A Letter From the Executive Director
(Picture above are Executive Director Paul Hollombe and Business Office Manager/Development Assistant Raul Velasquez.)
(
Hollywood)—So much is happening in our country and in our community right now. A looming war in the Middle East and the tragic break up of the space shuttle Columbia occupy our thoughts and wrench our emotions. The economy is not rebounding as well as we would hope. North Korea demands our attention. People worry about the future. The daily news can be downright frightening if not depressing.The good news is here at Travelers Aid Society of Los Angeles. We continue to provide much needed services to stranded travelers and to homeless people, every day. Last year, we served one million travelers at LAX and at Union Station. We have extended our services to homeless adults with temporary funding from the Los Angeles County Dept of Mental Health for family reunification—now we can buy a ticket to send someone home directly. We are busy at Teen Canteen serving homeless kids and helping them to avoid the scourge of HIV/AIDS.
While we continue to strive for excellence in terms of the delivery of our services, and while we continue to allocate 89 percent—a very high figure relative to other nonprofit, community-based organizations—of our revenue directly to our clients, we do worry about our revenues. Across our nation, public funding is distressed and private foundation grants have declined. We need more donors and larger donations in order to keep pace with the need for our services. Otherwise we face the sad prospect of turning away some people who need us.
We’re already doing things more efficiently and, we believe, more effectively. We have a new computer database management system for better access and utilization of our client files. But there is a limit to the efficiencies that we can implement. The challenge is clear: in order for us to continue to provide our current high quality of services, we will need to obtain more charitable donations. In order to sustain and to realize more fully our mission to help people in crisis, we must expand our private donor funding base.
In this edition of The Wayfarer we include stories about real people with real needs: for food, for shelter, for clothing, for advocacy, for medical and mental health services, for a friendly smile and a sympathetic ear. These people and thousands like them depend on the kindness of strangers. They depend on your kindness and your charity. They depend on your love.
For those of you who have already responded to our recent Annual Appeal, we send our heartfelt thanks and gratitude. For those of you who may have missed that opportunity to send us a donation, please take a moment, now, to send us your tax-deductible contribution. Your gift will be leveraged by our agency’s participation in the Alan Shawn Feinstein Foundation Challenge. Each participating agency will receive its share of $1 million equal to its proportion of the total amount raised by all participants. So the more donations we receive in response to our challenge—from March 1st to April 30th, 2003—the more of the Feinstein $1 million will be added to your donation.
For your convenience, we accept credit card donations by phone or online at our website. Your gift means so much to so many folks.
Thank you.