I want to ask you to imagine that you are asleep in bed on a warm, spring night with a gentle breeze blowing through your bedroom window. Your peaceful slumber is interrupted, however, when the air becomes heavy with smoke. Once you come to your senses, you launch out of bed to look outside, where you see flames shooting out of the windows of a neighbor’s house. Do you spend a lot of time wondering whether it’s your place to call the fire department or to offer whatever other assistance is within your power to provide – clothing, shelter, food, comfort?  

While you think about that, let me offer this bit of background for what follows. Baltimore County has some serious, socio-economic challenges, with almost one quarter of the population at or below 200% of the federal poverty line and over 10% of the population qualifying as “food-insure,” well before the onset of the pandemic.

These statistics are not well-known probably because they make for such unpopular news. The suburbs of yesteryear evoke images of white picket fences, blue skies, butterflies, and rainbows. For many people, it’s a bridge too far to entertain a different world view in spite of what the passage of time has done to taint this rosy picture. The reality is that the problems that many people would ascribe to cities, and, in our case, to Baltimore City, are suddenly staring us in the face because they are in our own backyards. Poverty has been rising faster in suburbs than in cities for years. It is here and, as we shall see, it is an increasingly pressing challenge.

Back in March, when the coronavirus outbreak led to the stay-at-home mandate, unemployment filings in Baltimore County began to outstrip those in other Maryland jurisdictions week after week. Given our existing challenges with poverty and food insecurity, job losses were surely going to make a bad situation disastrous. I began to call colleagues in County government and nonprofits on the frontlines of the food-insecurity fight to get their take on what was happening. The situation was not good – no one was prepared for the rising numbers of people who could not afford the most basic of necessities – food.

At about the same time, the nonprofit “Giving Tuesday” organization announced a campaign to create a new, worldwide day of giving, #GivingTuesdayNow, which was slated for May 5. A statewide group of land trust leaders convened by phone to discuss how our organizations planned to respond.

For many of us on the call, the idea of joining #GivingTuesdayNow to raise money for our own organizations was repugnant. So many people in our communities were hurting and so many of our fellow nonprofit leaders on the frontlines of fighting food insecurity were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the need they were being asked to satisfy. 

An email exchange with a few colleagues here in Baltimore County, leaders of not-for-profit organizations and other smart, caring people, who, like me, were not on the frontlines of feeding people, led to “Let’s ADAPT:  Ask our Donors to Aid Pandemic-relief Today.” In essence, 17 nonprofits NOT on the frontlines of fighting food insecurity in the County put their missions aside on May 5th to raise money for 16 groups that ARE .

Some organizations had to overcome an understandable hiccup in coming to the decision that they should participate. None of the “ADAPTers” are particularly large or well-endowed. The future for fundraising is about as uncertain as it has been in a very long time. The understandable trepidation was all about, “If we do this now, are we shooting ourselves in the foot? Will we be able to go to the well again to raise money for our own needs?”

These are hard questions to which there were no easy answers. We’re in uncharted territory. But a neighbor’s house is on fire, which is a metaphorical way of describing the crisis that was unfolding.  How could we turn a blind eye to it? How could we not act collectively, using our extensive email lists and social media reach to rally everyone to the task of helping ours neighbors in need?

I’m pleased and proud to tell you about the organizations that answered the call. In addition to NeighborSpace, they include:

• 7 th District Civic Council (Thank you, Scott Pappas)
• Ascension Lutheran Church (Thank you, Julie Lauver)
• Cromwell Valley Park Council (Thank you, Kim Shapiro)
• Dundalk Renaissance Corporation (Thank you, Amy Menzer)
• Dunmore Community Association (Thank you Chris MacNamara, Christie Bianco, and Bill Henderson)
• Fort Howard Community Association (Thank you, Scott Pappas)
• Graystone Community Association (Thank you, Tayoka Hall)
• Greater Dundalk Alliance (Thank you, Scott Pappas)
• Green Towson Alliance (Thank you, Beth Miller and Phoebe Letocha)
• Gunpowder Valley Conservancy (Thank you, Lou Etgen, Amy Young, and Charlie Conklin)
• Land Preservation Trust (Thank you, Vicki Collins, Anne Litz, and Ann Jones)
• League of Women Voters of Baltimore County (Thank you, Camille Wheeler,  Theresa Lawler, Tana Stevenson, and Sharalyn Luciani)
• Maryland Waterways Foundation (Thank you, Karen Wynn)
• Preservation Alliance of Baltimore County (Thank you, Scott Pappas)
• Sparrows Point – North Point Historical Society (Thank you, Keith Taylor)
• Towson Communities Alliance (Thank you, Lorrie Geiss)

We also had advice and support from several community leaders, including Kathy Martin, Donna Neuworth, and Jane Willeboordse, as well as members of the County Executive’s staff, including Elisabeth Sachs and Steve Lafferty. 

Many of the organizations listed above were not acquainted with one another. Some did not know me. Yet they came together in a spirit of collaboration and trust to address a pressing challenge by rallying support for our colleagues on the frontlines.

And then there is YOU, who did not hesitate to take action when we asked for your financial support.  We thank you for your generosity from the bottom of our hearts!

What were the outcomes? Well, given the magnitude of the crisis and the depth of financial need facing the frontline organizations, we “ADAPTers” decided that we should structure our website so as to allow donors to give directly to them.  So, it really is impossible to say exactly how much money we raised.

We do know a few things, however. We included a “catch-all” giving category for people who were uncertain about choosing an organization to which to make a donation. Those contributions were processed by NeighborSpace and distributed equally among the organizations serving the poorest areas in the County. We also asked anyone visiting the site to voluntarily complete a form telling us to whom they donated and in what amount. From these two sources of donor information, we know we raised $4,500. From Google Analytics, which was installed on the website, we also know we had 670 unique hits on the donor page.

More than that, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “we did what we could, with what we had, where we were.” We proved that we could come together quickly to help our community in a time of crisis. We should not lose site of the lessons learned. Our community is not out of the woods. The crisis continues to smolder and its embers continue to burn. 

If you missed #GivingTuesdayNow, you can still visit our website at https://www.letsadapt.org/donate to make a donation to one or more of these heroic groups, who are on the frontlines of feeding our hungry neighbors and doing yeoman’s work under very difficult circumstances:

• Assistance Center of Towson Churches
• Baltimore County Covid-19 Emergency Respond Fund
• Baltimore Hunger Project
• Bridgeway Community Church
• Catonsville Emergency Assistance
• Community Assistance Network
• Community Crisis Center
• Community Christian Church
• Jewish Community Food Fund
• Liberty Community Development Food Pantry
• Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland
• Morning Star Baptist Church Food Pantry
• Mount Pleasant Church Food Pantry
• Reisterstown United Methodist Church Food Pantry
• Student Support Network
• Victory Villa Food Pantry