Entering our seventh year of assisting military families has given me the opportunity to see a lot of other organizations, many of which we work with, all focused on the same goal of helping them through the challenges of serving our nation.
What USA Cares doesn’t do is have the opportunities to cut the ribbon in front of a house we just bought for a veteran or family, we can’t show anyone pictures of families that we sent to Disneyland or on Vacation because we don’t do that. We just put food on the table and keep the lights on.
Not very sexy.
Last week, Mark Wills was in town and came over to the Fort Knox PX where a steady stream of fans stopped by to meet him. He was as always, charming and personable. He left this week for a USO Tour overseas. (that is all I can say at the moment).
This is Mark with me, Anne and John Flanagan, one of our very first volunteers with USA Cares. It was a great way to spend three or four hours with Mark and those who think he is a good guy.
This week, I had the privilege of briefing a senior army leader in the medical community who had just arrived at Fort Knox. As we entered the office the officer immediately started with, “I know who you guys are, and what USA Cares does for military families. What you did for our soldier who was terminally ill and his family was nothing short of amazing, and I know it made his passing easier. I am so thankful that you guys are here for them.” Now I would like to shout that from the rooftops, put the officer on YouTube and push it out to all our supporters and friends, but I can’t.
The Army, and all the services, are very nervous when it comes to “implied endorsement” of any non-profit organization and those who still wear the uniform can get in trouble for doing so as an official member of the military, so we never ask, and we go out of our way to protect their voluntary thanks and offers of help.
So we do it the hard way, one meeting at a time, looking for new friends who might know “the guy” and on and on. Grant research and building relationships, earning the trust of our donors and maintaining that trust. This has been a week like that.
This week has been very full and very eventful. Our Executive Director was in Houston at a Car Race with the owner of Tax Master, and they raised a nice sum of money for USA Cares, then on Tuesday, he was in DC with Fannie Mae, a CFC exhibition for Government Engineers and then with the makers of the video game Call of Duty who also wants to assist USA Cares.
That was a pretty good week all by itself, but then Dennis Miller and Bill O’Reilly really made things happen, when they got to talking about USA Cares on Wednesday and Bill announced that he was personally sending USA Cares $25,000! That night we received an additional $17,000 in donations on our website, a tribute to the trust that his viewers have in his judgment.
As we move forward, we now have programs for Veterans who are suffering from PTSD and its awful effects, we have a growing employment training and placement program and we are looking for our first disabled veteran to assist with a new home grant, if he or she wants to live here in the central Kentucky area.
Still nothing sexy, but we are happy with keeping the lights on, and food on the table. The fact that we have kept over 1,800 military kids from being evicted from their homes counts too, but not something you will see on the front page of newspaper.
One family at a time, and with their privacy and dignity protected. That is USA Cares. I hope it never changes.
Merry Christmas to all, and special thoughts to those in harm’s way,
Roger
