Since the MOMS Club began in 1983, natural disasters have struck very close to our mothers. There have been devastating snowstorms in the Northeast, hurricanes in Florida, the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf Coast, tornadoes in Texas, Indiana, and Ohio, floods all across the Plains and Midwest, and fires in the South and West.

Although we have local MOMS Club chapters in all those areas, in our first 11 years, no members were seriously affected by those natural disasters. We were very lucky.

On January 17, 1994, at 4:31 AM, we were not so lucky. A major earthquake struck the Los Angeles area, destroying homes, schools, malls and freeways in the San Fernando and Simi Valleys. And that wasn’t all. Aftershocks continued — in the first week, there were over 1,000 aftershocks! Some homes which had escaped damage in the first quake, suffered extensive damage in later ones. Everyone who lived within the quake area lost possessions, but some people lost their homes and everything they owned.

No more had the dust settled after the first earthquake, than the International MOMS Club Coordinators began receiving calls from chapters in other parts of the country asking, “Were any MOMS Club mothers hurt? What can we do to help?”

We did a rapid survey of the local chapters in the affected area and confirmed that none of our 1,375 Southern California families living there at the time suffered loss of life. However, at least six families from two chapters, Simi Valley and Chatsworth/Northridge, had major damage to their homes, some of which made their homes “red-tagged” or uninhabitable. One family fled their quake-demolished apartment through a second-floor window with only their nightclothes on their backs. They were not allowed to return to their home for safety reasons for several weeks. By the time they were allowed to retrieve their things, thieves had stolen everything they owned.
As soon as the news about those six families was shared with our sister chapters across the country, the caring telephone calls were transformed into donations. Our Founder and Chairman, Mary James, set up the Mother-To-Mother Fund® to handle those donations and to distribute them to the needy MOMS Club families. Because it is too difficult in a time of disaster to coordinate clothing sizes and household needs, and because most of the families suffered losses that only money could help, it was decided the Mother-To-Mother Fund would only handle monetary donations. That way, the families could use the money for whatever needs were most pressing at the time — whether it was to get clothing, household items or shelter.

In the months after the Earthquake, $4,235.00 was contributed for the Southern California mothers-in-need and that entire amount was donated to the six members who applied for assistance. Some of those members said that the help given them by the Mother-To-Mother Fund was the best help they received because, even though it took several months for us to collect the final donations, the distribution still came before government and Red Cross assistance. Thanks to their sister MOMS Club members’ caring, those mothers were able to make a quicker start on their new lives.

In the year after the Earthquake, MOMS Club members experienced additional near-misses with natural disasters, including devastating wild fires, hurricanes, flooding, blizzards and still more tornadoes. With the thought that the Fund is of the most use if it is available before a disaster strikes, Ms. James decided to keep the Fund open so chapters could continue to donate to it in an ongoing way. This way, the Fund can provide emergency assistance practically immediately. We hope the Fund will be ready whenever a natural disaster strikes.
In 1996, several chapters asked if the purpose of the Mother-To-Mother Fund could be expanded to help mothers with devastating personal emergencies as well as natural disasters. Acting on that request, Ms. James asked the local chapters about the idea of expanding the purpose of the Fund. The universal response was, “Yes!” Now the Fund is also available to help mothers suffering devastating personal emergencies, such as abandonment, the need to flee an abusive spouse, help after the death of a spouse or severe accident, and assistance during a child or member’s life-threatening illness.

The Fund cannot take the place of other emergency assistance, such as insurance, state assistance and social service agencies, and it cannot replace the traditional personal support from chapters, like bringing meals or providing babysitting. With any devastating personal emergency, there must be a significant, long-lasting loss to the member’s family that was not caused by their actions. (For more information about the need requirements for a grant, see the “How to Request Help…” and the “When a Request Must Be Declined” sections of this Fact Sheet.)

In some cases of extreme need, in addition to direct grants to member families, the M2M Fund can also be used as a collection point for donations designated for particular families-in-need. This is only allowed in cases where a grant has already been approved by the Fund, and when the nature of the family’s need is recognized as being something that would warrant collecting contributions from other chapters, in addition to the member’s own chapter. This allows for a greater total amount of assistance to the family-in-need in extremely dire circumstances.

To give you an idea of what might qualify as an extremely dire circumstance, here are two situations when the Fund has collected additional donations earmarked for specific families:

• The first use of the Fund for additional donations for a personal emergency came when a Tennessee member died suddenly after giving birth to twins. The mother’s chapter helped the family by babysitting their older child, bringing meals, collecting baby clothes and diapers, and by rocking the babies in the hospital. A grant of $900 was given from the Mother-To-Mother Fund and local chapters donated an additional $809.50 to the Fund specifically for this family, making the total grant amount $1,709.50 given via the Fund to help this family transition to having an at-home father.
• Another use of the Fund for additional donations was after the tragedy of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Four of our mothers lost their husbands that day – three in the collapse of the World Trade Center and one in the Pentagon. Three of the mothers were pregnant at the time of the attack. The Mother-To-Mother Fund gave an immediate $5,000 grant for emergency living expenses to each of the four mothers – grants made possible by donations already in the Fund at the time of the attack.
  Over the next several months, in addition to many local projects to benefit the many other victims of the terrorist attacks, 160 chapters and Coordinators did projects on their own specifically for our four mothers. Those donations specifically for the 9-11 moms enabled the Mother-To-Mother Fund to send them each an additional grant of $10,160.

As in the cases above, for additional donations to be earmarked for a specific member-in-need, there first must be a grant approved from the general Mother-To-Mother Fund. After that point, in certain extreme circumstances, the Fund will offer to collect donations from other chapters specifically for that member-in-need. The chapter must designate that family as the intended recipient of their donation at the time they send the contribution to the Fund.

The Fund will collect the donations for the family from all chapters contributing, and make one additional grant of the donated amount to that family. Designations of recipients may only be made by the chapter at the time they make their donation to the Fund and not all grant recipients are eligible for this additional assistance, so check with the M2M Fund Committee before sending any donations specifically for a particular family.

(If your chapter has a member-in-need who does not receive an M2M grant or who is not eligible for the additional collection of donations through the Fund, your chapter may still do local fundraisers to benefit your member-in-need. Discuss the situation with your Regional Coordinator before conducting any fundraisers for a chapter member to make sure your chapter follows all IRS nonprofit rules.)

A list of all the grants given to date is included in this Fact Sheet packet. All of the family situations were extremely grave. You will notice that there have been no grants to assist with birth defects, genetic illnesses, funerals, divorce or unemployment, without other mitigating factors. We can only help with problems in a member’s immediate family (the member, her husband, her children living at home). We cannot help with situations that involve extended family problems (a member’s father, mother, sibling, in-laws, children living elsewhere or on their own, etc.), even if their problems impact the member’s family, too.

Because the amount in the Fund is limited and there are 100,000+ MOMS Club families – with an estimated 360,000+ family members! – it is not possible for the Fund to assist in situations like the ones explained in the paragraph above, even though we know they are very difficult for the families involved. Instead, we must concentrate on only the most serious, unexpected, devastating events in a member’s immediate family. As you’ll see from the list of grant recipients, the money donated by the chapters to the Fund has helped members in a most significant way when faced with devastating personal or natural disasters.

We hope chapters will remember the Mother-To-Mother Fund and their sister members around the world as they plan service projects, or when they look at their chapter treasuries and realize they have a bit more tucked away than their chapter truly needs.

We don’t know what the future holds. We hope that each chapter will be there for their own members, and, working together, we hope that the Mother-To-Mother Fund will always be available to give an extra boost to those unfortunate members who have been hard hit by natural or unexpected devastating personal disasters.