If your family is having a hard year
The Association helps families of the fallen, and families under strain from illness or injury. One office holds these requests. This page says what it can do and how to ask.
What it covers
Two kinds of work sit under family support, and they are worth separating because people usually mean the second one.
- Funding the events that keep the community together: the ball, the youth triathlon, and a Trunk or Treat in the autumn.
- Direct help for families in a period of need, including families of the fallen and families under strain from a serious illness or injury.
The second kind is deliberately not defined as a fixed list of benefits with fixed amounts. What a family needs in a bad month is rarely what a published schedule would have guessed, and a list would mostly serve to tell people they do not qualify. Ask, and the request is looked at as it stands.
How to ask
- Write to the Family Support Chair. A few lines is enough. Say what has happened, what would help, and how to reach you. You do not need to make a case or send documents.
- You get an acknowledgment. Within two business days, from the Chair, so you know it is with a person.
- The Chair comes back with what the Association can do. Sometimes that is money. Sometimes it is a connection to an organization better placed to help. Sometimes it is neither, and you will be told that rather than left waiting.
You can also ask on behalf of a family who would not ask for themselves. Say that is what you are doing, and say whether the family knows you are writing.
Who sees a request
A family-support request is the most sensitive thing this organization holds, and it is treated that way in the software rather than by good intentions.
- The Family Support Chair is the only office with access to these cases. Not the President, not the board, not the webmaster.
- The President can see counts and totals, and cannot open an individual case without a logged request that notifies the Secretary.
- Nothing about a request is published, and no family is named in any report, newsletter or accounts.
- A request is never a membership check. You do not have to be a member to write, and asking does not put anything on a membership record.
At a glance
- Owning office
- Family Support Chair
- Acknowledged within
- two business days
- Entity
- Joint Special Operations Association, 501(c)(19)
- Who else can see it
- No other office, without a logged and notified request
- Membership required
- No