After the Storm: What NOT to Donate, and Where TO Give

Many of us are eager to help victims of Hurricane Harvey.  Here are some tips on the best places to donate and volunteer - and what NOT to give.

Donate money through a trusted organization.  You can find out more about a particular charity's efficiency and effectiveness using your donations at Charity Navigator or CharityWatch.  Each site has set up a special page with Hurricane Harvey suggestions.  Look for organizations with the highest percentage of their funds going to actual programs and services (at least 75%), as opposed to administrative and fundraising expenses.

Items such as food, clothing, and toiletries should only be collected if you have a confirmed recipient at the disaster site willing and able to receive them.  Otherwise, volunteers will be pulled away from essential services to sort, transfer, store, and distribute items that might not even be needed by disaster victims.  Then you get a mess like the one pictured below - often such items will ultimately be discarded in an area already overwhelmed by debris from the disaster.  Here's a link to the 10 Worst Things to Donate After a Disaster - with explanations why and suggestions of what to do instead with those items.

Shoes Donated to Disaster Survivors / Adam DuBrowa - Sep 26, 2015 / FEMA.gov

If you want to volunteer to help on site, contact existing non-profit organizations BEFORE heading to the disaster area.  Get appropriate training, and be sure it is safe to travel (and you have some place to stay and eat) before going into the area.  Otherwise, you might just get in the way.  Remember, assistance will be needed long after the storm is over and the media is gone, so there will be plenty of opportunities for service later after you've been trained to best help.  Here is a link to Texas Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters.

For more information, see Volunteer & Donate Responsibly at the Federal Emergency Management Agency website:  https://www.fema.gov/volunteer-donate-responsibly.

Tarleton Thursday: Alum Donates Ancestor's 1870s Texas Emigrant Journey Memoir to Library

Above:  Alan Easterling '90 with his ancestor's memoir

It's very appropriate that we get to announce an exciting donation to our archival collections on Texas Independence Day!  Yesterday, Tarleton alumnus Alan Easterling, Class of 1990, donated the original handwritten account of the mid-1870s journey from southern Illinois to northern Texas made by his great-grandfather, Nelson Fleming Rudolph (1861-1937), and his great-great uncle and Nelson's brother, Charles Francis Rudolph (1859-1929).

As can be seen in the photograph, the approximately 139-year-old document has been a little torn and taped on its first (and last) few leaves, but the remaining leaves (there are 100 pages) are in remarkably good condition.  Charles, who later became a newspaper editor, wrote the account of the journey and gave it as a Christmas gift to two of his sisters, Serena Estella "Stella" Rudolph Dort (1855-1932), who also moved to Texas, and Louisa Catherine "Lou" Rudolph Lee (1857-1930).

Easterling also donated three family photographs (two are originals from the late 1880s).  Watch for future posts featuring these images, as well as excerpts from the memoir.

Alan Easterling's nephew, Grayson Easterling, is a student at our Stephenville campus.  We also discovered another family connection here in the Dick Smith Library.  Jennifer Barrera, Assistant Director for User Services, is also a descendant of Nelson Fleming Rudolph.  He is Jennifer's great-great-grandfather, which makes Jennifer and Grayson third cousins, and Alan and Jennifer are second cousins once removed. 

Donate! - The Library is hosting a Blood Drive

The Library is sponsoring a blood drive Tuesday, June 24 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in the Thompson Student Center, Ballroom A.

Hope for the Holidays

If you have extra goods on hand or are just looking for a way to pay it forward, donate to Hope for the Holidays between now and November 20th.  The Business Administration National Honor Society Delta Mu Delta and the Tarleton Society for Human Resource Management are collecting donations to give to the Ronald McDonald House of Fort Worth. 

Their wish list includes fruit cups, snack food (singles), pasta & sauce, pop tarts/cereal, mixed nuts, kitchen supplies & paper goods, gallon sized zip lock bags, paper towels/toilet paper, tissues, dishwasher detergent, soap & hand gel etc.

Drop off boxes are located in the Business Building, the Nursing Building, the Fine Arts Building, the Thompson Student Center and the Dick Smith Library.  In the library, you'll find our donation box in the foyer beside the supply vending machine.  Just look for the large "Christmas present" drop box!

Top Ten Tuesday: Donated Audiobooks

Besides purchasing a few new audiobooks each year, the library also receives a number of donations from our various "road warriors" - faculty and staff that commute a good distance to work in Stephenville, or to teach classes there and in Weatherford, Fort Worth, and/or Waco as well! Here, in no particular order, are twelve (not just ten!) recently-donated audiobooks (click the titles to check availability):

1. Undone by Karin Slaughter
2. The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia Cornwell
3. Black Hills by Nora Roberts
4. The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry
5. The 6th Target by James Patterson
6. 7th Heaven by James Patterson
7. A Painted House by John Grisham
8. A Chance to Make History by Wendy Kopp
9. The Wave by Susan Casey
10. Two Little Girls in Blue by Mary Higgins Clark
11. Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm (a 2011 Newbery Honor Book)
12. The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin (National Book Awards 2006 Young People's Literature Finalist)

Donations of gently-used audiobooks on CDs are gratefully accepted - all we need are the discs and the original box they came in!  We'll take care of putting the audiobook in a sturdy plastic case, with protective sleeves for each disc.