Interview transcript:

Terry Gerton: It is GivingTuesday and so I’m delighted to start this story with Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society. But as we sit here today, coming off of the longest shutdown in government history, walk us through how military families are doing right now. How did that shutdown affect them?

Robert Ruark: That’s an absolutely great question. I think the way military families feel is it can certainly affect their confidence in basically in the support of their families. And that’s the big thing is that if their pay is uncertain, then it is absolutely necessary that they have to have a backstop for that. So one of the things that’s come up with a lot of the banks that cater to the military is the Payroll Protection Plan, the PPP. So the banks like USAA, Navy Federal Credit Union, PenFed, PenAir, a lot of them to cater to the military, they have those. And where you can virtually, you got to get signed up for that if you’re basically active duty service member because they can guarantee a great part of that payday. But if you’re not, you talk about stress. I mean, there’s enough stress in military life between inflation, global conflict potential, unplanned deployments that are going on quite a bit right now, housing and gas prices and basic life events that happen to your families, especially when you’re raising a young family with children at a military base and you’re forced to relocate, deploy all the time, your spouse is trying to find work and it’s really difficult to do that. So to not pay a service member, to a service member, in my opinion, is a sin because of what they do for this nation because they’re not necessarily doing it for themselves. They’re doing it because they want to be part of something much bigger and that’s the country and the country that they love. There’s a very mutual relationship there. So you want that confidence. You don’t ever want to lose that confidence. So I think pay has to be there. We were taught when I was a young Marine: pay, mail and food. Pay, mail and chow is what we call it, but you need those three things. Those are rights. And so I think every military service member views it as a right to be paid on time.

Terry Gerton: People who aren’t familiar or haven’t lived a military lifestyle may not understand all of the things that you just walked us through. And that’s, I think, what makes this GivingTuesday campaign so interesting. Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society has partnered for the fourth year in a row with the other military aid societies for GivingTuesday. Tell us about that partnership and what it means for military families who may be facing some of the stresses you just described.

Robert Ruark: I think the best part about the partnership is, as everyone knows in the country that follows the armed forces, we consider ourselves a joint force. And so that should also apply to the military nonprofits. Unfortunately, most of the our nonprofit peers outside the military aren’t really partnered with a lot of people. There’s maybe a few exceptions, of course, but the bottom line is we thought we would do something about four years ago that would be really new. And so we decided to partner to benefit all of us because we fight together, we train together in a joint environment. So we decided on GivingTuesday, the last few years, to the four military aid societies, the Army Emergency Relief, Air Force Aid Society, Coast Guard Mutual Assistance and Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, we would join forces to raise important funds to support military families in need through a different campaign each year. This year’s campaign is ‘Make Giving Your Superpower.’

Terry Gerton: Tell us about that campaign theme and why you chose it.

Robert Ruark: So the campaign is being conducted today on social media with the one-day goal to provide active duty service members and family members with vital emergency relief, financial support and education assistance. Those are the three things that we all have in common that we do to support everybody.

Terry Gerton: And how do you hope folks resonate with that superpower theme?

Robert Ruark: Well, the theme is a challenge to Americans to step up, suit up and make giving your superpower for the heroes who serve this country every day. All the donors need to do is visit the website missiongive.us. We believe our service members are truly superhuman in many ways and this is one way to honor their service. And the money goes straight to those different ways that we all support them. Financial assistance, education assistance, disaster assistance. And it goes primarily to those junior service members, the E-5s and below, with probably about five years or less service and a lot of them are married, they don’t make a lot of money and they’re looking to really improve their lives.

Terry Gerton: I’m speaking with retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bob Ruark. He’s the president and CEO of the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society. So something that’s really interesting with your campaign this year, you have a major matching gift partner. Tell us about Lockheed Martin’s role in this year’s campaign.

Robert Ruark: Lockheed Martin is the, of course, the global aerospace defense company. About three years ago, they started the $1 million match for all contributions, doubling the impact. That made this not only a competition, but a wonderful thing that very few nonprofits have. And so last year, we raised $1.3 million, which clearly doubled the impact. And so visiting missiongive.us is really what we ask, but that money will go right back out to the troops and especially those that are deployed, the families that are behind and help them with a lot of their needs. For example, financial assistance is our biggest need. And right now, the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society alone, we do $50 million of financial assistance a year, interest-rate loans and grants and we sit and we do budgets. We do financial education. We do everything we can to help them basically make the money or make the dollars go as far as they can.

Terry Gerton: But if someone wants to go beyond giving on GivingTuesday and get involved, what are the opportunities and how might someone become a volunteer with you?

Robert Ruark: Well, there’s enormous opportunities. They can visit one of our offices at one of those 52 major Navy and Marine Corps bases. They can go to nmcrs.org. They can call us. They can email us. We will always accept the volunteers. And the best part about that is the volunteers, in a lot of cases, get some great training. They become caseworkers in financial situations. They can get retail experience in our thrift shops. They can assist the visiting nurse program because it’s in such demand where we make 12,000 patient contacts each year, and they can learn budgeting and be able to do that financial education. So there’s enormous capabilities to grow and we know military spouse unemployment, I should say, is a huge issue. They can get some skills and then hopefully apply those to a real job.

Terry Gerton: Do your volunteers have to be connected to the military or can they be real-life civilians?

Robert Ruark: They can be real life civilians. It is so easy.

Terry Gerton: Well, give us the website one more time.

Robert Ruark: Ours is nmcrs.org and the GivingTuesday website to give to all of us to choose your favorite military aid society is missiongive.us and please thank Lockheed Martin in some way, shape or form because they’re making it happen with a billion-dollar match.

The post This GivingTuesday, one campaign aims to turn generosity into a lifeline for military families first appeared on Federal News Network.