FAYETTEVILLE -- Sometimes do-gooders need a little help to do some good. More and more of them are seeking help from a group started in 2012 called Compassion Fayetteville.
Compassion Fayetteville connects charities and philanthropic residents to the public. The group also hosts its own events such as a Black Lives Matter panel discussion, programs to educate schoolchildren on bullying, feeding people at Seven Hills Center and organizing food drives.
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"A lot more people have become aware of who we are and are now coming to us wanting us to help them out with some projects," said Edwin Williams, who operates the group with his wife, Dian. "We just want to expand our programs so we can help other people."
Similar organizations have been popping up all over the country, a concept known as "giving circles," said Kristina Gawrgy Campbell with the Independent Sector, a national organization that specializes in nonprofit research.
"It's not unusual for entities to help nonprofit organizations provide their services and achieve their missions," she said. "There are an array of nonprofit organizations, trade associations, consultants and coalitions with the aim of helping nonprofits."
Compassion Fayetteville is seeking nonprofit status so it will be eligible for grants and can more effectively solicit donations and money, Edwin Williams said. It needs $1,000 to cover the Internal Revenue Service filing fee, he said.
More than 500 people on Monday night attended a panel discussion touching on the meaning of the Black Lives Matter movement. Compassion Fayetteville hosted the event at St. James Missionary Baptist Church. A follow-up conversation will be held Sept. 19, said Pattie Williams, who heads the black history portion of the group with D'Andre Jones.
The group will sponsor a public meeting with the Ozark Guidance's Therapeutic Foster Care program two days before that at the library's Walker Community Room. The program focuses on finding foster parents for children and teens 3 to 18 years old who might have emotional or mental disabilities, have had multiple failed foster home placements or who need homes in between hospitalization or residential treatment.
The guidance center has worked with Compassion Fayetteville before to hold public sessions informing potential foster parents on what it takes to do the job. The organization has become an invaluable tool in getting the word out on the center's foster care program, said Dina Rega with Ozark Guidance's marketing.
"In any organization, you're looking for different outlets and different audiences," she said.
Compassion Fayetteville teamed with Seeds that Feed and Washington Plaza Apartments last spring to collect canned food and distribute it at fire stations, the library and grocery stores. The event, dubbed "Canpassion Fayetteville," probably would've been too much for one entity to take on, said Margaret Thomas, co-director of Seeds that Feed, a nonprofit that brings fruits and vegetables to food pantries. Having Compassion Fayetteville spearhead the effort made things go smoothly, she said.
"They know so much about this area, and the officials and making things happen," she said. "I'm very excited about them getting their status."
The organization has a distribution list with about 1,000 members on it, in addition to about 240 partners with whom they work, Pattie Williams said. The workload keeps the 15-20 volunteers on the planning team busy, but they're happy to be in that position.
"It's pretty exciting that we're at this stage of development," Pattie Williams said.
Pattie Williams was one of the original members of Compassion Fayetteville, along with Wahida Zamani and Margot Jackson, who have since gone to other charitable organizations. Pattie Williams put her focus on the group's black history events when Edwin and Dian Williams, no relation to Pattie, moved to Fayetteville from Houston about four years ago and took on leadership roles.
One of Mayor Lioneld Jordan's first initiatives after taking office in 2009 was developing the Fayetteville Forward Economic Accountability Council. Several subgroups emerged from that council, most of which have since dissipated, said Dede Peters, the city's community outreach coordinator. Pattie Williams, Zamani and Jackson created Compassion Fayetteville after working in the "inclusion" subgroup of the council.
A global compassion movement was gaining traction around the same time. The basic concept, spearheaded by scholar and author Karen Armstrong, was to promote the Golden Rule.
Compassion Fayetteville relies on its planning team to decide which projects to take on because a lot of altruistic endeavors can fall under the compassion umbrella, Dian Williams said.
"When someone comes to us with an event that is a compassionate action, and we think we can do it, we will sponsor that event," she said. "So, we never know exactly what we're going to be doing, when or where. We just go where we can and do what we can do."
Dian Williams agreed there's no shortage of humanitarian organizations in Fayetteville. The Omni Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology is one doing similar work, but that's a good problem to have, she said.
"There's so much that needs to be done, there's room for all of us," she said.
NW News on 08/27/2016