{"id":2649,"date":"2021-03-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/familyhouseinc.org\/article\/reflections-on-one-year-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-at-family-house-san-francisco\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T16:46:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T23:46:35","slug":"reflections-on-one-year-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-at-family-house-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/familyhouseinc.org\/tl\/article\/reflections-on-one-year-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-at-family-house-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on One Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic at Family House San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
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Alexandra Morgan, Family House CEO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\nAs we look back on a year marked by uncertainty and a test of our ability to adapt to a new reality, it seems as if we\u2019ve gone through a <\/span>lifetime<\/b> of challenges, not just a mere 12 months. From March 16, 2020, the date San Francisco officially began shelter in place and when operations at Family House drastically changed, I have been consistently impressed by the dedication of our staff, the Board of Directors and our donors. If we had not quickly pulled together as a team, we would not have made it through those first scary months of making hard but essential decisions.<\/span>\n\nThe first decision was to cancel the annual Cabernet para sa mga Connoisseurs<\/a>, which was scheduled just a week after the initial shutdown. This was the first time in 25 years we didn\u2019t have a Cabernet for Connoisseurs party. I\u2019d been to the Make-A-Wish gala the weekend before and thought, \u201cif they can do it, we can do it.\u201d Was I wrong! Once we canceled the Cabernet event, we reached out to our wonderful donors who were exceptionally generous in providing much-needed funds to get us through the shutdown. I was feeling a little more confident about facing an uncertain future. At first we thought that the shutdown would last a few weeks, or worst case, a few months. Wrong again!<\/span>\n\n\n\n
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Screenshot of Nancy Grand leading the Family House Town Hall online, May 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\nThe next windfall came from the estate of Bettye Poetz Ferguson, thanks to our friend, George Argyris. That $2 million gift that arrived the first week of the shutdown was as rare as hen\u2019s teeth <\/span>for most nonprofits, but perfectly timed for Family House.\u00a0 I kept thinking that our co-founder, Dr. Ablin<\/a>, who passed away a few years ago, had something to do with it, because it felt like more than luck \u2013 it felt as if someone was watching over us.\u00a0 <\/span>\n\nWe knew that if we couldn\u2019t do any events, but keep the rest of our donors, we\u2019d make it through the year without having to make budget cuts. A small team of us taped a Family House <\/span>Town Hall<\/span><\/a>, MC\u2019d by our angel, Nancy Grand. It seems like eons ago, but it was only last May.<\/span>\n\nDuring the first weeks and months of the shutdown I was driving myself crazy by attending online workshops and webinars about leadership during a crisis, how best to manage staff remotely, how to keep morale up, how to fundraise during a pandemic, how to recruit key staff remotely, and on and on and on. I was panicked because I knew the staff and board would look to me for calm leadership, so I dove headlong into finding and deciphering any best practices that made sense for us. Fortunately, the Family House staff is creative and quickly adapted to operating the building and the lives of our families in the best, cleanest and safest way possible. This has been an evolving process that has resulted in a well-running operation today in every department.<\/span>\n\nThe next thing I did was to produce a series of emails to our board and major donors, so they knew that we were on a good path, ever diligent in procuring the most recent information from UCSF and the SF Public Health Department. I watched Governors Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom every day to learn what they knew. I reached out to colleagues at other residential nonprofits to find out how they were adapting, and among all of this information-gathering, as thin as it was, I discovered that members of my own family had died in the 1918 pandemic. There was an eerie tension between the quiet, bare streets of a community that had closed down amidst the anxiety of not knowing what to do or how to do it. The best part of life during that time was commuting.\u00a0 There was literally no traffic.<\/span>\n\n\n\nOne of the first things that our COO, John Barrett, did was to remove all of the lobby furniture and a great deal of the kitchen furniture to avoid congregating. It has been heartbreaking to see this beautiful building, designed to bring families together for meals, playtimes, music sessions, arts and crafts be transformed into a sparse, spare environment. No more children running up and down the hallway, no more sitting at the front desk with families, and most difficult is no more family meals. We quickly suspended the volunteer program, losing 5,000 folks who came in annually to help out with meals, cleaning, projects like putting wheelchairs together, running arts and crafts programs, etc. The biggest loss from cutting the volunteer program was family dinners. Volunteers provided dinners up to 4 times per week in addition to the breakfast program held in the lobby every morning. These were the ways that families got to know one another, share stories and get to know others who they may have seen in the hospital. In a word, the normalcy we strive so hard to provide was gone. We were in the midst of a new normal that we knew nothing about.<\/span>\n
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We love all our volunteers and miss the thousands we typically count on and look forward to welcoming back as soon as we can.<\/p>\nMary and Mimoh volunteer to hand out the family dinners a couple of nights per week, and are delivering food from @T0MA_SF<\/a> to the families! pic.twitter.com\/xDc89pdByl<\/a>\n\n\u2014 Family House SF (@familyhousesf) February 13, 2021<\/a><\/blockquote>\n