Winning the 2024 Nonprofit of the Year Award from the Nonprofit Alliance Catholic Development Council is a prestigious validation for Edmundite Missions, a Catholic charity based in Selma, Alabama, that is dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor.
In presenting the award, Aby Graf, the alliance’s vice president of programs, said, “Edmundite Missions lives its core values of compassion, service and social justice every day.”
Chad McEachern, president and CEO of Edmundite Missions, places equal importance on the charity’s ability not only to serve immediate needs, but to help people build their lives and find a path out of poverty as well. He calls it “the Catholic faith alive,” expressing corporal works of mercy.
The organization was founded July 6, 1937, by Edmundite Fathers Francis Casey and Barney Paro, who were responding to a call by Pope Pius XI to minister to African Americans in the Deep South. Shocked at the depths of poverty and the degrading conditions they found, Edmundite Missions was born, at first just with sandwiches the priests handed out from the back door of their house.
Today it has 55 full-time employees as well as many volunteers, an annual budget of $10 million and funding from individual donors, foundations and companies such as Alabama Power.
Through Catholic Social Ministries, Edmundite Missions counsels more than 100 people per week and provides over 22,000 client services each year. The need exceeds capacity. On average, 72 requests for assistance go unmet each month, the charity reports.
The service area includes Selma, which has an unemployment rate 30% higher than the national rate, and the surrounding counties of Dallas, Perry, Monroe/Wilcox and Lowndes, and it stretches to New Orleans. The average annual income of those served is just $9,000.
Nutritional needs are at the top of the visible assistance — 1,300 meals a day, with 300 of those delivered to seniors and the disabled.
Other initiatives include a Center for Workforce Development, a grant program for Black farmers, nutrition services and a senior program.
McEachern likes to talk about the less visible part, making sure, he told OSV News, that “folks that are on the cusp don’t slide into poverty. That we lift them up and give them some economic stability to themselves and their families.”
That always means listening carefully and acknowledging interior lives. McEachern remembers talking to young men at the basketball court at the Bullock Recreation and Community Center.
“And you find out they have hopes, dreams and aspirations,” he said. “People believe if you’re poor and from a disadvantaged area, that you don’t have dreams.”
He helped one young man get into a welding program, and eventually was shown his work.
“It was a special weld. That young man was so proud of that weld. That’s what the Missions is trying to do. You just see that smile. And it’s amazing to me.”
For the nursing program at Wallace Community College campus in Selma, Edmundite Missions provides grants of up to $7,500 to assist students in the licensed nursing assistant program move into the registered nurse track.
The result means doubling their income. “And that changes everything for a family,” McEachern said.
The Nonprofit Alliance is a national membership organization that was formed in 2018 as a unifying voice to promote, protect and strengthen the nonprofit sector.
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