LOCAL LEADER/Lissette Bishins - Depleted by hurricanes and tornadoes, the Red Cross' Bishins trudges on

By John Arundel
Managing Editor
 
Lissette Bishins likes to say that there's one thing the American Red Cross never does.
 
When a cossetted family's home burns to ashes over the holidays - as one did last year in the Groveton area - or hurricanes and tornadoes ravage the Gulf region and she needs to dispatch a local team to lend a helping hand, neither she nor any of her 500 volunteers show up afterwards with a bill.
 
"Despite a tough economy we're plugging along like other non-profits," Bishins offers. "When we send our local volunteers out, they sleep on prison cots like everyone else...We have the most engaged volunteers I've ever seen."
 

As the new executive director of the Alexandria chapter of the Red Cross -- its third in three years -- Bishins inherited some intractable issues when she took the reins one year ago this month. There was complacency, a high turnover of staff and a palpable lack of dynamism, a trait unknown to the high-octane Bishins. "We're really taking a turn here," she said recently. "We're putting some very progressive pieces in place."
 
First, however, there's that $200,000 hole in the local chapter's finances Bishins inherited and has been working to fix. The gap was narrowed to a $33,000 deficit ending June 30. The deficit got $50,000 in help from a successful Rhapsody in Red fundraiser in March, but a rained-out Waterfront Festival in June soaked a full financial recovery of the donor driven organization.
 
"Two-thirds of our budget is raised by individual donors," she said. "So when it rains on Waterfront Festival (its biggest fundraiser), we're having a really bad year."
 
Previously the regional southeast director of the YWCA in Miami, Bishins put together what she calls her "yes team" of lieutenants and volunteers. She approaches local engagement of the Red Cross as a "12-month event," training them on everything from preparedness, to drawing blood, to looking after socially-isolated seniors.
 
Some of the local chapter's services are not found in the national charter, such as providing company to 400 homebound senior citizens with their Friendly Visitors Program, begun in 1993.  Another unique service Bishins has nourished locally with her nine core staff members was connecting the chapter with the Animal Welfare League, arranging a protocol to house pets during a natural disaster or terrorist attack.
 
"I see us as being so much more in the community," she said. "Hurricane Isabel almost seems like a lifetime ago."
 
Isabel was the costliest and deadliest hurricane in the 2003 Atlantic hurricane season, leaving in its path  damage totaling about $3.6 billion and 51 deaths in seven states directly or indirectly related to the hurricane.
 
With Gustav and Hannah, hurricanes which succeeded Isabel, the Red Cross dispatched 20,000 volunteers to the Gulf Coast region, including 16 from Alexandria. Local volunteers ranged in age from their mid-20s to their 70s, and Bishins said they're either retired, work for the government or between jobs, so they can take weeks off to volunteer. "They have varying degrees of capability," she said. "But they're all totally committed."
 

Bishins emphasized that the Red Cross is a charity, not a government agency. While Congress recently appropriated $100 million in funding, a national campaign was launched shortly afterwards to match it with $100 million on its own.
 
With a local annual budget of $883,000, Bishins said the Alexandria Red Cross raises - and spends - all of its funds locally, harnessing the gifts of about 1,200 local donors. "We have an amazingly robust donor base," she said.
 
But during tough economic times, she said, donors are paring back their contributions, with $100 annual givers converting themselves into $50 annual givers. This has forced her to become more innovative with her fundraising, with events like restaurant nights in which the Red Cross receives 20% of the evening's take.
 
"We're starting to hit more people with our pleas," she said. "The Alexandria community is great, but it's a very tough year for non-profits...We're turning over a lot of rocks."   
 
The Alexandria Red Cross campaign for 2008 ends December 31. For more information, log on to www.alexandriaredcross.org.