rico Avenue NE in 2010, which will increase both its budget and its number of employees.

United Way donors contributed $30,900 to CAFB in the last full fiscal year. That's a relatively small sum. Yet each dollar contributed to CAFB buys three meals for one person, Lynn Brantley said. "Every dollar makes a big difference," she said.
The first thing a visitor sees on CAFB's front door is a sticker that reads: UNITED WAY.

"I've always been a proponent of United Way," said Lynn Brantley. "We as a community have to pull together, and United Way is a critical way to do that."

The Need is Greater Than Ever....

Alexandria has always had a way of pulling the wool over the eyes of visitors.

In Old Town, pricey shops and restaurants offer the best from around the world. On nearby side streets, quaint 300-year-old homes routinely sell for more than $1 million.

A smash hit movie starring Denzel Washington was made about the local high school’s state champion football team. Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford once lived in Alexandria. George Washington once worshipped there.

So is Alexandria heaven on earth? Not by a long shot.

More than 1,500 Alexandria families have incomes below the federal poverty level. More than 5,600 Alexandria families are poor enough to qualify for food stamps. At Carpenter’s Shelter, the largest homeless support agency in Alexandria, the staff has seen more than 1,000 homeless children and adults so far this year—nearly one percent of Alexandria’s population.

But in Alexandria, United Way has been meeting these challenges, and others like it, for 64 years. On Dec. 11, leaders of the Alexandria Regional Council of United Way kicked off this year’s fundraising drive.

It’s an ambitious one. The goal, as announced by chair Carla Fleming, is $1 million. But history is on Alexandria’s side. “United Way is what you can always depend on,” Alexandria Mayor William D. Euille told a crowd of more than 50 at the kickoff event. “It’s always there.” He urged the audience to “give till it hurts. Help people help themselves.”

Perhaps because of its relatively small size, Alexandria has done an especially good job of raising and spending money via a Community Impact Fund. The council, and seven others like it around the Washington area, steer undesignated dollars toward larger community problems that no single agency can resolve. Last year, Alexandria donors gave $158,000 to Community Impact programs.

Because of Community Impact, “United Way is more than just a way to collect dollars,” said James Hoben, co-chair of a local non-profit called Housing Action. United Way money “helps us try to identify problems and coordinate solutions better.”
“People are much more engaged” in a city of only 140,000 or so, which means that “Community Impact funds are more carefully spent,” said Jasmin Witcher, Director of Development and Strategic Alliances at Carpenter’s Shelter. Other city leaders said that more than 100 Alexandria organizations benefit from United Way via the Community Impact program.

Forms were passed out. Checks were written. Year 65 of United Way in Alexandria was underway even before the leftover vegetables were wrapped in plastic.

“The need is greater than ever,” said Jasmin Witcher. “I hope the response is, too.”

My Mailbox is Groaning. It's the Usual Suspects...

My mailbox is groaning. It’s the usual suspects--year-end appeals.
Some of them plead. Some cajole. Others yank me with photographs of sick children. Still others remind me that I gave a year ago, and surely I will want to give again, won’t I?

I make three stacks—a yes stack, a no stack, and an I’ll-decide-in-a-week stack. But first—always first—I start by writing a check to United Way of the National Capital Area.

The reason is not just habit and tradition, but suppleness and effectiveness.UWNCA does not aim my gift at just one agency—unless I tell it to. It does not aim my money at just one issue—unless I tell it to.

United Way will always honor my wishes. But it will also use my money wisely and well when I check a box—as I always do—that says, “Please use my gift in the most effective possible way.”

This is my way of recognizing that needs change in our community, sometimes very quickly. The last year is an excellent case in point.

Last December, most gifts in our community went to religious groups, higher education and hospitals, as they usually do. There’s nothing wrong with any of those causes, and there never will be.

But the recession was just beginning to develop into a Category Five storm. Some of us didn’t believe it would be as bad as it turned out to be. Others didn’t anticipate how steeply our needs for food and shelter would increase.

Now, a year later, we’ve seen reality. I’m delighted that my end-of-year gift in 2008went to provide meals and emergency housing. But my gift couldn’t have done that if I had restricted it to one agency or one geographic area.

United Way gives me the pathway to aim dollars at big, real problems. I can designate one agency, or I can designate one problem via the UWNCA Community Impact program. This gives me, the donor, the control I want. But it also gives me the flexibility that I know the community needs.

If you’re sitting on the fence about making a gift to United Way this year, I hope you’ll climb off it and write a generous check. You can rest assured that your money will go wherever you specify. But if you don’t specify, it will go toward the greatest community needs.

Sound good? It does to me, too.

29 days to go...

December is make-or-break time at every charity on earth. It’s no different at United Way of the National Capital Area.

The major holidays that fall in this month are all about good will and good tidings. If you care about those humans around you who are less fortunate—often through no fault of their own—a gift in December is very much in order. A gift to UWNCA would be especially useful and very much appreciated.

There’s also the wonder of a tax deduction (if you itemize deductions). Cynics love to say that this—and only this—motivates charitable giving. Mr. and Mrs. Moneybags are coming to the end of yet another tax year, and they discover that they may owe the government more than they would like. So, panicky, they give at the end of the year to dodge the tax man.

I try not to be quite so cynical. I give each December for another reason: To try to make next year better than the one that’s about to end.

Money isn’t the only way to do that, of course. But after the harrowing events of 2009, every drop of charity carries additional weight.

More of us are hurting in the Washington area than I could ever have imagined. To help out with the basics—food, shelter, health care—is a clear responsibility this year. But so is the avenue by which a giver gives.

I’m about to write my 43rd consecutive check to the local United Way. I give because I care. But I give via UWNCA because I’m as persuaded as I was in 1967 that this organization gets my money closest to what hurts, and closest to the agencies that can do something about that hurt.

My name isn’t Pollyanna, and I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy. Nor do I think that my modest gift, by itself, can undo the recession or bring someone’s house back from foreclosure. But I do believe—very firmly—that everyone can and should do what they can. If that happens, we’ll never need millionaires, because we’ll already have many millions. Not to mention the kind of caring, supportive community we all want.

So…29 days to go in this final month of 2009. Let’s make it one to remember, for givers and getters alike.