Nancy Marvel to Retire After Heading the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief
Episcopal News Service. November 19, 1998 [98-2267]
(ENS) To Nancy Marvel, the problem and the answer were very clear. The Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief wants to see its annual income grow to $20 million, "and, of course, that's important and should be very possible. Twenty dollars and one million people, there's your $20 million, right there. It's very simple." .
But she knows that fundraising -- and life -- are more complicated
On December 31, she ends a 22-year span of service -- an effort she often has called her ministry -- in the Episcopal Church. Is she looking forward to retirement? "Yes, very much," she declared in a recent interview. "It is with regret that I'm retiring, but with great enthusiasm for what the future will bring." The future will include membership on several committees that will allow her to continue working for the church.
Ask her to describe her work, primarily with the Presiding Bishop's Fund, and it soon becomes evident that her dedication to the fund's mission and activities still runs high. .
"The thing that has been the most rewarding to me as part of the staff of the Presiding Bishop's Fund has been disaster response," she said
As chair of the Church World Service emergency response committee [she has chaired the committee twice; she is currently vice-chair], she helped establish a preparedness program "that has really been well received here in the United States. That means that the ecumenical bodies within the States, most of them, have programs so that they are ready to go as soon as a disaster hits. This has been extremely exciting."
Preparedness has been especially important during 1998, a year in which the U.S. and its Caribbean and Central American neighbors have been battered, even devastated, by bad weather. Not only has the Presiding Bishop's Fund made more than $100,000 in emergency grants since Hurricane Mitch struck Central America on the last weekend of October, its worldwide mission has also provided support to other Caribbean countries still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Georges as well as parts of the United States fighting to overcome drought, floods and ice storms.
Preparedness has been especially important during 1998, a year in which the U.S. and its Caribbean and Central American neighbors have been battered, even devastated, by bad weather. Not only has the Presiding Bishop's Fund made more than $100,000 in emergency grants since Hurricane Mitch struck Central America on the last weekend of October, its worldwide mission has also provided support to other Caribbean countries still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Georges as well as parts of the United States fighting to overcome drought, floods and ice storms.
The work is demanding, but Marvel brought a resume of church experience to the executive director's job. She was hired by the Episcopal Church in 1976 as an assistant to Presiding Bishop John Maury Allin, who named her director of the Fund's grants program in 1981. She became executive director of the Fund in 1995 and served until May this year, when she was named the fund's ambassador.
In her years with the Fund, Marvel has not only seen the need for help grow, she said she has seen the definition of disaster expand to cover not only the initial impact of a storm or an earthquake or a local revolution, but also include the long-term aftereffects such as immigration.
"That affects the people who are migrating and impacts greatly wherever they land," she said. "Can the countries who have received these migrants absorb them? In most cases, they cannot. Therefore you have a triple disaster. There's the initial disaster, and then migration. Often, when people are migrating, they lose people, they die. And then, when people get to another country, what is the impact there?"
The growth in the definition of disaster and the need to use its funds wisely pushed the Fund to work hard at refining its disaster response, she recalled.
"If you follow demographic changes, especially here in the United States, you are able to see where you have to really look," she said. "I remember taking the disaster response office with me to Texas in the late 1980s. We went because there had been five to seven years of continuous flooding there.
"It was horrendous. We were constantly having to think about the people who were affected on the flood plain there who moved and then immediately moved back and rebuilt. That was the beginning of the preparedness program. We just knew you have to think it all the way through. It's a problem; the people who usually build in floodplains are poor."
Often, the decisions she had to make on grants were tough, she reflected. "The resources of the Fund are not sufficient to respond to the growing needs. Each request is considered on its own merit."
The executive director has the authority to respond to requests for one-time emergency grants of up to $25,000. These requests may be made only by the bishop for the affected area. In addition to the emergency grants, the Fund forwards the contributions designated for specific work, such as the Central American recovery from Hurricane Mitch. In addition, the Fund's board meets twice a year to consider requests for grants to support long-term projects.
"Whoever is responsible for emergency work spends a lot of time early in the morning getting as much information as anybody could about a disaster," she said. That person also must keep up with news reports from around the world to monitor situations that may eventually need a response.
That person also works closely with other aid organizations such as Church World Service, an international relief, rehabilitation and development effort of the National Council of Churches. The Fund has long supported CWS and other ecumenical organizations that can ship food and supplies, building materials and equipment into disaster areas, she noted. The Presiding Bishop's Fund helps to finance that work.
"The Episcopal Church would love to have a hands-on program. The board has talked about this a lot and I really think it will happen," she said. "But right now we just don't have the staff." The board has also raising the Fund's annual income to $20 million, an ambitious goal that it sees within the near future.
Looking toward the future, Marvel acknowledges that she will be busy with some favorite projects. She is a part of the planning committee for the year-long celebration of the Fund's 60th anniversary in 2000. The celebration will have a special place at the General Convention in Denver. "I'm excited about that," she said. "We have a lot to be proud of."
She is also very interested in the Presiding Bishop's Fund plan for a Haiti Initiative to help parishes there to support the schools, clinics or agricultural projects that will help communities become self-sustaining and therefore more able to retain the youth who are now migrating to the island's cities. In addition, she remains excited about the Fund's continuing participation in Interchurch Medical Assistance, which matches available medical supplies and medicines with medical missionary teams that need them. IMA also helped with projects such as the distribution of medicine to treat river blindness in Tanzania. It has been approached again for assistance in treating elephantiasis in Haiti.
Another project that will keep her interest was also part of the Presiding Bishop's Fund. It is called Projects for Hope, and it involves matching projects that need funding with parishes seeking projects they can directly support.
Marvel is intent on staying an active participant in the Episcopal Church -- specifically Christ the Redeemer Church in Pelham, New York, which she has represented in many activities, from diocesan boards to the National Coalition for the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood.
Retirement will also give her more time with her husband, Robert Marvel, plus four grown children and five grandchildren.
And to contemplate a 22-year church career -- a ministry -- that, as she noted several times in her interview, combined service with great joy.
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