GOODWILL “One of the pilots pulled me aside and said, ‘This is so good, you can’t keep it a secret, you have to tell other pilots’ ” –Captain Ed Faath ALL IMAGES COURTESY PILOTS FOR KIDS GLAD TIDINGS Christmas time is, of course, a major priority for Pilots for Kids hospital visits a date, and visited a ward of burn victims at Shriners Hospital for Children in Cincinnati. “We went to the Burn Center, and and we had the same reaction,” Faath recalls. “I learned then that there is always one child that stands out on every visit.” On their debut stopover, the pilot-volunteers had been briefed by the nurses about protocol, and were told to treat these disfigured young people as “normal” and to keep things light. When one young burn victim didn’t respond to the group’s cheery “Good morning!”, she was berated by staff and froze. “I didn’t know how to respond,” Faath recalls. “But then I remembered what the nurses had told us, and how these burn victims are taught not to expect to be treated differently, that that is part of the healing process. So we treated her like anyone else who wasn’t covered in burn scars.” Smiles erupted all around once the young girl accepted the everyday kindness of these generous pilots. The pilots on that first visit told their friends, and it all snowballed organically, funded exclusively by modest annual dues of and additional generosity. (In 2021, Pilots for Kids raised dues to for the first time since 1994.) “It got bigger and bigger,” says Faath. “Eventually, one of the pilots pulled me aside and said, ‘This is so good, you can’t keep it a secret, you have to tell other pilots about this!’ “From that point onward, Faath made an effort to reach out to different pilot groups, find one person who was interested, and give them the 14 NetJets
tools to take on what came to be known as the nonprofit Pilots for Kids. Think of it as an early Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). “The nice thing about our group is we are decentralised, we don’t micromanage,” Faath says. “When someone becomes a chapter coordinator in a city, we help them and finance them and work together, but they are free to choose hospitals or other types of children’s centres, raise their own money and spend it in a way that they deem is appropriate for the kids.” Since that first visit in 1982, Pilots for Kids is now approaching 5,000 members in 53 chapters, and has donated millions of dollars and visited hundreds of thousands of kids at hospitals, shelters, orphanages and halfway houses, with zero overhead. “We are very efficient,” says Faath. “I don’t know of another 501(c)3 [the US tax code for charitable nonprofit] organisation that comes close, with no paid staff, just volunteers.” And some goodwill from heavy hitters. Recently, NetJets held a raffle and raised 0,000, which was donated equally to the American Heart Association, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Pilots for Kids. Since Faath’s organisation doesn’t take donations from companies, they gave the money back to NetJets, which will use those funds in a similar fashion as Pilots for Kids does. The organisation’s Columbus Chapter has developed a strong partnership with NetJets’ pilot union (NJASAP), “so there’s a vested interest in supporting Pilots for Kids,” according to Courtney Hessenauer, Director of Philanthropy at NetJets. Around the holidays, the union and Columbus Chapter members partner to support Christmas wish programmes for select Central Ohio organisations. “They do holiday toy drives and spread cheer to children in the local community,” Hessenauer says. Those NetJets Pilots who participate in local Pilots for Kids chapters have stories of their own, which Faath disseminates through a newsletter he puts out from his home in Orlando, where he now works as a freelance private pilot. “One told me two years ago that there was a little boy whose mother was a single parent. He had told his mom that she shouldn’t have gotten him this Christmas gift, that it wasn’t necessary because ‘the pilots are going to give me what I want when they visit’. The little boy didn’t know this, of course, but the pilots get kids’ letters to Santa, so they actually do know exactly what each child wants on 25 December. Another year, a doctor greeted a chapter as the pilots arrived in uniform and told them he was glad to see them. He explained that a little boy in his ward kept sticking his head out, and they kept asking if there was anything he needed. Eventually, the doctor asked if the boy was looking for Santa Claus. He said, ‘No, I’m not waiting for Santa. I’m waiting for the pilots.’” Like Captain Faath said, there is always one kid on each visit who stands out. pilotsforkids.org LIGHT SIDE OF THE DARK SIDE The force of philanthropy is with these gift-givers at one of the many hospitals that Pilots for Kids visits NetJets 15
