Untitled Document
For 10 years, Barry Locher was responsible for
establishing and maintaining relationships with key Springfield businesses,
double-checking hundreds of pages of information, ordering corrections,
working within a limited budget, and meeting deadlines — and when he
wasn’t doing all that he was running the newsroom of
Springfield’s daily newspaper, the State
Journal-Register. In addition to his paid gig with the SJ-R, Locher was in charge of
the procurement of all the jump ropes, teddy bears, and Hot Wheels cars for
Friend-in-Deed, the SJ-R’s holiday charity program. “It might seem like a weird thing for the
editor of a newspaper to be doing that, but I liked it. I was proud of what
it became and I liked the toys that I picked out,” Locher says. But picking out the toys wasn’t always fun and
games, he says: “It got to be stressful sometimes. It didn’t
necessarily have to be, but I was worried about toys: When are they going
to get here? Are they going to be the right ones? Are they going to be
enough?”
Much of the time he and other SJ-R employees who volunteered for
FID put into the effort was on the clock. For example, reporters and
photographers were at one time dispatched to the homes of prospective
recipients to conduct interviews and determine whether a legitimate need
for assistance existed. Fleet vehicles were then used to deliver donated
food, clothing, and toys to families. Locher says the program’s success hinged on the
paper’s absorption of all the administrative costs. As editor, he
never bothered to calculate the precise costs of that overheard, he says.
Up until recently, nobody cared. On April 10, the SJ-R reported that from now on FID would be “a true
volunteer organization, not supported by newspaper employees on staff
time.”
The announcement understandably raised eyebrows
around Springfield, coming about one year after the Copley family sold the SJ-R to the stockholders of
New York-based GateHouse Media Inc. Scott Bowers, who was named publisher of the SJ-R by GateHouse late
last year, says the change in owners had nothing to do with the decision to
reevaluate the organization’s role with the charity. “The Friend-in-Deed program has always been a
separate 501(c)(3) corporation, and whether the State Journal-Register was
owned by Copley or Gatehouse doesn’t really matter,” Bowers
says. “The change in publishers [and] the change in
ownership had nothing to do with whether Friend-in-Deed was going to
continue under its current structure. The question became ‘Is it
really a true volunteer organization, and what can we do to keep it going
at its current clip?’ ”
Locher, who resigned from the paper in December but
remains on the FID board of directors, isn’t so sure that it can. “You have a gazillion years of institutional
knowledge that’s gone from the program. That institutional knowledge
is so deep that I don’t know if all of that can be fully
recovered,” he says. “The only way the program is going to work is
for the newspaper to stay involved as it was — and I just don’t
know that that’s possible.”
Friend-in-Deed’s fate now lies in the hands of
two of its veterans: Karen and Bill Becker, whose involvement with the
agency spans 25 years. In a letter mailed to 800 homes — the SJ-R paid for the postage
— the Beckers asked volunteers to “step up to the plate as a
coordinator and become a part of either organizing, running, and/or
staffing the FID program” from start to finish. The letter reads: “We describe the FID program
as being like an Octopus with many tentacles. And we are asking a few key
volunteer coordinators to grab hold of a tentacle and be responsible for it
beyond delivery day year after year or until they find their replacement
volunteer (which is how this process must operate to stay
alive).”
Those who have been closely associated with the
charity characterize FID as an undertaking so immense that a salaried
full-time director and staff are needed to run it — but of course
that would mean less money available for recipient families. A check of the
organization’s most recent 990 form, filed in October 2006, shows
that none of the 12 board members receives compensation. Locher describes the arrangement under Copley’s
ownership as a win for everyone because volunteers, led by the Beckers, did
most of the legwork and the newspaper picked up the tab. “Everybody liked the fact that if they gave a
dollar, 100 percent of that dollar went to stuff. There was no
overhead,” he says. The SJ-R started the charity in 1960, helping just under 100
families. By 1977 the program had grown fivefold, handing out donations to
560 families. Last year the charity helped nearly 3,000 local families with
$342,800 in donations. Patrick Coburn, who served as the SJ-R’s publisher until 2006
and spent 40 years at the paper, says that when FID began there were far
fewer charities than there are today. “It’s grown immensely over the years.
It’s been a very good thing, but it’s evolved, and I think it
will continue to evolve because you have a need,” says Coburn, a FID
board member. As other organizations have sprung up, FID has
remained a vital piece of city’s fragile safety net of
social-services agencies. In 1998, when FID started taking in more
donations than it could give away during the holiday season, Coburn
suggested that the program set up a year-round disaster-relief fund. Dave MacDonna, capital-campaign coordinator for the
Salvation Army, says that FID’s efforts are invaluable, particularly
during the holidays, when every service organization in town is under
pressure and stretched thin. When FID takes in more donated food than it
can give away, the excess goes to local food pantries. Forty boxes of food
from FID went to the Salvation Army last year, MacDonna says. “It’ll be a rough year to try to
pick up the slack,” says the Army’s Maj. Paul Logan, who
worries that the worsening economy and higher food and fuel costs will put
a damper on this year’s holiday giving and affect every
agency’s ability to meet the needs of local families that need
assistance. Top managers at the SJ-R say it’s much too early for hand-wringing. “We haven’t determined what the role [of
FID] is going to be, so we don’t know what the State Journal-Register’s role
is going to be,” says audience-development manager and current FID
board president Edie Weaver. Bowers, who last week joined the FID board, says that
meetings are ongoing and that the board intends to have a plan in place by
the end of May. “The question is not whether Friend-in-Deed
will survive. It’s ‘What is it going to look like when it goes
forward?’ Is it going to stay exactly the same? It could. Is it going
to change slightly? It could,” Bowers says.
“If our outside corporate governance
didn’t want us to proceed with this program, we would have killed it
last June — and that did not occur,” he says. Bowers notes that charities associated with two other
GateHouse properties in Illinois — the Peoria
Journal Star and his former employer, the Rockford Register Star —
have recently undergone streamlining but have remained intact. “My desire, as I’ve said in my own pages
of my newspaper, is to keep Friend-in-Deed going as it has gone in the
past,” Bowers says, “so if you’re asking, ‘Was
there any outside direction given as to what we should be doing with
Friend-in-Deed?’ the answer is no.”
In the meantime, the Beckers are looking for their
replacements, indicating that the need for volunteers will be greater this
year should the SJ-R alter its level of commitment. “The important thing to stress is that they are
at a crossroads. The reminder that we have here is that it is a separate
organization,” Bowers says of FID. “We’ve had some significant management
changes, and some of those folks serve on the board of Friend-in-Deed as
past employees of this newspaper, and the thing is that some of them are
deeply involved, some of them are questioning their involvement — but
I think if you want to keep this going there’s going to have to be
some torch-passing here.”
To carry that torch forward, Springfield residents
will have to take on a number of responsibilities. In addition to 1,300
volunteers, volunteer coordinators are being sought to perform database
maintenance; process paperwork; purchase clothing, toys, and food; and
organize “bagging days,” when items are packaged for delivery.
Coordinators are also needed for FID’s
disaster-relief program and for its annual golf outing, which takes place
in September and raises close to $100,000. The Beckers, who were
unavailable for comment this week, have agreed to train each new
coordinator. “It’s an emotional issue for the
community because it started from nothing and grew into a gigantic
program,” Locher says. “It grew so big and it’s touched
so many people — not only recipients but generations of people who
were involved as young people now have their children involved. “The community — and I know this —
believes Friend-in-Deed is the heart of Springfield.”
Contact R.L. Nave at rnave@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Apr 24-30, 2008.
