Hundreds of small memorials have sprouted in the past 10 years, but numerous communities have scaled back or abandoned such projects, and many monuments remain unfinished, the news service says.

Meanwhile, even ambitious efforts like the national memorial in Shanksville, Pa., to mark the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 have struggled. It still needs $10-million.

Memorials started to grow popular in the 1980s as way to commemorate key events, says Erika Doss, a University of Notre Dame professor. “People think if they can make a memorial, they can come to terms with what happened.”

American Muslims observing zakat are directing funds that once flowed to Islamic relief groups to aid Afghan refugees or Gaza children into building mosques locally and supporting clinics and soup kitchens in their communities, according to the public radio program.

The shift in priorities has provided a boost to local Muslim charities such as Chicago’s Inner-City Muslim Action Network, which has seen its annual budget grow from $200,000 to $2-million in the past decade.

Some of the more potentially disturbing displays, such as photos of people plummeting from the burning towers or a recording of a flight-attendant’s voice just before she died, will be placed in special alcoves away from the main exhibition, with warnings as to their content so museumgoers will not be confronted by them unawares.

“We’re not here to traumatize our visitors,” said Alice Greenwald, director of the museum slated to open on Sept. 11, 2012. But she added, with regard to the pictures of falling victims, “It is one of the aspects of the 9/11 story that if you didn’t include it, you’re not telling the story.”

The Arab American National Museum, in Dearborn–home to one of the largest Arab communities outside the Middle East–will host panel discussions and conferences and record oral histories about post-9/11 life. Admission will be free on Sunday’s Sept. 11 anniversary.

Museum head Anan Ameri said the events will highlight both positive and negative influences, including increased harassment of American Muslims and enhanced support and cooperation with other faith and ethnic communities.

“I believe that the Arab-American community and the Muslim community realized after 9/11 how little people knew about them,” Mr. Ameri said. “It made us reflect … that we should maybe have done this before. 9/11 was a wake-up call.”

The September 11 museum, which will be 80,000 square feet and seven stories under the memorial, has raised $57-million of the $79-million it needs to finish construction and pay for its initial operating costs.

The museum will include exhibits about what happened on the day of the attacks and feature artifacts like a fire engine from a New York Fire Department crew that lost 11 members.

The museum isn’t without controversy, though. Plans to store 9,000 bone fragments and other remains in the museum have met resistance from family members who would like those remains to be buried at the monument.

The museum has also attracted complaints about a possible $25 admission fee that would be charged to everyone except family members of the terrorist victims.

The study found that 34 states lack plans to take care of youngsters of any age. Twenty-one states don’t require child-care facilities to draft an evacuation plan. Twenty-two don’t require the facilities to outline how they will reunite families. Nine states don’t require elementary and high schools to adopt disaster plans.

Only six states have plans that the charity says guarantee children will get the care they need in a disaster.

The report, “Charitable Giving Among Muslim Americans: Ten Years After 9/11” by Zahra Jamal, a fellow at the institute, was based on 200 interviews.

She says government policies designed to deter terrorism have made many donors afraid to give to Muslim charities. Federal regulators and lawmakers pushed for new policies in the wake of the attacks, saying they were concerned that some charities had served as conduits for transferring money to terrorist groups.

“Since September 11, 2001, Muslim nonprofits, charities, and individuals have come under increasing scrutiny as the American government has bolstered its national security measures through laws, regulations, and guidelines on transparent and accountable giving,” Ms. Jamal writes. “The result has been major shifts in the community’s giving practices.”

Since 9/11, seven Muslim organizations have had assets seized by the government, six have been raided, and 27 other people and organizations have had their assets blocked, the report says.

“With the reallocation of funds domestically and the possibility of international giving dwindling, some leaders say that their community’s ability to give and to receive charitable monies as they did before 9/11 has been challenged,” Ms. Jamal writes.

The performance, “Ten Years Later: North Carolina Remembers 9/11,” will include spoken-word performances and selections from the Mozart Requiem and Raleigh composer J. Mark Scearce’s “This Thread,” which is based on Toni Morrison’s poem “The Dead of September 11.”

“Music has the unique ability to bring people together, crossing all boundaries of culture and creed with ease,” said Grant Llewellyn, the symphony’s music director, in a press release. “It also has the power to soothe, heal, and inspire.”

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 time of day or night and helps with paperwork. It also holds camps for children who have lost parents to war and seminars for grieving adults.

“We can bring families together to offer comfort, support, healing, and resources, as only those who have walked this journey can do,” says Bonnie Carroll, founder and president of the organization, which she started in 1994.

Ms. Carroll, herself, is a survivor. Her husband, Brig. Gen. Tom Carroll, was killed in a plane crash in 1992.

The organization, which receives no federal aid but works closely with the Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs, received a $6.6-million grant for operating support and children’s camps from the California Community Foundation’s Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund.

“Over the next five to ten years we see the program growing, become stronger, providing enhanced services, and really filling a void that is appropriately met by peer professionals,” Ms. Carroll said.

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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.

Kevin Held, who created the quilt charity, said he has done nothing wrong.