Courtesy of Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter
The residencies at the Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter are decorated with donated furniture from local vendors to avoid an “institutional” look. Clients are allowed to stay for 30 days to make arraignments.
A women’s shelter in Benton County needs $150,000 by the end of June or else it may have to shut down operations, effectively abandoning abuse survivors seeking refuge.
The problem came from reducing public outreach. In an effort to keep the shelter and its clients confidential, Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter officials kept their affairs private and limited public outreach about ten years ago. Without public fundraising, the growth of the community and the increase in demand for services has overwhelmed the shelter, said John McGee, executive director for Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter.
“We stopped telling the community what we did,” he said. “You can’t be a community-based organization and forget to tell the community who you are.”
If the shelter doesn’t raise $150,000 by the end of June, the board of directors will have to decide on either closing operations or severely downsize operations, McGee said.
In order to survive the deficit and continue providing services, NWAWS must raise $60,000 per month from the community contributions to meet its needs.
Staff Photo Nick Brothers
Al Glover (far left) speaks with attendees to the silent auction at a pre-party for the Parade of Homes in the garage of the house. All of the proceeds from the auction were donated to the Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter.
NWAWS is the only women’s shelter in Benton County, and has room for 16 adults and 24 children. Staff and volunteers handle 1 in 4 crisis hotline calls in the state.
The shelter provides free residence for 30 days, including food, personal hygiene products and over the counter medication if needed. The shelter also provides advocacy programs to help clients move toward a life free of violence and abuse and provide several public outreach programs related to dating violence in schools.
“We start breaking the inter-generational transfer of abuse,” McGee said. “Shelters are the point of entry into the social safety net that will help them break out of that and prevent transfer. How successful are we? It’s one family, one child at a time.”
As much as 17 percent of the shelter’s funding comes from state and federal government sources. The remainder of the budget is funded through community support. One method they use is using the profits from their thrift store — which makes roughly 20 percent of its annual income — as well as fundraising events, individual giving, and foundation grants.
The shelter first opened in 1986 and houses men, women and children who seek refuge from domestic violence. The goal was to ensure domestic abuse victims in Benton County could find economic independence in a safe environment and avoid having to relocate.
Courtesy of Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter
Booths of information and service contacts can be seen set up at several fundraising events planned by local businesses and organizations to aid the Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter during their “Save Our Shelter” campaign.
The shelter hasn’t been empty since November 2000, and is on average 60 percent full. The shelter frequently hits capacity, McGee said.
Closing would mean 70 orders of protection left unfiled, 1 in 7 survivors with nowhere to go and more than 200 children without safe refuge. It would also mean 4,325 calls unanswered, 9,377 unsafe nights and 200,000 people missed in outreach programs, according to 2015 data by NWAWS.
“Save Our Shelter” Campaign
The “Save our Shelter” campaign began earlier this month to raise enough proceeds to keep the shelter open, and the community has answered the call.
Several businesses and individuals have set up benefit events and fundraising drives where the proceeds benefit the shelter, including Two25 Gallery & Wine Bar and Krav Maga in Bentonville.
“I was on a radio broadcast this morning, and a number of businesses called me and said, ‘I’ll collect checks for you,’” McGee said. “We’re ultimately going to survive because the community has decided its worth our effort and their effort to be alive.”
Courtesy of Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter
The Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter can house as many as 24 children, as seen here by the shelter’s toddler play room. On average, half of the clients the shelter houses are children an average of 5 years old.
Al Glover, a Springdale interior designer, threw a silent auction pre-party at a Parade of Homes site where the all the proceeds from the auction went directly to NWAWS.
“The women’s shelter has been something for me personally that is a very close connection because of my own personal background,” Glover said. “It’s something I went through as a young person as a victim of abuse. When I came back here to Northwest Arkansas it was something I felt very passionately about trying to help with. It’s something people need to be educated about, especially the need for those services for men.”
McGee said those who are interested in helping can write a check and send it to P.O. Box 1059, Rogers, AR 72757. Donations can also be made online at nwaws.org. Fifty dollars provides the shelter with groceries for one week, $100 provides one night of safety for a survivor and $707 sponsors a child in shelter for one week, according the NWAWS. The NWAWS can be reached at 479-246-0353.
