As President of a charitable organization,
such as the Disabled Police Officers of America, Inc. (DPOA), how do I know if the
organization has achieved a “Mission Accomplished” status for the year?
Raw numbers?
A critical self-evaluation?
Impact and Customer Feedback?
While Raw numbers are usually the quickest of the three inputs to produce, they can appear rather clinical, one dimensional and detached by themselves. Without a focused and rather personal perspective of what the numbers translate into relative to human feelings and an individuals’ sense of well being they can mean much or they can mean little to an outside observer. I don’t want to go so far as to convey that we discount completely the importance of “numbers”, we don’t. They serve as a definite and understandable indicator of achievement, just not the most important one in my mind. We are proud of the numbers of people we have helped and they are quite impressive. There is a complete listing of all the individuals we have awarded scholarships and financial assistance awards to within this website.
A self-evaluation is another method used to mark achievement, or the lack there of, regarding completion of your mission. Most self-evaluations are built around pre-selected, objective and measurable factors. Depending on what you pick as an evaluative factor you can be determined a success no matter what you do. Limited in value but a process that never the less should be conducted.
Then there’s the 3rd way to measure mission achievement and it’s the one I consider the most crucial of the three mentioned above, Impact and Customer Feedback. This is the human side of measuring success. Did the organization really help anyone? Did we make the quality of disabled/retired officer’s lives any better than before we came into the picture? In my opinion – without a doubt! But this type of measurement tool, as its title implies, depends on customer feedback and not just my opinion. Over the last three years I have had many conversations with the retired officer or their spouses who have contacted us or been the recipients of the DPOA Scholarship and/or Financial Assistance awards. Many of these conversations were emotional and moving for me. I heard time and again of feelings of hopelessness, of not knowing where to turn to for help, and of sincere gratitude for the help we could give them.
There are two groups
of disabled/retired officers who seek DPOA help. The first group is comprised of those individuals who are looking for
scholarship assistance so that they could attend a college or certified
technical training institution and hopefully be able to secure meaningful
employment. Many of these individuals were experiencing financial difficulties of
trying to support their families while at the same time paying for and attending
school, all while on a reduced income. They just didn’t have enough money to do
both on their own. This is a nationwide program and is open to disabled/retired
officers all across
The second group is
comprised of those individuals, especially the men and women who had to retire on
disability, which found themselves suddenly in difficult financial straits. In
many instances they were having great difficulties in meeting basic daily living
expenses. Without warning or time to plan, their incomes became greatly
reduced. Mortgages still had to be paid, as did utilities, car notes,
prescriptions, medical treatments, and all the obligations they had before
becoming disabled. Many expressed that they had searched high and low and
couldn’t find anyone or any organization to help them. The DPOA was created to
fill this void by awarding up to $1,000.00 annually to these needing and
deserving disabled and retired police officers from any where in
I thought it might be meaningful to share a sample of Customer Feedback we have received from some of the DPOA Scholarship/Financial Assistance award recipients. These excerpts are taken, with their permission, from a few of their letters:
“Over the past seven
years since my husband Roberts’ accident that caused his disability we have
endured extreme dire financial circumstances that we never thought we would
have to face in our lifetime.” … When I contacted you last year, we were just
coming out of bankruptcy and needed a little boost to help us to get up and
running. We were mentally beat up and exhausted, our families had helped us out
to the limit,… and could not imagine there was a soul out in the world that
would look at us, let alone be willing to help us with anything.” … “When I
received your phone call telling me that we were approved to receive financial
assistance, I was shocked. I had been stuffing my feelings and emotions down my
throat for far too long that I really did not know how to respond to such
kindness from a complete stranger but to cry.” … “The financial help you
provided last year and this year greatly impacted our lives for the better good
in more than one way. It has helped us financially so we can purchase heating
fuel to stay warm, and found someone to confide in when our journey in life
seems like we are wavering.”
…” Thank you so much
for creating the Disabled Police Officers of
Robert & Anita Donahue –
“ I just wanted to
take this opportunity to tell you how grateful my family and I are for you and
the DPOA providing the financial donation we needed to avoid legal actions
being taken against us due to debts we had incurred since my injury. Without
your kind donation we would have had judgments placed against us and property
seized and all because we incurred debts just to clothe our children while I
was awaiting the bureaucratic process involved with approval of my police
disability retirement following my line-of-duty
injury.” … “I cannot overemphasize the importance of what you and the DPOA
mean to disabled retirees like myself. I had searched for a few years for some
form of assistance and even, much to my surprise received very little help
from… “I guess once you are injured and can no longer serve… you have little to
no worth to the agency you once gave your life for, and in fact did sacrifice
your whole life as it once was.”…” For this purpose alone the moral support
shown by the DPOA and Mr. Morrison deserves great commending, coupled with the
financial assistance provided us when faced with extreme financial hardships
while on half salary or when trying to
re-train for a new career it is a gift that is often difficult to express just
how much appreciated.”
Charles L. Goldthwait, II (Ret.) – State of
“As you know, this
past December 03, 2004 I was severely injured while effecting an arrest that
has left me 100 percent disabled and partially forced to use a power
wheelchair. As a result of this line of
duty traumatic injury I was placed on 45 days leave from the
Alan J. Odze –
“… I had to retire
after twenty-two and a half years working for the Dekalb Police Department in
In closing we at the DPOA feel a sense of the “Mission Accomplished” status but realize in the larger sense that our work is not yet done. Yes, the DPOA has made a very significant and positive impact on the quality of life of its’ award recipients to date but I can’t help but feel there are many thousands more disabled/retired officers around America who still need the type of help we have been able to give.
I have two hopes
for the coming year. The first is
that the DPOA will continue to have the funding to carry on its’
Terry K. Morrison
President, DPOA