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PREPARATION is your best defense against these often unpredictable and deadly events.  Sites such as NOAA and TXGLO offer helpful checklists and reminders that extend beyond gathering food and water.  Also understanding what types of disasters you may face, depending on your location, can help shape your plan. This may include bookmarking sites that give current road conditions, or saving numbers to call if you are impacted and need assistance. For example, if your state has an Emergency Assistance Registry, be sure your qualified family members are on it. If you are impacted, calling Crisis Cleanup should be one of your first steps. They serve as a central point of contact for multiple agencies responding after a disaster. And of course, FEMA offers disaster assistance programs. For Texans, we recommend visiting https://tdem.texas.gov/prepare.

Putting Faces To Our Mission 

Want to know what the work we do here at Missions on Wheels looks like?  

It also means that Inspiritus and other groups that partner with Missions on Wheels save thousands of dollars a week on the cost of renting dorm and shower trailers from private companies. That’s because we provide our units to Mission-focused nonprofits for roughly the cost of mobilization and maintenance. As Inspiritus’ Sherry Buresh wrote in Facebook post, “We couldn’t have had the high number of volunteers without Missions On Wheels. We appreciate you so much.”     

The story of Harold McKinley and the help he received from Inspiritus was featured in the Sun Bay Paper in Fort Myers. This is what American volunteerism is all about - ordinary people who drop what they are doing to go help strangers who are in crisis. We are proud of our role in helping Harold McKinley, our affiliation with Inspiritus and the way our approach to holding down the cost of response allows mission teams to have even more impact. 

This picture of a crew from our partner, Team Rubicon, illustrates why these units are so popular. It’s not just the mud and the grime from working in the sun all day. Responders can come into contact with floodwaters full of pesticides, chemicals, and bacteria. It's about keeping crews clean and healthy. 

Like so many of our units, this one was put together by Mission on Wheels volunteers. A big shout-out to everyone who helped us with the construction!

Retention is always a concern. The last study about 10 years ago found that about a third of volunteers don’t volunteer again, with the turnover rate approaching nearly 50% in some areas.  That has become even more of a problem since the Pandemic because fewer people are volunteering. The number of volunteers in America dropped by 7% after COVID, the biggest drop in participation in at least 20 years, according to the latest survey.

It is more important than ever to make sure that we do everything we can to ensure the people who give of their time and talents want to keep coming back the next time they are needed. 

One of the most important ways to accomplish that is to ensure people have a good volunteer experience. That came out loud and clear in some new research: What motivates and demotivates emergency response volunteers?  The study found that motivating factors for volunteers include:

1. Knowing they are helping the community 

2. Having a strong self-image and 

3. Feeling competent in their tasks

And one of the biggest things that demotivate volunteers is having a negative experience on-scene. There are a lot of factors that decide whether volunteers have a positive or negative experience. The one we focus on is volunteer logistics - meeting the needs of the volunteers so that they can see to the community's needs.

When a mission crew arrives in an impacted area, power and water may be out, and displaced residents may have filled nearby hotels and shelters. Sure, some responders love sleeping on a cot in a leaky tent, going a week between showers, and wearing the same muddy jeans day after day.  But what about the other 98% of volunteers?

That’s why Missions on Wheels goes the extra mile. We don’t just provide a shower, but we make sure that the “VIP” feels comfortable and would want to return knowing we are there. By providing safe and secure dorm trailers and clean, well-maintained shower and laundry facilities, we enable mission crews to focus on the job they came to do and get the rest they need to get up and focus the next day, as long as they are on-scene. 

That’s how you create a positive experience for your people.  Happy volunteers keep volunteering! 

That doesn’t mean we weren’t busy at Mission on Wheels. Some of our equipment is still in Florida, a year after Hurricane Ian caused $113 billion in estimated damages. Volunteer crews are still on the job, so we’ve kept dorm and shower trailers onsite as well.  This project shows the true impact of our equipment. We’ve saved our nonprofit partners more than $2 million in rental expenses, allowing them to put more people in the field and “do more good.”  We are especially grateful for our strong relationship with Wintergarden Presbyterian Church and Anthem Church in Florida.

Much closer to home, our partners at Compassion United in Conroe, TX, have been able to use one of our 7-stall shower trailers to help people experiencing homelessness. Most people don’t realize that homelessness is an issue in our community. Still, one survey identified nearly four thousand people without stable housing in Montgomery County, and the majority are experiencing homelessness for the very first time.  

As the hurricane season winds down and church summer mission trips are behind us, we can focus on the fleet's maintenance. It is a long to-do list that we work through to be ready whenever and wherever our nonprofit partners need us. 

Have you ever bought a brand-new shower trailer? They cost upwards of $65,000.00, so when a water leak damaged one of our units, we decided to rebuild rather than replace it.  Our volunteers put in a lot of hours tearing the trailer down to the metal frame and replacing the rusty parts. 

We reached a milestone at the start of October when we were able to attach the new walls and begin the new construction. 

As we look ahead to 2024, I wanted to share with you why 2024 may look a little different for us. The biggest difference we'll see is I will be undergoing surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff. The recovery and physical therapy will take some time and I'll be limited in what I'll be allowed to do. Ideally, we would like to hire a full-time operations person to handle maintenance and upkeep on the fleet. To do this, we need your help to spread the word and raise the funds to cover this salary.

During this time, I will also be "transitioning" to more of an administrative role and less of an operations role. This will be a HUGE change for me, as I love the operations side of the house and being in the field.