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We're doing that with our entire disaster response. We have resources of 5,000 officers across the United States who are all trained in how to respond to these things. And we rotate them on a two-week basis. And then of course, the backbone of everything we do are our volunteers. We won't allow any volunteer to stay there beyond a two-week window. And we just keep circulating people in and out. We're fortunate in that we have an infrastructure of 65,000 employees and 3.5 million volunteers, we can keep circulating fresh bodies.

That's one of the unique features of this whole experience, because it seems that so many of the relief workers have been exhausted and even traumatized.

We saw severe damage done to people from 9/11.

The first responders?

The Salvation Army personnel who were working there in that environment for days and weeks—marriages and emotional lives have been destroyed as a result of that. People are still carrying the stress of those days.

Our big concern right now is that while we believe we have the aftermath of Katrina under control, and we're developing a long-term response that we think is going to reach out for the next four years, we suddenly watch this new storm moving in that's wreaking havoc. We're evacuating evacuees out of the Houston area right now. So it's more complex.

And the other thing we're keeping our eye on is our traditional Christmas season, which is only weeks away. Then we put 20,000 volunteer bell ringers on the streets of America to raise money to make sure that the poorest of the poor are taken care of during the holidays and throughout the year.

We're picking up from other charitable groups that they're really nervous about the fall giving period. And you share that concern?

Yes. You have no idea how it's going to come out. Our primary fundraising season, as everyone knows, is November and December. And I mean nobody has a clue about the impact of this hurricane season upon the annual giving that many nonprofits and religious organizations depend upon at the end of the year.

Just how do you prioritize spending the resources that people have given, particularly since Katrina?

We have a policy that we do not mix operating dollars with disaster dollars. Every donation that comes to us designated for a disaster is isolated and committed to that disaster. None of our ongoing administrative costs are taken from disaster funds. There are disaster-related administrative costs, but we don't mix the annual operating money with disaster money.

All of the money that comes dedicated to Katrina will be used on Katrina.

Now, as we're working, we know that 30 percent of the population in that region lives in poverty. So these are the people who we're already serving on an ongoing basis. Now their lives have been devastated, and the whole region has been turned upside down. So the American public is entrusting us with this money, that we will focus the recovery efforts upon that population, making sure they're served.

At the same time, in all of those communities in that area that were not directly impacted, we have this ongoing social service program. In the devastated communities, I'm not even sure that we'll be able to put bell ringers on those streets, or whether there are even any downtowns to have face-to-face contact with the giving public.

So those Salvation Army units are going to be really stressed for a long time until the recovery is fully in place.

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September (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49