As I sat writing a story for Suburban Living last week, I heard a motor outside my kitchen window. I looked up to see my young neighbor mowing my lawn. Even though I can mow it with just a little arthritis pain, I was surprised and grateful for his service. That feeling is shared by many veterans and their families through the services of a Fuquay-Varina nonprofit called Military Missions in Action (MMIA).
The United States has long been blessed with a generous citizenship. Fully 30% of adults volunteer and they each contribute an average of $2,000 worth of services each year. But this does not even count what we do for our family, friends, and neighbors. All the bad economic news of the last few months made me wonder what is happening to these very important services. So I called Mike Dorman, founder of MMIA, to ask.
PAST
What have been the biggest changes in the last few months? What was the first alarm?
When we started shutting everything down, I realized how devastating it could be for any nonprofit, including ours. Volunteers can’t work. Nonprofits rely on the generosity of people, so our fund-raising capabilities go away. The whole structure of society changed. We lost 50% of our funding because our major fund-raising events were all scheduled during March and April, especially one that has been a mainstay for the last several years was completely gone. Jersey Mike’s Day of Giving vanished when Jersey Mike’s closed.
What did you do to think it through?
I took a day-long motorcycle ride—’social distancing on two wheels.’ During that day I realized first that I had to stay calm, second that I had to carry on the mission that I was given (God called me to do it), and third that I had to keep the faith (God will provide).
What did you decide to change?
Being a good nonprofit means being a good community partner. Most of our volunteers are over 65 and at high risk. They need to take care of themselves and that will result in very limited services. Still, we have a lot of resources that our community could use. If we focus our efforts locally, we can find ways to give back to the community.
With our disaster response program, we had a lot of antibacterial wipes and cleaning supplies. This was another way we found that we could help our community with much needed, hard to find supplies. We packed them up in the truck and delivered antibacterial wipes to police departments for nursing homes and shelters, as well as veteran homes and families.
We had also just received coffee from our partners at Black Rifle Coffee company. We got the okay from them and were able to pass out coffee to our first responders in the local areas who needed a well-deserved pick me up.
We used to deliver food to homeless veterans all over the state through the Veterans Administration’s Stand Downs. These always meant lineups for services, so they were all closed. We could not take the food around the state anymore. But one of the needs here at home is school children, who are not in school but used to get their primary nutrition from school food programs. So, we began taking the food that would have gone to the stand downs over to the schools that needed them. We were using our resources to feed those in our own community.
We have food, hygiene kits, and bedrolls for stand downs and know there are local homeless veterans that need them. It turned out that the police knew where they liked to stay, so we took some filled packs to those places. Also, we teamed up with the women’s shelter in Raleigh to provide them with hygiene kits, coffee, antiseptic wipes.
How did you protect yourselves during these drop-offs?
We followed social distancing requirements, used gloves and masks, and even passed out masks to the homeless – veterans who otherwise would not have had them. One of my decisions on that motorcycle ride was to do what’s right, not what was easy, even if it is not exactly what our mission statement says.
What did you have to learn to make the change?
I had to learn how to operate without 50% of budget and 90% of our work force. We had to re-evaluate everything to see how we could meet the needs that we promised the public. Some of us worked longer hours. Some worked at their homes. We learned that some of our volunteers have talents we didn’t know about, like making masks or plastic plain for sleeping mats and networking with other groups to meet the community’s needs.
The question came up about how we could do the pickups from people who volunteered furniture and other items. So, we set up a trailer in front of the office where people could do a no-touch drop off. Zak, Jillian, and Mike Arthur are still doing pickups, if people put items in their driveway or garages where we can pick them up while still keeping a safe distance.
Who helped you learn all the things you needed to learn to adapt during the pandemic?
Friends and family, mentors, advisors, and other people in the community. These include special advisors like Scott Quilty (a veteran in the area) and my fiancée Jillian. A lot of prayer helped. There were also Core Volunteers like Tim Virgillio, who was instrumental in motivating me to get MMIA off the ground years ago. We text, email, and talk several times per week. Also, we have monthly board meetings by Zoom and I meet with Chairperson Tracey Watson on a weekly basis and talk with her almost every day. I’m definitely busier now than before the stay-at-home orders, helping out in the community.
When did you put the new plan into action?
We have to constantly readjust the plan, because everything is changing on a daily or weekly basis. We add people to the list who have needs. We started a project for parents to challenge kids at home by writing thank you letters and coloring patriotic pictures for our servicemembers. We even teamed up with Home Depot for that one. They gave us 1,200 kits that MMIA sent home with lunches.
The other side of the adjustment is that we used to partner a lot with the American Legion, but they are closed down. Our motorcycle groups can’t help with pickups and deliveries currently. IBM, Cisco, and Fidelity Investments all had fund-raising events that can’t be done any more because they need to do business in a different way to keep their employees safe.
Who is getting more and who less service than last year?
We’ve reduced the number of care packages for deployed troops because we couldn’t afford postage. Four or five stand downs for homeless veterans have been canceled. They would have served over 700 vets. Deliveries to veterans are down as well as pickups from people donating furniture because we need to protect the volunteers who do them. They can’t go into a home to pick up furniture because of the risks. Also, for the safety of the vets, we can’t make modifications inside their houses. But we still do outside ramps.
On the more side, we’ve provided a lot more help than in the past to first responders in the form of food, disinfecting wipes, and Black Rifle Coffee. We’ve also helped community service organizations. We’ve dropped off items to Piney Grove Baptist Church and Pine Acres Community Center to provide food for free-lunch kids. Their volunteers deliver the meals to the homes and MMIA has assisted with delivering weekend boxed meals.
What stories can you tell that show the impact
of the changes?
Some of the deployed units, like the USS Harry Truman, have been extended overseas and requested care packages, but due the postage problem, we can’t send them. Shipping costs are up, and our funds are down.
On the positive side, we are creating and strengthening relationships, teaming up with other groups like Project Front Line to prepare plates and deliver meals. Old North State Catering, Gatherings Church, and Century 21 are part of the team that feeds our front-line workers as well.
What are you doing online now that you used
to do in person?
As I mentioned, our board meetings are online. We used to have face-to-face meetings with potential donors. Now, they are all online. Most of the work in the office is done remotely. I go there once a day to check voice messages and mail. We are using social media more now to get the word out about what we are doing. If people need assistance, and people not at risk can contribute, we have found new ways to raise funds online. For example, we had a virtual 5K fund raiser, where people run on treadmills or in parks and login to start and stop.
How will Phase 1 change your plans? (Open many retailers. Ensure social distancing, mask usage, enhanced cleaning, employee symptom screening, vulnerable worker accommodations, and education to combat misinformation. Limit gatherings to 10 people. Reopen parks. Encourage teleworking).
It will allow volunteers who want to and feel safe to get out with proper protection to pack kits for veterans, get back into the office to answer phones, keep records, and accept applications for projects or requests for assistance.
We can now do a quasi-stand-down, where instead of setting up our wares under a tent or in a room, we find out what individuals need and they get a drop off. We’re doing this for Jacksonville.
How will Phase 2 change your plans? (Lift stay-at-home order. Strongly encouraging vulnerable populations to observe it. Require public places and businesses to follow safety protocols including capacity reduction.)
In Phase 2, we will start having more events. We can do motorcycle rides where riders can stay 6 feet apart. We will
increase the amount of wheelchair ramp building. We will slowly start going back into homes for bathroom modifications as well as for pickup and delivery of furniture. We can start resuming care package collections and drives to get snacks and hygiene items to ship overseas.
How will Phase 3 change your plans? (Lessen restrictions for vulnerable populations. Encourage physical distancing and minimal exposure when it is not possible. Increase capacity at public gatherings.)
People’s generosity will enable us to return to our full mission. We will focus less on delivering meals but continue to help those with high risk.
How will Phase 4 change your plans and how will MMIA have changed? (After most people have received vaccines, lift all restrictions).
We will be stronger due to the lessons we learned. A big one was to spread out fundraisers over the year instead of concentrating them in the spring. We also learned how to make more personal homeless veteran deliveries instead of just relying on stand downs.
We will adjust our methods more often. Every 6 or 12 months we will re-evaluate what we do and how we do it. Also, we have found many more groups willing to collaborate, and this makes it possible to serve more people. We’ll continue to do our best to support the businesses that have supported us in the past.
In our society, are we going to do better?
Many businesses owners are starting to ask themselves, ‘Do we have to be in an office from 8 to 5?’ Are there are people who need help that we don’t know about?
The virus has made families strengthen their family bond with changes like eating together more often. It has given parents a new appreciation for what teachers do. Kids are saying they want to get back to school. Restaurants have learned they can do a stellar take-out business compared to in-house. Some will realize they don’t need to rent such big spaces.
Hopefully, everybody has learned something important, our families, our friends, and our country as whole.
Mike Dorman’s adaptation to this catastrophe provides us with an important message. More care for each other, more collaboration, and more focus on our own communities will make us a wiser nation.
