9/11 Charity Held Up as Model Of How Best to Help Bereaved

Immediately after the terrorist attacks, there was an outpouring of support across the Washington region. National disaster-relief charities started collecting millions of dollars, but there was no local apparatus in place for Pentagon victims.

Five days after the attacks, a coalition of about two dozen philanthropists and political, business and civic leaders established the Survivors' Fund. Daniel K. Mayers, a Washington lawyer, served as its chairman.

"We immediately then sat down to draft a short plan, almost a constitution, of how we were going to operate," Mayers said. "We resisted attempts to dot all the i's and cross all the t's because we didn't really know at the outset the problems we were going to face."

Alan G. Merten, president of George Mason University, was among two dozen leaders who set policy and allocated funds for the Survivors' Fund. "People came in with both their heart and their head and helped make both the compassionate decisions when asked to but also made the proper fiscal decisions when we had to," he said.

The federal Victim Compensation Fund provided significant financial relief to those directly affected by the attacks. Of the $7 billion in public dollars given to victims, $224 million was allocated to victims of the Pentagon attack. Most of the rest went to those affected by the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Feinberg said the Pentagon victims had different emotional reactions than the New York victims, many of whom worked in the financial sector.

"I found it absolutely amazing how the military families at the Pentagon were much more calm, dispassionate and understanding of what the Congress and the charities were trying to accomplish," Feinberg said.

Over the first seven months after the attacks, the Survivors' Fund spent just $800,000 of its donations. This was by design. The charity's leaders wanted to be around to help families over the long term and knew that donations eventually would dry up.

In total, the most money -- 58 percent -- went toward helping families pay bills. About 14 percent of the charity's funds went to education for survivors, 11 percent helped pay for victims' medical expenses and 14 percent was spent on emotional and mental-health needs.

For case managers, guiding first responders and military family members to psychological counseling was the most challenging.

"It's not wholly acceptable in the first-responder community, the military community, to be asking for mental health resources," said Stephanie Berkowitz, a case manager from Northern Virginia Family Service. "We really had to educate them and help them understand the impact of trauma on your being."

The fund's spending patterns represent a marked contrast to larger national charities. The American Red Cross's Liberty Fund was flush with $1 billion in donations. The Red Cross originally planned to spend some of the money on long-term investments for the disaster-relief agency but later bowed to pressure from donors and victims and pledged to devote all Sept. 11 donations to victims of the attacks, awarding large cash grants to victims' families.

Bernadine Healy, who was Red Cross president on Sept. 11 but was ousted two months later, said the charity was spending its money "hand over fist."

"We never went out to raise money so we could give to limousine drivers who lost business or SoHo millionaires who got dust on their walls," Healy said last week. "It was probably one of the most extraordinary diversions of philanthropic dollars."

But Russ Paulsen, the Red Cross's disaster recovery chief, said the disbursements helped victims and their families, especially those who lost primary breadwinners, "find their way in the world."

Nearly three-quarters of those affected by the Pentagon attacks said they believed the Survivors' Fund's case-management model worked better than if the charity had disbursed lump-sum cash payments, according to a survey commissioned last year by the charity.

"We don't know when or if the next tragedy will strike," Mayers said. "But I do think that it's very important to at least say here's how we did it, here's how our community got together, and here's the facts and a legacy for the future."