With the 2024 hurricane season underway, national and regional nonprofits have collaborated to assist the ongoing recovery from Hurricane Idalia and help the local community prepare for future storms.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a national organization focused on health and health equity, awarded Community Foundation Tampa Bay a $300,000 grant - money that’s now funding grant awards to Bay Area nonprofits.
It’s the first collaboration between the two well-established national and regional nonprofits.
“It was a little bit of a cold call by them, which was great,” says Community Foundation Tampa Bay Senior Director, Community Investments Katie Shultz. “They explained to us that they look to invest their money in disaster relief roughly six months or so after most disasters happen. Based on their research, that’s when they see a lot of the public support wanes and the fervor that comes immediately after a disaster stops. But there are still significant needs in the community as far as rebuilding and addressing the impact of the hurricane.”
Dealing with the aftermath of Idalia
To assist the ongoing recovery from Idalia in the northern counties of the Bay Area, the Community Food Bank of Citrus County
has a $45,000 grant to replenish its shelves after the nonprofit, which
feeds 70,000 people a month, stocked more than 60 food pantries, ministries, shelters and soup kitchens across Hernando, Sumter and Citrus in the wake of Idalia.
Pasco Kids First, a children’s advocacy center focused on child abuse and neglect prevention, intervention and treatment, has a $30,000 grant to rebuild its center, which was flooded during Idalia.
Assisting nonprofits who have their operations disrupted by hurricanes is one focus area of the grant program, Shultz says
“The community members they serve are also going through the storm and still need their services,” she says. “Many of them have to keep running food pantries and facilities serving homeless individuals remain critical services after a hurricane.”
Preparing for future storms
The $300,000 also funds storm preparation and resiliency investments to better prepare nonprofits and low-income communities for future storms. The grant funding to nonprofits arrives at the outset of what is projected to be a busy hurricane season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts well-above-normal activity in the Atlantic basin because of La Nina and warmer ocean temperatures from climate change.
To help with hurricane preparedness, St. Petersburg-based nonprofit Sol Relief, which formed in 2018 to fly disaster relief missions and has over the years expanded its programs, has a $24,000 grant to fund a series of community disaster relief and CPR training sessions.
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Courtesy Community Foundation Tampa BayCommunity Foundation Tampa Bay Senior Director, Community Investments Katie Shultz“They’ll be happening throughout the year,” Shultz says of the preparedness sessions. “If there’s a great response, we hope to fund more. Because what we learned from Ian is that it could have been us and you need to be prepared. “They’re always going to be coming, we have to be ready. We need to give people the information, the tools and the resources.”
Rebuilding Together Tampa Bay, which assists local homeowners with repairs to prepare for or recover from storms, has $25,000 for community education programs on hurricane preparedness and to stock its hurricane response distribution center, which serves low-income homeowners in hurricane-impacted areas of Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties. Rebuilding Together and Atlanta-based non-profit ToolBank opened the 5,000-square-foot distribution center in an East Tampa industrial park last September.
“With the funding, we will be able to stock the warehouse with parts, equipment, flashlights, medical first aid kits, et cetera,” Rebuilding Together Tampa Bay Executive Director Jose Garcia says. “It will get our warehouse ready for our partners to come in quickly, pick up supplies like tarps and get in the field. It will also fund hurricane packets for residents.”
This is the first collaboration between Community Foundation Tampa Bay and Rebuilding Together Tampa Bay.
“We’ve been hearing about them and their work but they had never applied before,” Shultz says. “Our efforts on hurricane relief had been in the immediate aftermath. This was the first time we took a step to support resiliency efforts, prepare for mitigation and get ahead.”
Community Foundation Tampa Bay has funded the community response to storms through two programs. The critical needs list focuses on the unplanned, unforeseen, unfunded needs that nonprofits face because of flooding, power outages and other storm damage and impacts. The disaster relief fund provides money for nonprofits’ response to help the community in the immediate aftermath of a storm. Shultz says Community Foundation Tampa Bay offers a one-to-three match of donations to that fund “to spur philanthropy and increase the impact of donor funds.”
The Robert Wood Johnson grant funding expands those efforts. Shultz says Community Foundation Tampa Bay wants to continue the collaboration moving forward.
“That’s the hope,” she says. “If we steward their money properly, do exactly what they’re asking us to do and show the impact, hopefully when there’s a hurricane in the future or other opportunities, they’ll look to us as a trusted organization that will distribute their money prudently but also in ways that have the most impact and address the needs they’re focused on.”
For more information, go to Community Foundation Tampa Bay, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Pasco Kids First, Community Food Bank of Citrus County Sol Relief disaster prep events