The credit-card company American Express has teamed up with two charities, MyGoodDeed and HandsOn Network, on their 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance “I Will …” campaign by releasing a new Facebook tool that allows people to find volunteer opportunities nearby.
The tool, available on both the American Express and 9/11 Day Facebook pages, allows people to search HandsOn’s volunteering database, sign up for a project, and invite people they are connected with on Facebook to help, too.
American Express has provided a $1-million grant for large service projects in 20 cities and other efforts to mark the anniversary.
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….
Runners have two opportunities in New York to raise money for charity this September.
• On September 4, the World Trade Center Run to Remember will be held on Governors Island, in New York Harbor. The event will benefit Tuesday’s Children, the New York Firefighters Burn Center, the Police Athletic League of New York City, and several other organizations.
• On September 25, runners can retrace the final steps of Stephen Siller, a New York firefighter who ran from Battery Tunnel, in Brooklyn, to the World Trade Center the day of the attacks. The run will be followed by an anniversary ceremony featuring former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the actors John Turturro, Dennis Miller, and Gary Sinise. The run will benefit the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
The Awareness Foundation, a London charity dedicated to stopping religious violence and conflicts, will mark the 10th anniversary of the September attacks as “Awareness Sunday.”
The day will be marked by a special service of reconciliation at Westminster Abbey and church services across the United Kingdom and the United States. The charity is asking Muslim and Jewish religious groups to observe the date as well.
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…
The Paley Center for Media, in New York, will host a series of events and exhibits to mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
On September 8, the center will host a panel discussion with current and former NY1 television reporters about their work on the day of the attacks and the news media’s role in how the story unfolded.
The center will also show an exhibit of portraits of reporters at work in the days after 9/11 from September 1 through September 25.
DoSomething.org, the youth volunteerism organization, is mobilizing Americans to thank emergency responders in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
The charity is asking people to share their messages of thanks on a special site or through their mobile phones by sending a text message with the word “decade” to 38383.
People are then shown how to print a personalized thank-you flyer to give to firefighters, police units, and other emergency responders. The site also offers a guide for schools to use as part of September 11 memorial lessons and events.
A nonprofit summer camp for kids who lost parents in the 2001 terrorist attacks is shutting, The Boston Globe says.
America’s Camp in Massachusetts’ bucolic Berkshires ended its final session this week, a few weeks shy of the 10th anniversary of the attacks. The camp had hosted the children of victims of the attacks for a week in August since 2002, and many early participants grew up to serve as counselors.
The camp’s founders committed to operate it for a decade but had left open the possibility of continuing longer.
Larry Levy, chairman of the American’s Camp Foundation, said that 10 years past the attacks, the number of children of camp age is shrinking and it’s become “extraordinarily hard to raise money for 9/11 causes.”
Nonprofits across the United States are gearing up for service projects for volunteers who want to give their time to charity to help mark the 10th anniversary of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
HandsOn Greater D.C. Cares, in Washington, plans to enlist more than 10,000 volunteers to participate in a wide range of service projects throughout the metropolitan area on September 9, 10, and 11.
A small group of volunteers is getting ready now for the September service projects. Many of them gathered recently at the organization’s massive tool shed, for instance, to make sure its hundreds of hammers, drills, and shovels are ready for volunteers who will refurbish schools and work on neighborhood-improvement projects.
See this video to learn more about how this small group is preparing for the big event. And if your organization is planning its own day of service, please let…
While initial scholarship numbers for the 2011-12 school year won’t be released until September, the organization says it distributed $13.7-million for 2010-11, at an average of $17,550 per student. Everyone who applied this year received at least $500 per semester.
The fund says it operates at no cost and will continue until 2030, when the last children can apply for assistance. It is managed by Scholarship America.
9/11: The Nonprofit World Remembers offers announcements about how nonprofits are marking the 10th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks and examines how this event has affected the nonprofit world.
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