NEW YORK (AP)
-- Some of the biggest names in rock 'n' roll were on the bill for the
nationally televised "12-12-12" concert benefiting victims of Superstorm
Sandy, but the charity in charge of distributing donations has been
thinking small when it comes to doling out the $50 million-plus raised
by Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and other
stars.
More than 160 organizations and
counting have gotten shares of the Sandy relief funds collected so far
by the Robin Hood Foundation, and many have been the type of small,
grass-roots groups that seemed to be everywhere on the devastated New
York and New Jersey coastlines in the initial weeks after the storm.
Some
of the grants have been small, too, but the foundation's staff said
each has been designed to make a difference on a human scale.
The
list of grant recipients includes places like the Point Pleasant
Presbyterian Church, of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., which got $25,000 so
it could install showers and beds for the stream of volunteers it has
been deploying to help rebuild damaged homes.
Numerous
food pantries got grants to help serve thousands of hot meals. Another
group got $25,000 for making storage space available to families that
need a temporary place to put salvaged possessions.
Robin
Hood gave a $100,000 grant to an operation called Rockaway Relief,
hastily put together after the storm by James Brennan, a San Diego
nightclub and restaurant owner who grew up on New York City's
flood-ravaged Rockaway peninsula.
In the days
after the catastrophe, Brennan hired tractor-trailers to send space
heaters, water pumps and generators into the disaster zone. Then, he
rallied volunteers to help rip out soggy walls and furniture. Since
then, the group has repaired plumbing, electrical and heating systems in
close to 100 homes, he said.
"This was really
way over my head," Brennan said. "But there is so much more that these
people need. I could probably rattle off 500 families right now that
don't have washer and dryers and have no way of paying for them."
The
foundation gave another $150,000 to the Mennonite Disaster Service,
which has been dispatching home builders almost daily to New York City's
Staten Island and the Rockaways all the way from Pennsylvania.
Volunteers,
mostly rural farmers, leave Lancaster County, Pa., at 4 a.m., put in a
full day mucking out homes and hanging drywall in the city, and then
make the 170-mile drive back to Pennsylvania at night, said MDS
Executive Director Kevin King. So far, they have worked on 117 houses.
"We are looking to set up a long-term camp," King said.
Founded
in 1988 by a hedge fund manager, Paul Tudor Jones, the Robin Hood
Foundation is one of New York City's premier anti-poverty charities. It
spends about $125 million per year funding a wide array of food banks,
schools, medical clinics, and other programs.
Still
overseen and financed by big names on Wall Street, the charity is
considered a pioneer in "venture philanthropy." The programs it funds
are put through rigorous performance evaluations, with a goal of
rewarding nonprofit groups that achieve the strongest result per dollar
spent.
The foundation's executive director,
David Saltzman, said it has tried to apply some of those concepts to the
Sandy relief effort.
"Our general strategy is
to get out to the hardest-hit communities ... and see with our own eyes
who is doing good work, and then be able to pump money into the
strongest organizations doing the most needed work in the toughest-hit
communities," he said. "That is the kind of grant-making you can't do
from behind a desk."
Robin Hood had also been
in charge of distributing the $65 million raised by the Concert for New
York after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Saltzman said
that in the weeks ahead, he anticipated that the foundation would focus
on housing - still a critical concern in neighborhoods where many
houses are still uninhabitable, or lack power and heat.
"We need to make sure nobody is freezing this winter in New Jersey, or New York or Connecticut," he said.
That
effort has included making a $1 million grant to the Affordable Housing
Alliance, in Monmouth County, N.J., which is using the money to buy and
install manufactured homes for people displaced by the storm. Legal aid
groups have also gotten donations to help storm victims maximize FEMA
benefits and deal with banks and insurers.
Robin
Hood has also made a $2 million grant to a program, administered by the
Fund for the City of New York, that will make interest-free loans to
nonprofit groups that suffered losses in the storm.
"Not one single penny will be diverted to anything other than helping people who were hurt by this storm," Saltzman said.
Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
