Dashboard

Washington Memo

Six and a half years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Washington is nearing a poignant milestone: the Survivors' Fund, the country's last major 9/11 charity, officially dissolves on May 15. In dollar terms, it was far from the biggest player: more than 7,000 people affected by the attacks have received over $12 billion, most of which came from the federally financed Victim Compensation Fund. But the $25 million Survivors' Fund, formed to help those affected by the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, may be the best model for assisting victims of a mass-casualty disaster.

Following the advice of charities set up after the Oklahoma City bombings, organizers at the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region created the fund to do more than just write checks. Each of its 1,051 clients was assigned an experienced social worker who helped draft a set of personalized goals. For Sergeant First Class Christopher Braman, an Army Ranger who was at the Pentagon on 9/11 and was severely injured while helping recover bodies at the site, the case managers "became like family." The fund assisted Braman's wife in getting scholarships for nursing school and found college students to mentor the couple's three daughters. "They didn't pay a bill off," he says. "They showed you how." In a study of the fund, 71% of the clients surveyed said their lives would have been worse without it--a remarkable satisfaction rate--and, in a rebuke of the federal victims fund, nearly three-quarters said they preferred its holistic approach to just getting cash.

Some of these lessons were applied last year in responding to the Virginia Tech school shooting and the Minneapolis bridge collapse. On May 5, the fund released a detailed blueprint of its methods; it will, unfortunately, prove useful again.