[nagdu] Why should donors give to guide dog schools?

[Cindy Ray]

Has anyone ever read "Crashing Through?" If you do, you learn Michael May's story about why getting your sight back isn't necessarily all it is cracked up to be, especially if you have been blind since birth or lost your sight at a very early age.

CL
p.s. I have to think how I would convince a donor. I'm not good at it, but I would probably speak of the successful teams working out there and how it had given them the courage and confidence that they hadn't previously thought possible to go out and do what needs to be done.

On Nov 8, 2013, at 3:19 PM, Hannah Chadwick <sparklylicious at gmail.com> wrote:

> I just want to also bring up that not everyone would want to cure their blindness.  Some people feel that their blindness is a large part of who they are, and they are so used to living with their eye condition that, if there is a chance for them to cure it, they would not do so.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: minh ha <minh.ha927 at gmail.com
> To: "NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users" <nagdu at nfbnet.org
> Date sent: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 14:07:23 -0500
> Subject: Re: [nagdu] Why should donors give to guide dog schools?
> 
> Hey Ginger,
> 
> That is really interesting.  Would it be possible for you to find the
> link to that article and post it here? I am actually reading one of
> Peter Singer's works in my theology class and it would be fascinating
> to bring it up in class to spark some discussion.
> 
> Personally, I am of the opinion quality over quantity.  Just because
> donors can give money to an organization that helps to cure blindness
> doesn't necessarily mean that it is more valuable than pairing a guide
> dog with a blind person.  I know how much more confident and
> independent I feel traveling with my guide dog, and I could definitely
> make the argument saying that she has helped to increase my
> involvement within my college community as well as Boston at large,
> which directly impact my networking and landed me an internship.  I
> really don't think you can value one over another.
> 
> Minh
> On 11/8/13, Ginger Kutsch <GingerKutsch at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ed, thanks for sharing this article.  It may be of interest to know that
> this
> article was published in response to comments made by Peter Singer, a
> well-known Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, who frequently
> lectures about effective altruism.  He recommends that donors put data ahead
> of passion and give to organizations that help the most people.  He stated
> "You could provide one guide dog for one blind American, or you could cure
> between 400 and 2,000 people of blindness.  I think its clear what is the
> better thing to do."
> 
> And really, if you stop to think about it, tax payers already pay for blind
> people to learn how to travel independently with a white cane.  So in this
> case, it shouldn't be surprising that some might question why thousands of
> dollars more should be spent to provide a guide dog to a blind
> person...especially when some blind people assert that they travel just as
> well with a white cane as they do with a guide dog.
> 
> I would be interested to hear from list members as to why they think donors
> should give to guide dog schools.  I could easily make an argument for list
> members like Mike M.  who sacrificed so much for our country -- no amount of
> money makes up for what he lost in service to each and every one of us.  But
> for those of us who aren't wounded warriors, why should donors give money
> to
> help us? Said differently, if you were a fundraiser for a guide dog school,
> what would you say to convince a donor  to give to your school?
> 
> Best,
> 
> Ginger
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nagdu [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Ed Meskys
> Sent: Friday, November 08, 2013 10:32 AM
> To: nagdu
> Subject: [nagdu] dog guides
> 
> Precious Eyes.
> NY Times Friday, 2013_11_08
> By PAUL SULLIVAN.  Paul Sullivan donates to charities for the blind,
> including guide dog schools..  JENNIFER MURRAY woke after a night out with
> friends and thought her husband was playing a trick on her.  She could not
> see anything and did not believe him when he said it was daytime.
> 'It was like a light switch had been shut off,' she said.  'I shut my eyes,
> and I blinked.  And I tried it again several times.  Then I realized the sun
> was in my face, and I said, now what?
> Ms.  Murray had been battling to keep what little vision she had since her
> premature birth in 1978.  She had a bit of peripheral vision in one eye but
> nothing else.  A few years before the day when she lost her eyesight for
> good, she had an operation to implant a permanent contact lens in her right
> eye.  It gave her sight such as she had never had before.
> 'I was giddy for weeks,' she said.  'I could see everything, and everybody
> was beautiful.
> I remember thinking life is so colorful and so pretty, and I wouldn't have
> taken that back for the world.
> With her vision gone again, Ms.  Murray said she began to withdraw from the
> world.
> Her husband, an Iraqi war veteran, was going through a difficult time, and
> life was a struggle.  With the birth of their son, Liam, who is now 2, Ms.
> Murray said she realized she needed to become more independent to care for
> him.
> 'I realized the white cane wasn't cutting it,' she said.  'I was putting a
> lot of unspoken pressure on my husband and my son, which isn't fair to
> them.
> That was when she decided to try to get a guide dog.
> The mission of all guide dog schools is to create a team, pairing a blind
> person and a dog to give the person greater freedom and independence.  It
> would seem to be an easy cause for fund-raising.
> After all, most people melt when they see a puppy -- a big marketing tool
> for these schools -- and helping blind people lead better lives seems to be
> an unqualified good.
> Yet if the cause is an easy sell, the work is not cheap.  These schools need
> to raise money and engage volunteers on a very large scale to ensure they
> have enough resources to pay for the long, costly and often unsuccessful
> training of dogs.  One guide dog takes about two years to train and costs a
> total of $45,000 to $60,000, covering everything from boarding a dog to
> extensive drilling by professional trainers in serving the needs of the
> blind to a weekslong period acclimating dog to recipient.
> And about 45 percent of dogs bred by the schools do not make the grade.
> Those
> that
> do are provided free to people who need them.
> Beyond this, guide dog charities must compete in the wider contest for
> dollars among nonprofit organizations.  The Urban Institute, a research
> organization that focuses on social and economic issues, estimates that 1.6
> million such groups operate in America today, a 25 percent increase in the
> last decade.
> 'We're in competition with every charity and cause that's out there,' said
> Eliot Russman, chief executive and executive director of Fidelco Guide Dog
> Foundation, in Bloomfield, Conn.  'American Cancer Society, American Heart
> Society -- everyone is out there telling compelling stories.  There is a
> finite pool of money.
> 'We've got puppies, but Hole in the Wall Gang has dying children,' he said.
> 'What's
> more compelling? Our donors have to have confidence in management.
> Mr.  Russman came to Fidelco from the advertising world, where his clients
> included McDonald's and Xerox.  And that experience has helped him sell
> potential donors on Fidelco, known for its German shepherds.
> Bob Forrester, president and chief executive of the Newman's Own
> Foundation,
> which receives its money from the line of foods created by Paul Newman in
> 1982, and gives money to the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, said the school
> fit
> with the foundation's mission of empowerment.  'We want to help people to
> rise to whatever their potential might be if that potential is being
> thwarted by circumstances beyond their control,'
> Mr.  Forrester said.
> He said that the foundation had given Fidelco $450,000 since 2010 for a
> program that pairs guide dogs with blinded combat veterans.  'We think
> broadly that it will be for nine dogs, but specifically we trust and
> respect
> our nonprofits to use it well and let us know,' Mr.  Forrester said.
> One of the dogs the foundation's money paid to train is Xxon, a male German
> shepherd, who was paired with Michael Malarsie, an Air Force sergeant, a
> year to the day after he was nearly killed by a roadside bomb in
> Afghanistan
> in January 2010.  He survived a severe injury that left him blind, though
> four others in his unit were killed.
> In an interview last month before running a half-marathon in Hartford, Mr.
> Malarsie,
> 25, said that when he was recovering at Walter Reed National Military
> Medical Center he decided he wanted a guide dog.  'I made a promise to
> myself
> that I wasn't going to let blindness slow me down,' he said.
> He has three children and said Xxon, with a sweet, gentle face not often
> associated with the breed, serves a more basic function: He helps him find
> his children when they hide from him.
> Mr.  Malarsie's wife, Julie, whose first husband died in the same blast --
> and who met Mr.  Malarsie when she and other widows of those killed visited
> survivors -- said Xxon had been just as important for the family as for Mr.
> Malarsie.  'He's not relying on me,' she said.  'I know he's safe and taken
> care of.  I know he's not going to wander off.  Xxon helped him find that
> independence and confidence.
> Like many nonprofits, guide dog schools find big corporate donations hard
> to
> attract.
> The Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind in Smithtown, N.Y., receives
> contributions from local businesses.  One is Marchon, an eyewear company
> based on Long Island.
> Donna Rollins, vice president of United States sales operations at Marchon,
> said the company became involved with the foundation when the economy
> faltered in 2008.
> Marchon was having a party for 5,000 people at a trade show in Las Vegas
> and
> decided that, given the times, it should have a charitable component, she
> said.  'We had a band made up of eye doctors that was going to play, and we
> asked our partners to sponsor the band to benefit the Guide Dog
> Foundation,'
> she said.  That raised $25,000.
> Instead of having an open bar, the company paid for the first two drinks
> and
> charged
> $5 for additional ones, which raised another $5,000.
> While the company has continued to promote the foundation at its trade
> show,
> the amounts today are lower.
> Jean Thomas, director of donor and public relations at The Seeing Eye Inc.
> in
> Morristown,
> N.J., which says it is the oldest guide dog school in the world (founded in
> 1929), said the school had had success in setting up lunches at companies
> to
> discuss what it does -- dogs in tow -- with employees.  Still, she said,
> three-quarters of Seeing Eye's support comes from bequests and estate
> gifts,
> two areas that could be in trouble for all nonprofit groups as younger
> donors seek to give while they are alive.
> The
> Seeing Eye and Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, Calif., each have
> endowments of more than $200 million, but they are exceptions among the
> dozen guide dog schools in the United States.  Most rely on individual
> donors
> to finance day-to-day operations.
> One way to raise money is to allow people to sponsor a dog, which entitles
> them to name it.  At the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind, this costs
> $6,000 per puppy.
> 'We have a lot of ways for donors to come to us,' said Katherine Fritz,
> director of development at the Guide Dog Foundation, citing events like
> bike
> races, walks and runs that typically net about $25,000.  A recent golf
> tournament brought in $185,000.
> 'A majority of our donations come through direct mail and are from smaller
> donors,'
> she said.  'But we had one woman who gave $25 a year for 25 years and made a
> six-figure donation in her estate, and she didn't inform us about it.
> One thing all of these schools share is the need for hundreds of volunteers
> a year to answer phones, give tours or just walk dogs.  They also need
> people
> to help socialize the dogs in their first year.  Called puppy walkers or
> puppy raisers, these volunteers take the puppy home at eight weeks, teach
> it
> the basics like obedience and return it when it is about 14 months old.
> Roger, 70, and Sheila Woodhour, 68, of Woodcliff Lake, N.J., are on their
> 29th German shepherd.  Fourteen of the puppies they have taken for The
> Seeing
> Eye have become guide dogs.  Yet Mrs.  Woodhour still gets choked up over
> their first one, Dorsey.
> 'When I gave up Dorsey I thought no one was going to love her as much as I
> did,'
> she said.  But when she later saw Dorsey working, she changed her mind.  'I
> loved the dog, but I didn't need the dog,' she said.  'I realized it gives
> them purpose.
> She and other puppy walkers said the line they hear over and over from
> people is some version of, 'I could never do that because I couldn't give
> the dog back.
> Gail Horan, who raised Xxon as a puppy at her home in Farmington, Conn.,
> said she and her husband cried all the way to Fidelco the day he was due
> back.  She admitted that in the back of her mind she wondered if he might
> fail and come back to her.
> 'That does go through your mind,' she said.  'But you have to remember
> that's
> not why you did it.  I wish there were words that could tell you how it made
> me feel when he passed' the training.  These schools also need volunteers to
> talk about what they do, with the goal of bringing in more volunteers and
> donations.
> Celebrities are part of this.  Isabella Rossellini, the Italian actress and
> model, and Betty White, the comedian and sitcom star, both volunteer to
> help
> schools for guide dogs.
> Ms.  White said she sponsors a dog each year at Guide Dogs for the Blind,
> and
> offers to have lunch or dinner with the highest bidder in an auction each
> year for The Seeing Eye.
> 'It's a chance for me to say thank you for your support,' she said.  'It
> means we're all animal lovers, so we have no problem with conversation.
> Those dinners have fetched $5,500 to $20,000 each over the last five years.
> 
> Ms.
> Rossellini
> has helped socialize 10 puppies for the Guide Dog Foundation.  Seven have
> become working guide dogs.
> She has also helped four dogs as they gave birth in her Long Island home.  A
> fund-raiser there last summer after a litter was born raised $6,000.  'I
> decided everything I do, whether I give money or I volunteer, I have to be
> hands on,' she said.
> 'I
> see
> the rate of success.  I see they're useful.
> She added that, initially, 'I was interested in dogs, but it also makes me
> feel good that those dogs go to help people who are visually impaired.
> Criticism of guide dog charities often is based of the cost of training a
> dog and pairing it with a person.  The failure rate for these animals is
> high.  Dogs mainly wash out for health reasons -- bad eyesight, hip or
> stomach problems -- and for temperament, such as being too calm or too
> high-strung.  And they can work for only eight to
> 10
> years before they retire to become pets.  A blind person could need six or
> seven dogs in a lifetime, which is a considerable expense.
> 'We have something people can see and understand, but it is certainly still
> a challenging fund-raising environment,' Ms.  Thomas of The Seeing Eye said.
> 'One of the challenges is, what we do has a profound impact on about 265
> people a year.  If you're going up against a charity that feeds one million
> people a year, that's a tough comparison.
> Philanthropic advisers point out, though, that while there are ways to
> affect more lives with the same dollars, donors might not get the same
> level
> of satisfaction out of doing it.  'If where you're giving to doesn't reflect
> things that you're interested and passionate about, it won't be very
> rewarding for you,' said Jim Coutre, partner at The Philanthropic
> Initiative
> in Boston.  'Donors have to be honest with themselves.
> If providing clean water to a village in Africa doesn't resonate with them
> emotionally, they're not going to throw themselves into it.
> He added, though, that people should still be discerning among different
> nonprofit organizations focusing on the same cause.  'There are lots of
> different organizations that train these dogs, but they're not all equal,'
> he said.  'Some are going to have more impact.
> The guide dog schools are addressing the high failure rate by improving
> breeding and training to reduce the number of animals that do not succeed
> and by finding other uses for them.
> Mr.  Russman said Fidelco dogs that do not make the cut sometimes work for
> the police departments in Connecticut and New York.  A Fidelco-trained dog
> found a survivor at the World Trade Center site the day after the attack in
> 2001.  A few years ago, Wells B.  Jones, chief executive of the Guide Dog
> Foundation, said that the group saw a need for service dogs to help
> soldiers
> with traumatic injuries.  Called America's Vet Dogs, the program has since
> expanded to help civilians who have served the country.
> He said the former representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the
> head while meeting with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket in 2011,
> uses a dog trained through the program to help with balance.
> 'We had dogs that weren't being used in the guide dog program that could
> contribute,'
> he said.  'We viewed that as an opportunity to meet a need using existing
> resources.
> Frankly it's turned out to have lots of benefits for us.  And it's added to
> what we were doing with veterans.
> Ed Bordley, a lawyer at the Justice Department in Washington who has been
> blind since age 10, said that after one winter navigating Harvard
> University
> as a freshman, he applied for a guide dog in 1976.
> 'You had these snow banks and people parking their cars on the sidewalks so
> there was just a little room to get around,' he said.  'The dog would find
> the path in the snow banks and walk you around the cars.
> After graduating from Harvard Law School and embarking on a career that
> required him to travel, he appreciated the dog more.  'I feel that there is
> a
> dignity to having a dog,' said Mr.  Bordley, who is on his fifth dog.  'When
> you're using a cane, people grab you and direct you all the time.
> The dogs also do things a cane or any GPS device could not do.  Cliff Aaron,
> a lawyer who works in Lower Manhattan and lost his sight late in life from
> a
> hereditary condition, said his first dog, Alto, kept him from getting hurt
> the first day they went to work.
> 'I have to cross Church Street and Broadway every day,' he said.  'I'd been
> relying on my hearing or someone to help me.  On my first day with him he
> stopped.  I couldn't figure it out.  Then I felt this wind go right past my
> face.  I knew right away it was a bike messenger who blew the light.
> Last month, after four weeks at The Seeing Eye, Ms.  Murray was getting
> ready
> to go home with her dog, Fuchsia.  'They've changed my life in ways they
> only
> think they know, but they don't know,' she said, with Fuchsia curled up by
> her chair.
> Yet she admitted to some trepidation in leaving the school and returning
> home to what will be a very different life with her dog.  She did not know
> how her life would be changed.
> 'When I lost my sight, I kind of just sheltered in a bit,' she said.  'The
> first time I walked down the street with Fuchsia and I felt the wind on my
> face, I was smiling like a little kid.
> Tears of joy ran down from her closed eyes..  PHOTOS: LEARNING THE ROPES:
> Igloo
> is
> being trained at the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation in Bloomfield, Conn., to
> give a blind person more independence.  (F1); ONE ON ONE: A puppy gets
> personal attention at Fidelco.; NEW BEST FRIEND: Sue McCahill of The Seeing
> Eye helped Jennifer Murray adjust to a guide dog.  (PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW
> SULLIVAN FOR THE NEW YORK
> TIMES)
> (F2).
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> 
> --
> "All men dream, but not equally.  Those who dream by night in the dusty
> recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity:
> but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on
> their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible." T.  E.  Lawrence
> 
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