Severe storm warnings had been out for days when the calls started coming in. Organizations across Western Alaska wanted to know whether ACF would open a relief fund.
The calls kept coming, so we reached out to partners in the affected regions and asked two things: does a coordinated fund make sense, and does it make sense for it to be ACF? Everyone said yes and offered to help promote it. By the time the storm hit, the fund was open.
The reason was practical. Gifts would arrive from everywhere, and Western Alaska needed one place to hold them and the grantmaking experience to move them to Tribes, cities, nonprofits, and villages with a record of where each one went. That is work a statewide community foundation exists to do. Just because we could do it didn’t mean we should, so we asked the people closest to the need first.
The remnants of Typhoon Halong struck overnight, in the dark. In Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, water lifted homes from their foundations. One person died. Two were never found. Within days, more than a thousand people had left the only home many of them had known.
About a week and a half after landfall, leaders from Kipnuk and Kwigillingok invited relief organizations to the Alaska Native Heritage Center. They didn’t start by talking about houses. It was freezers. The storm hit at the end of harvest season, and the water wiped out a year of fishing, hunting, and berry picking, along with how people feed each other.
More than 21,000 donors gave, from more than 150 Alaska communities, all 50 states, and 37 countries. A kindergarten class sent cards and pictures. Nineteen bands played all day at a benefit at Williwaw. A family in Fishkill, New York, and a family in Kipnuk will likely never share a meal, but for a season they belonged to each other.
ACF held the structure. The region said what mattered. Five advisors with deep roots in Western Alaska (Willie Hensley, Valerie Nurr’araluk Davidson, Ana Hoffman, Marie Greene, and Tikaan Galbreath) listened to Tribal councils and recommended where every dollar went. The Lower Kuskokwim School District bought clothing, shoes, backpacks, and winter gear for more than 140 displaced students.
The storm did not end when the weather cleared. Families are still displaced, and case managers are still working alongside them to find housing and services. Recovery will take years. To everyone who said yes: thank you.
ACF plays this role wherever people closest to a need are ready to act and need a trusted way to put resources to work. We played the same role supporting the Rural Health Transformation Program and the more than 200 funded projects working to strengthen health care across the state.
