How COVID-19 Temporarily Changed the Way Families Receive Aid

It’s been nearly sixty years, but Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of Alice’s Kids, an organization that provides small grants to children in financial need, has never fully shaken off the indignity of growing up in poverty.

“When a child can’t afford football gear, school clothes, a new backpack, or camp fees, it can feel like life and death,” he begins.

That’s where Alice’s Kids comes in.

As schools and libraries were shuttered and teachers stopped seeing students in person, many feared that kids would stop reading.

During the first six months of 2020, Alice’s Kids disbursed $120,000 in grants—typically about $100 per request—to 2,635 children. Thankfully, Fitzsimmons says, donations have continued to come in, something of a near-miracle in these economically shaky and illness-ridden times. 

Fitzsimmons is aware that this sets Alice’s Kids apart from other community-based charities. There are other differences as well. “Many organizations are trying to provide food and shelter to the thousands of people who are hungry and homeless,” he says. “Right now we’re one of the few organizations in the U.S. that raises money for the little stuff.”

“The money we collect always buys something concrete, and there’s no bureaucracy,” Fitzsimmons continues. First, there’s no overhead: Fitzsimmons operated Alice’s Kids out of  his  home.  “We get a request, and once I approve it, a gift card or check goes out within forty-eight hours.” 

What’s more, unlike other organizations that address economic inequities or work to alleviate economic want—goals that Fitzsimmons champions—this is not the mission of Alice’s Kids.

Instead, their mission is far more personal.

After Fitzsimmons’s dad left his family in 1962, abandoning his wife, Alice, and three kids, the family went through a series of hardships, including eviction. “We had to keep moving because my mom could not pay the rent,” Fitzsimmons recalls. “Our life was not Angela’s Ashes, but there were economic pressures, and we stuck out in our small Long Island town because we were poor.”

They got by on meager welfare payments, supplemented by his mother’s occasional work cleaning other people’s homes. “It was humiliating, embarrassing,” Fitzsimmons tells The Progressive. “I’d get to school, and some kid would say, ‘Hey, your mom was in my house yesterday washing my underwear.’ Worse, when the Lion’s Club came to drop off food or clothing, they’d take our photo and put it in the newsletter for everyone to see.”

Anonymity was impossible.

That’s why, when Fitzsimmons and his sister, Laura Fitzsimmons Peters, created Alice’s Kids in 2011, they pledged that grant recipients would never be named, photographed, or asked for testimonials. In fact, they opted to take requests for assistance only from teachers, social workers, and other community liaisons, rather than directly from those in need. 

Then COVID-19 changed this policy.

As schools and libraries were shuttered and teachers stopped seeing students in person, many feared that kids would stop reading. “A lot of kids don’t have a Kindle or Internet at home,” Fitzsimmons explains.

In response, Alice’s Kids decided to allow parents or guardians to ask for up to three books per child. “We publicized this on Facebook and Twitter and got a tsunami of requests,” he says. “To fulfill them, we had to get children’s names and addresses. Still, I’m really proud that we were able to switch gears and do this. We spent $29,000 on books over three months, March to May.”

Although Fitzsimmons ended the book giveaways, dubbed Alice’s Library, at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year—and he says that he does not anticipate restarting it—COVID-19 continues to impact the program.

“We’re getting emails about people who are in need because they’ve had family members die. We’re also hearing from folks who are getting evicted,” he says. “We just got a request about a single mom who is living in a shelter. She wants money to buy posters to make the room feel more like home for her kids.”

‘No,’ Fitzsimmons admits, posters won’t turn the shelter into a real home for this family. Nonetheless, he says, little things matter—a poster, a new pair of shoes, new jeans, a musical instrument, or sports equipment can make a difference.

This message was reinforced about a decade ago when he did a stint as a substitute teacher in a public high school.

“One day I noticed one of the kids crying,” Fitzsimmons explains. “When I asked what was wrong, she told me that she could not afford a prom ticket. I went downstairs, bought one, and gave it to her. I then asked other teachers if they ever paid for stuff for their students. Every one of them said ‘yes.’ ”

A subsequent conversation between Fitzsimmons and his sister hammered the importance of small gestures. “We were reminiscing about our mom and about how hard things had been, but as we talked, Laura reminded me that as bad as it usually was, when our mother had money, she would take us to E.J. Korvette’s Department Store or to Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor.”

That recollection—of how great these small excursions made them feel—formed the cornerstone of Alice’s Kids.

The organization—initially focused on the suburbs surrounding Washington, D.C.—now fields requests from throughout the country. Fitzsimmons says that approximately 40 percent of the appeals are for money to buy clothing or footwear. In addition,  he says, they’ve also funded school trips, exercise equipment, and therapeutic materials for kids with disabilities.

“We have a few thousand donors, including actors Patton Oswald, Bebe Neuwirth, and Stephanie D’Abruzzo and writers Jill Twiss and Bev Vincent,” Fitzsimmons reports. “More than 80 percent of our income comes from individuals. There’s an eighty-six-year-old woman in Alabama who sends us $5 a month.”

In addition, Alice’s Kids now boasts a $200,000 endowment thanks to retired ophthalmologist Mitchell Davis. “Dr. Davis called me in 2019 after learning about us. The endowment is meant to ensure our longevity and is a reserve. Dr. Davis also gave us money to do outreach in West Virginia and Kentucky, two of the only states we have not yet served.”

This, of course, is being done in addition to the daily work of both fundraising and processing requests.

“I’ve done many jobs throughout my life,” Fitzsimmons says in closing. “There’s absolutely no question. This is the best work I’ve ever done, the job that feels the most gratifying.”