Dallas Disaster Relief
One of our Special Works programs, Disaster Relief, was particularly effective this year. I would
like to highlight and detail St. Vincent de Paul’s hurricane relief efforts in the greater Dallas area,
which began in September 2005, the final month of last fiscal year, and which will continue
until October 2007 if not longer.
Certain parallels can be drawn between the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s Dallas-area
hurricane relief efforts and the gospel story, Feeding of the Five Thousand. We began with very
meager resources -- five loaves and two fishes seems an apt analogy -- yet we were privileged to
help thousands of needy evacuees. The growth of resources which has allowed us to do this has
been nothing short of miraculous.
The Community’s Need - The Katrina Hurricane disaster caused the greatest displacement of
people in the United States since the Civil War. Approximately 8,000 evacuees were bused to
makeshift shelters in downtown Dallas, and thousands of others were lodged in hotel rooms
throughout the greater Dallas area.
Our Immediate Response - The Society of St. Vincent de Paul Council of Dallas evaluated the
situation, taking into consideration our agency’s capabilities, the needs of the hurricane victims,
and the availability of other community resources. We concluded that the collection and delivery
of furniture and household items were the greatest unmet needs within our areas of competence.
While providing necessities like household items and furniture to the needy has always been a
part of our mission, the magnitude of the post-Katrina need greatly exceeded our internal
capabilities and resources. To overcome this, we quickly secured the use of several warehouses
across the metropolis to facilitate the receipt of furniture donations. In addition to using the
centrally-located warehouse at Bachman Lake, we acquired the use of warehouse space south of
downtown Dallas, donated by Goldmetal Recyclers, and to the north in Plano, donated by IDI.
Collaboration with the Business Community - With the help of D Magazine and the University of
Dallas, we reached out to the business community for logistics assistance. Corporations
responded to our needs with overwhelming support. Wal-Mart Stores and Bell Helicopter
responded by setting up and initially operating our distribution centers at our Plano and Bachman
Lake locations respectively. Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club also helped locate and arrange
accelerated delivery of certain critically needed items and made other items available at
discounted prices. In addition, the Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club Foundation donated $50,000 to
help defray the overhead costs of our relief efforts. Allyn & Company provided pro bono public
relations support. Atmos Energy deployed a number of its employees to help sort delivery
items. Aidmatrix Foundation created a web-based registry of our furniture and household item
needs, to which donors could respond. AT&T and On-Target helped host the Aidmatrix website.
Target Corporation donated gift cards, which we used to buy household items to distribute to
evacuees. Target also sold us additional merchandise at discounted prices. Sprint Nextel
provided 15 wireless phones and complimentary airtime, allowing key relief personnel to stay in
constant touch with each other. The company also provided a large number of complimentary
long-distance phone cards, which have been given to many evacuees. The success of our efforts
became apparent when Ashley Furniture arrived unannounced at one of our distribution centers
with a truckload of upholstered furniture.
Support from Donors - We reached out to the general public for donations through
advertisements in the Dallas Morning News, the Texas Catholic, inserts in church bulletins, and
strategic distributions of flyers. Mention of our efforts in the Dallas Morning News, Peoples
Newspapers, and the Texas Catholic helped as well. The donations allowed us to deliver many
sofas and easy chairs, which otherwise would not have been possible. In addition to
approximately $2 million of in-kind donations of furniture and household items from individuals
and entities such as the Mike Modano Foundation, Potter’s House, and Saudi Aramco, we also
received in excess of $300,000 in cash donations from the Meadows Foundation, Wal-Mart and
Sam’s Club Foundation, Catholic Foundation, North Texas United Methodist Conference,
Kennedy Foundation, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul National Disaster Fund, and a number of
generous individuals.
Support from the City of Dallas and Community Foundations - We reached out to the City of
Dallas, partnering with Mayor Laura Miller and the Mike Modano Foundation in Dallas Project
Assist. In an effort spearheaded by one of our board members, the Modano Foundation collected
$159,000 in donations from members of the Dallas hedge fund community, which were used to
pay for our purchases of furniture for evacuees.
Support from Volunteers and Outsourced Labor - There was plenty for volunteers to do, to be
sure. Phone bank volunteers fielded incoming calls, helping guide evacuees through the process
of registering with the Federal Energy Management Agency (FEMA), working with the Red
Cross and other agencies, finding lodging, and scheduling deliveries and pickups of furnishings
from donors to evacuees. In our distribution centers, volunteers sorted donated and purchased
household items into “Fill It With Hope” containers organized by family size and content
Categories: kitchen items, linens/household items, and toiletries/cleaning supplies. Two of our
initial volunteers were evacuees from New Orleans themselves: a Congregation of the Mission
Brother, who has subsequently returned to New Orleans, and an Ursuline Sister, who will
remain in Dallas and work part-time as part of our staff.
There were familiar faces among the volunteers, including dedicated SVdP Conference
members, but also many, many new faces. It was particularly heartening to see the many church
groups: Catholic, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic, working together on a daily basis at the IDI
distribution center in Plano. Some of these groups were from the Reformed Church of Plano,
First United Methodist Church of Plano, Friendship West Bible Church, St. Mark the Evangelist
Catholic Church, Custer Road United Methodist Church, St. Paul the Apostle Catholic
Church, and St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in Garland. Women and children from
the Texas Muslim Women’s Foundation were also well represented in our volunteer workforce,
including the nice Muslim lady who proudly announced to her fellow volunteers, “I am a
Vincentian!”
We initially envisioned a volunteer-centered effort, and throughout the process were blessed with
many faithful and hardworking volunteers. We soon came to realize, however, that the
magnitude, complexity, and exhausting nature of the enterprise -- many trips up staircases,
carrying heavy furniture to third-floor apartments -- required a cadre of able-bodied young men,
as well as licensed commercial truck drivers and trained forklift operators that could be counted
on to show up for work every day. Our fleet of five rental delivery trucks was used to deliver
furniture to evacuees and often to pick up donated furniture on the way back to our distribution
center. We chose to utilize outsourced labor, through All Star Staffing. As the volume of
furniture donations subsided, we consolidated all operations into the IDI distribution facility in
Plano. This had the benefit of reducing the complexity of our enterprise, and reducing overhead
costs as well.
National Council Support - Both familiar and new faces from the ranks of the Society of St.
Vincent de Paul from other areas of the country also made major contributions to our Dallas
relief efforts. Our National President and National Executive Director traveled to Dallas to see
our operations firsthand, and they could not have been more supportive of our efforts. Volunteers
from SVdP Councils in Dayton, Ohio, Lewis & Clark, Washington, Ft. Worth, Texas, and
Detroit, Michigan sent in personnel, a number of whom had valuable disaster relief experience,
and all of whom worked tirelessly at our command center and our three distribution centers.
Other Councils, such as those in Madison, Wisconsin and Rockville Center, New York, sent
truckloads of materials to us in Dallas, for distribution to the evacuees.
The Present
As the needs of evacuees shifted from basic living necessities to creating new lives for
themselves, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul USA was selected to become part of the United
Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) $66 million FEMA-funded Katrina Aid Today
initiative. St. Vincent de Paul was awarded $5 million, with a portion allocated for use in Dallas.
This two-year case management grant draws on our core competency of face-to-face interaction
that is supportive and empowering. We seek to help the evacuees become self-sufficient. Our
task is to listen to the survivors, help them see their options, affirm the choices they make, and,
when necessary, help them access available community resources.
Reflecting on this remarkable year, my thoughts are best summed up by a verse from Isaiah
26:12: “Oh Lord, you mete out peace to us, for it is you who have accomplished all we have
done.” Today we continue to reach out to the needy, by hiring long-term case managers for the
evacuees and by furthering our Special Works and parish-conference programs.
Henry Hermann, President
Dallas Council
May 13, 2006