Shortly after a plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the nonprofit Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors issued a plea to volunteers, urging them to help the families of service members killed in the attack.

Dozens of volunteers responded to the call, traveling to Washington at their own expense to help families through a difficult time.

Since then, demand for the organization’s counseling and support services for military families has been growing rapidly, with two wars and an increasing suicide rate among service members.

TAPS, as the nonprofit is known, has 42 employees who work to connect military families with people who have also faced the death of beloved service members. Last year, the volunteers who work with TAPS contributed 48,000 hours to helping people who are grieving.

The charity operates a telephone hotline families can call at any…

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Regulators in Arizona and New York are looking into spending and fund raising by charities formed in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or failed to follow registration and disclosure regulations, the Associated Press writes.

The investigations by both states’ attorneys general follow an Associated Press examination of 325 of the charities, which found dozens of groups that did not disclose spending or revenue or paid salaries and benefits to their founders while failing to achieve stated goals such as creating memorials.

The New York attorney general’s office said it was conducting a “broad review” of September 11 charities but did not identify any groups.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said his office’s examination is focused on a group that raised more than $700,000 to create a massive memorial quilt honoring 9/11 victims that never was completed.
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President Obama helps children who are working on a service project at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington at THEARC. (Pete Souza/The White House)

President Obama used his weekly address Saturday to call on Americans to participate in a national day of service on September 11 and help “reclaim that spirit of unity” that prevailed in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, CNN and The Hill write.

In the coming days “folks across the country … will come together in their communities and neighborhoods to honor the victims of 9/11 and to reaffirm the strength of our nation with acts of service and charity,” said the president.

“Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost; a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11,” he said….

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Dozens of charities formed in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks fell well short of their stated missions, spent virtually all their money on fund raising or putting on events, or engaged in questionable dealings that appeared to benefit their founders, according to an Associated Press investigation.

Most of the 325 groups identified by the news service, which have raised a collective $1.5-billion, fully accounted for their spending and closed after fulfilling their founding goals. But the news service found many examples of groups it said have “failed miserably,” some of which are still soliciting donations.

Among them are an Arizona charity that raised $713,000 for a memorial quilt that was never sewn; a New York religious group that lost its tax exemption after accounting for only 17 percent of $4-million it collected for victims and first responders; and a Connecticut…

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