December 2011 - The ASJA Monthly

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Meet Paula Dranov, the new leader of ASJA’s The Writers Emergency Assistance Fund BY LISA COLLIER COOL F or ASJA member Paula Dranov, the new chair of the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund (WEAF), charity literally began at home. As a child, Paula watched her mother tuck $2 in cash into envelopes. “She responded to every appeal, and never threw an envelope into the trash. She couldn’t send much but she always sent something,” says Paula, who served on the WEAF board as deputy chair before assuming her new leadership role at ASJA’s charity for professional writers facing financial hardship due to illness, disability, infirmity, or an extraordinary crisis. Paula is an award-winning freelance writer who specializes in health, nutrition, and fitness. She writes on a regular basis for drweil.com, the website of integrative medicine pioneer Dr. Andrew Weil. She has written seven books as well as hundreds of articles for leading national magazines, including Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and Reader’s Digest. She lives in New York City with two gorgeous—but very demanding—rescue cats. Joining Paula at the helm of WEAF, as deputy chair, is Gloria Hochman. Winner of ASJA’s Career Achievement Award in 2006 as well as 27 journalism awards, Gloria has written hundreds of articles for Health, Ladies Home Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Science Digest, The New York Times book review, and many other publications. She’s the coauthor, with Patty Duke, of the bestseller, A Brilliant Madness, and serves as director of communications at the National Adoption Center in Philadelphia. With WEAF’s 30 th anniversary coming up in 2012, I spoke to Paula about her plans for the year ahead and some of the questions she’s often asked about WEAF. You have held various positions in ASJA, including being secretary in the 1980s. Why do you now direct a major portion of your efforts to the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund Of all the volunteer positions I’ve held, this is by far the most gratifying. What we do as writers can be so difficult, and if we don’t look after each other, who will The WEAF board hears terrible stories about freelancers with Stage 4 breast cancer or horrible injuries, and it really makes us appreciate how important it is to share a bit of our better luck with professional writers who are struggling. Although WEAF’s grants are modest, they can make an incredible difference. What portion of ASJA members contribute to the fund In our last fiscal year, we received only 169 donations. About 100 members added $5 or more to their dues payment as a donation to WEAF. The largest donation was $5,000, from an extremely generous ASJA member who was a former WEAF grant recipient. He is now doing so well that he was able to donate far more than he received as a grant. He told us that he believes in tithing, so he sent us 10 percent of the money he has in the bank, as a way of giving back so the money will there for someone else who needs it. Overall, the number of members who donate has dropped significantly, since 2008 when 522 members donated. Lisa Colllier Cool, a long time ASJA member and WEAF board member, has written for dozens of national magazines and is author of How to Write an Irresistible Query Letter. More at lisacolliercool.com. Do you have a goal for 2012 It would be great to get at least $40,000 in donations. Clearly we have to do much better than last year when WEAF received $17,757 in donations and gave out $38,770 in grants. WEAF can’t sustain a trend of giving out more in grants than it receives in donations. How close are we Unfortunately, there’s a long way to go. We have received a number of donations this fiscal year, including $5,000 from an anonymous donor and $1,200 from an ASJA member. WEAF urgently needs donations of any amount. I’m hoping that members will consider donating $10 to $100 when they pay their annual dues. That’s been the traditional fundraising path for WEAF. However, I would like to see more members make monthly pledges. Many wouldn’t miss $5 to $10 a month—and if one-third of ASJA members donated an average of $20 per month (a few already donate $75 or more per month), WEAF would have more than $110,000 a year, enough to put us on a sound financial footing. It’s easy to make a tax-deductible donation online at weaf. org, using your credit card. Exactly how does WEAF help writers WEAF has awarded hundreds of grants to freelancers who are seriously ill and unable to pay their bills, those who have been injured or were victims of a natural disaster, and some who are simply too old to support themselves through writing. WEAF also alerts applicants to other groups that award grants to writers. Weaf.org has a list of these resources. 14 THE ASJA MONTHLY DECEMBER 2011 WWW.ASJA.ORG
All writers—members and non-members alike—can apply for grants. What’s the proportion of members helped vs. nonmembers The majority of grants—about 75 percent or more—go to nonmembers. To be eligible, applicants must be established professional writers with similar qualifications to those of ASJA members, who are suffering financial hardship due to illness, disability, natural disaster, infirmity, or an extraordinary crisis that impairs their ability to write. What’s the largest grant WEAF has ever given out Due to WEAF’s financial crisis, with grants exceeding donations, the board recently was forced to cut the maximum grant to $4,000. Previously, the maximum was $5,000. In the past, WEAF sometimes gave second grants of up to $2,500 in cases of extreme emergency, but to conserve its rapidly shrinking resources, the lifetime limit is now one grant per applicant. How does the WEAF board decide which applicants should receive grants For instance, you have 10 requests. What’s likely to tip you over to a particular applicant It was heartbreaking to have to turn down a man left totally blind by medical malpractice a few years ago, but he didn’t meet the eligibility criteria. He was actually a professional photographer who had written a handful of articles decades ago, and wanted to make a career change to writing. However, WEAF’s bylaws bar funding works-in-progress. Since applicants must be established professional writers of nonfiction, the board checks to see if applicants have written enough books or articles for major and substantial publishers to qualify. WEAF’s criteria are the same as those of ASJA’s in evaluating prospective members. If some of the publications are unfamiliar, I ask ASJA Membership Committee chair, Terry Whalin, for guidance. Sometimes it’s a very close call, so if Terry says there’s a reasonable possibility that someone would be admitted with those credentials and that person is struggling with a terrible situation, then I send the application to the board for a vote. The key factor is the nature of the crisis. A recent applicant was the author of a dozen books who was facing eviction. But he was young, healthy, and wasn’t in any way impaired from writing. He was bitterly disappointed when the board turned him down--and appealed the decision five times. However, WEAF doesn’t view having insufficient work to make ends meet to be an extraordinary crisis—it’s one of the unfortunate risks of freelance work. A crisis must be a problem that prevents a writer from working, such as a lawsuit or caring for a seriously ill spouse. How often are deserving applicants turned down To date, WEAF has never had to turn down a qualified applicant, because in its nearly 30-year history, there was always enough money in the bank to issue grants to desperate freelancers who meet the criteria. But obviously, WEAF can’t continue to do that if we run out of money. I’ve always found writers to be incredibly helpful and generous one-on-one so I hope ASJA members will respond to the needs of other writers facing financial crises in this tough economy. WEAF belongs to ASJA and represents the response of ASJA members to fellow writers who, through no fault of their own, are dealing with financial crises. Any especially moving stories of late Two stand out. One is a writer whose byline everyone on the board instantly recognized—he had had a long and successful career writing for top magazines, but is now in his 80s with “a touch of colon cancer” struggling to make ends meet for himself and his wife with social security and food stamps. The other is a former ASJA member who was injured in a freak accident and more than a year later is able to work only two hours a day because of the residual effects of her injury. When those applications came in, I felt (and I suspect most members of the board felt) “there but for the grace of God go I,” nothing religious about it, but the recognition of how fragile our careers can be. Are contributions tax-deductible Absolutely. WEAF is a registered 501 (c) (3) charity, so all donations are fully tax-deductible. Not only can you donate online, but you can also send a check by mail to the ASJA office, 1501 Broadway, Suite 403, NY, NY 10036. Make the check payable to “ASJA Charitable Trust” and mark it “for WEAF.” ¢ WANTED: WRITERS for THE ASJA MONTHLY We need your work on our pages. Features, Writing Life essays, Market Reports and Technology columns, and more. You will own the rights and can place what you contribute in other publications, as past member-contributors have. And if you have an idea for a piece or a column, but don’t have the time to write it, please feel free to send it our way. EMAIL EDITOR BARBARA DEMARCO-BARRETT at theASJAMONTHLY@ASJA.ORG THE ASJA MONTHLY DECEMBER 2011 WWW.ASJA.ORG 15
Page 1 and 2: THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE AME
Page 3 and 4: FROM THE PRESIDENT’S DESK BY SALL
Page 5 and 6: Minds campaign honoring seniors. In
Page 7 and 8: In your book you also talk about
Page 9 and 10: 650 VIDEOS POSTED DURING BANNED BOO
Page 11 and 12: The June Roth Book Award is typical
Page 13: a review removed because it was an
Page 17 and 18: Voices on Writing continued from pa
Page 19 and 20: write what you know, don’t sweat

December 2011 - The ASJA Monthly

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?