Getting Involved:

One Act Of Charity Leads To Others

By BRAD GROZNIK

Most people who want to get involved in charity work never know where to start – that is normal.

Rob Danno’s charity work started in 1975 when he read about a Ugandan girl who was attacked by a hyena and left for dead.

Danno felt compelled to do something for the girl so he wrote to the local Rotary, which adopted the girl and assisted in her care.

As fate would have it, the Rotary Club already accommodated for her rehabilitation with a doctor in Australia. Instead, the club wrote Danno back and asked if he could help a child with a congenial heart defect – he did.

In that moment, unbeknownst to Danno, he became the founder of Gift of Life International, which will save its 10,000th child this year from congenial heart defects.

“You have an interest and you throw yourself in – that’s how you get started,” Danno said.

Over the years Danno has run his organization, thousands have been willing to “jump out of the plane with him.”

“I never thought there would be any design to what I was doing at first,” he said. “You just take one step at a time and one step leads to another.”

For a lot of people, the Internet is the first place volunteers dip their toes before diving in like Danno, and Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator.org) is a good place to start.

Sandra Miniutti, vice president of marking for the Web site, described Charity Navigator as the Consumer Reports for the nonprofit world.

The free Web service rates the financial health of more than 5,000 charities in the country. Of those, 217 are within 10 miles of Fresh Meadows.

“We want donors to make educated decisions,” she said.

Among many other features on the Web site, Charity Navigator lets Web surfers know if the organization will sell their name to other organizations, a problem Miniutti calls “rampant” within the nonprofit world.

“Do your homework, look at their tax status and make sure they are a sustainable organization,” she said.

One group in the City that does the first bit of foot work for volunteers is New York Cares, an organization that couples with other community groups to create opportunities where volunteers can make a difference.

New York Cares prides itself in its 100 percent searchable Web site (www.nycares.org), where potential volunteers can input their time of availability, where they would like to volunteer and for how long – the site then shows where volunteer opportunities exist.

Currently, New York Cares has 80 volunteer projects around Queens.

The organization only asks interested people to attend one 45-minute orientation, which is held once a week in various spaces around Queens.

Greg Bagley, senior director for programs, said the group and the Web site were created because of the difficulty that can come from finding a volunteer opportunity.

“We wanted to make the start up part easier,” he said.

New York Cares operates an early morning reading program at PS 19 in Corona, where adults can still make work at 9 a.m. They also have volunteers working with immigrants in Queens on helping pass their citizenship test.

Most of the volunteers with New York Cares are between the ages of 24 and 35, but Bagley said he’s hoping this will change.

“There are a lot of senior citizens looking to volunteer their time,” he said. “We hope they find us.”

Bagley said those who do not consider themselves Web savvy can call the Manhattan office at (212) 228-5000 during normal business hours.

However, some soon-to-be-volunteers already are part of an organization.

Every parent of a student is a member of the school’s parent association, said Mary Kunicki, co-president of the Parent Association for PS 144.

“Schools tie communities together,” she said. “So if you help your school, you help your community.”

Over the years, the parent association for PS 144 has raised money to offset the shrinking budget of the City’s schools.

Recently, they raised $18,000 for a new sound system installed in the school’s gymnasium and auditorium.

Kunicki said they are always looking for volunteers to help with their events and fundraisers.

“We like to have all the help we can get,” she said.