The "Soggy Donut" Story

The Soggy Donuts Fund was started back in June of 2008. And here’s why…June 7th of 2008 Terre Haute Indiana got somewhere between 16 and 18 inches of rain in a 24 hour period. It was amazing. It rained and rained and then rained even harder. Obviously with all of this rain we had horrible flooding. In the Midwest we are use to spring flooding along the rivers and streams. I had never seen anything like this. I had worked the night of the rain and realized it had been down pouring most of the night but wasn’t prepared for what I woke up to. It was about 1030 in the morning on June 8th 2008 and my better half comes up the hall to our bedroom and said, “ you have to get up and you have to get up now!” I’ve been with her a long time and she has never said something like this and in that tone. So, naturally I got up not knowing what to expect following her down the hall and onto the back deck of our house. Our back deck faces (southwest) a golf course. When I walked out to the deck I couldn’t believe it. You couldn’t see any dry land on the other side of the railroad tracks, which is built up about 10 feet between our house and the golf course. If it weren’t for those old railroad tracks acting as a levee I would have lost everything. The water was so bad that even elevated greens on the golf course weren’t visible. I was amazed. I walked over and started to notice that the water was moving and it was moving fast. The floodwaters were moving so fast that white caps had started to form on top of the water. I estimate that the water I was looking at was about 3 to 5 feet deep and rising. I turned on the TV and of course it was focused on the flooding and the footage was amazing. Areas of Terre Haute were literally being washed away. It wasn’t just Terre Haute that had been affected but other cities throughout central Indiana.

As police officers we don’t get too bent out of shape and we see events like this and think to ourselves how bad it’s going to be when we have to go into work. That’s just how we are wired. It was at work I realized how lucky I was and how bad things had gotten for my fellow officers and friends. I got to work and found out that about 12 of our people had been affected and lost pretty much everything. Some who lived in low-lying areas of the county had lost everything. Some of these officers/people I am very close to. I watched as things started to unfold and there was this look of horror of the unknown and disbelief on people’s faces. Literally people had no idea where to start. These people’s lives had been turned upside down. I watched as the Red Cross, FEMA and insurance companies responded and couldn’t believe how poor the response times were. This was very frustrating to watch. I would have hoped that after some of the situations that we have had in the last few years concerning storms we would have become more proficient in our response time. In other words by now they should have all of this responding to emergencies down to an art form. They didn’t!

I was at our local Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #85 with some close friends having some spiritual beverages discussing what we could do to help some of our officers who had been affected by the flooding. I asked if anyone knew of a fund to help strictly law enforcement? No one had ever heard of such a fund. That’s when I made the decision to start a fund for our police officers that were affected by the flooding. I decided that I was going to call it “Soggy Donuts”. Soggy for the flooding and Donuts because we are cops and its funny! Everyone makes fun of cops eating donuts! Part of my warped sense of humor I guess? So, I said it out loud and everyone just stopped and looked at me. They all thought it was a great idea and laughed out loud at the name. I wasn’t sure where to start. Pretty much had no idea! I first called different agencies in some major areas and asked if there was fund like what I was talking about and they all said “no.” I had to laugh. This entire process has been an unbelievable learning experience for me. I went around to local businesses and asked for donations. Every business I went to, I explained what the fund was for and that we were going to try and help our fellow officers through this financially tough time. I decided to have t-shirts made with the Soggy Donut Fund on the front and every business that donated $500.00 or more was going to have their business and logo on the back of the shirts. It was amazing. In the toughest of financial times and all of the local businesses were eager to help. Don’t get me wrong, not everyone likes the police and helped but more did than didn’t.

I went to Fast Track Apparel here in Terre Haute and spoke with the owner Brent Poole. I explained that I wanted to get shirts made, one in gray for the men, and one in pink for the ladies. Brent was super. He got what I was trying to do and he wanted to help. Instead of giving us a donation Brent agreed to help me come up with a design/logo and sold us shirts at cost. I still to this day think he sold us shirts below cost just trying to help us get started. Brent introduced me to one of his employees, Jon Dacosta who came up with the logo and set up the backs of the shirts with the business names. We had about 50 shirts made and I put up a shirt sign up sheet at Terre Haute Police Department as well as a sign-up sheet at our local dispatch center. Cops love t-shirts! It didn’t take long and we sold every one of the original 50 shirts. Especially when they understood what the profit from the t-shirts sales went toward. We used all the profits from the shirts to buy more products, K-9 prints (two of our flood victims affected by the disaster were K-9 handlers) wristbands with The Soggy Donut Fund that glows in the dark and of course more t-shirts. Something I want to add is from the time that the fund started it was never in the red! We continually worked at getting different businesses to support us in many different ways. As the fund started to grow we set up a website and put our basic donation request letter on the site and listed the two shirts we had for sale. The Internet response was horrible. Not many orders came. So we had spent a lot of money on the site and got nothing. This was a great lesson for the fund at a very early time in the funds short life. Nothing made me feel worse than failing with the internet idea! Needless to say the company that we used to design our first website wasn’t cheap and charged us an arm and a leg! Unlike the gentleman who now handles all of our internet business and design. So, we suffered a little setback! Lesson learned! I wasn’t about to let this setback stop all the good work and progress we had made.

I continue to say “WE”. The reason I say that is as the fund grew I realized I needed some help and couldn’t do all of this by myself. In no way am I solely responsible for the success of the fund. Todd Haller, Greg Mosbarger, Ryan Adamson and Jason Parker all stepped up and helped in so many ways. It was my idea for the name and the concept but when it comes time to do an event or get something donated these guys are the best! The Terre Haute Fire Department has been huge backers of the fund and local events. I’ll go into more detail about people who have helped make the fund successful as I continue to explain about the fund.

Other officers with THPD helped in any way I asked. I learned to use each person’s strengths to help the fund. For example one of our officers (graduated from an Ivy league school with an English degree) proofreads everything I write for donations from businesses as well as anything I post on the Internet. (Of course he didn’t proof this so I hope I don’t come across as an idiot!) Without these types of help I would still be lost. Another officer who says he doesn’t have time to do the fund full time helps sell tickets to every event we have and usually sells more than I do. It’s this type of effort that has helped The Soggy Donut Fund get to where it is now.

Now, back to the how this all got started. I get off on rants from time to time. Please bear with me!

In the meantime, another artist who liked what we were doing and said he had another design for t-shirts and wanted to know what I thought approached me? It was a different look, kind of tribal design. I took the proof of the new design to work and asked my fellow officers their opinion (cops are the most opinionated group of people in the world so I knew if they liked it the public would probably love it!)? It’s now the shirt we sell on our website (www.soggydonuts.org) and the one we would eventually take to Police Week in Washington DC. We continued to sell as many shirts as we could to everyone we met. If one of us was out we were talking about Soggy Donuts.

All of this happened as my fellow officers who were affected by the flood still tried to put their lives back in order. As Christmas arrived we had raised enough money to hand out nearly $6500.00 in checks to the officers who were affected by the flooding six months prior. What people don’t realize is that even though the floodwaters are gone the rebuilding of their lives continued!

What we learned is that the first 96 hours of a natural disaster are the most critical for law enforcement and the communities they serve. This is when our communities need us the most. To prevent looting, thefts, to give directions to those who are lost, to direct traffic, to help rescue personnel in anyway they can to preserve life, property and to help others. This is prior to FEMA, or insurance companies or The Red Crosses arrival. Police officers need to know things are going to be ok for themselves on a personal level. The Soggy Donuts Fund isn’t trying to take the place of insurance companies or FEMA or the Red Cross. What our goal is, to get officers a roof over their and their families heads (hotel), food, uniforms and the peace of mind that everything is going to be alright. Police officers can’t do the their jobs when they are worried about their families welfare. The Soggy Donuts Fund can’t replace sentimental things lost in a natural disaster but we can try and make things easier in the hours directly following a natural disaster. We can take wheat we learned through trial by fire and make it easier for our fellow officers.

We made the decision to continue the fund even after we were able to help our own. Our local prosecutor helped us become a non-for-profit organization. We made the decision to take the fund nationwide. The Soggy Donuts Fund is for any sworn officer who is a victim of a natural disaster! It doesn’t matter if that officer is a city/metro police officer or a sheriffs deputy, campus police, conservation officer, FBI, Secret Service whatever. It doesn’t matter as long as they are a sworn law enforcement officer.

By making the decision to take Soggy Donuts Nationwide also brought new challenges on how to raise money. We held a spaghetti Dinner in March at a local community center, in May, Tom Wetnight of Wetnight RV sales loaned The Soggy Donut Fund a trailer to take all of our shirts to Washington DC so we could attend Police Week 2009. Myself, Ryan and Greg packed the trailer with 700 shirts, a tent that Terre Haute Tent and Awning donated to us and jumped in my truck and headed off to Washington DC. Of course we hadn’t attended as a vendor before so we weren’t sure what to expect. When we arrived in DC the members of the DC FOP lodge made us feel right at home. The members of DC Metropolitan Police Department and the all the members of the Capital Police came and checked on us everyday! Brought us food to eat and always had a smile on their face! They were great! While we were at Police Week we met with our Congressman, Brad Ellsworth and spoke with him on ways we could be more successful. After DC we held our 1st annual Golf Scramble at Idle Creek Golf Course and that raised a lot of money. More recently we had a pancake breakfast and raised over $1800.00 in three hours. It’s our peers and our community who are the reason for the success of “The Soggy Donuts Fund’. When I say our peers, every officer we meet at different events that buys a shirt or every FOP or organization that makes a donation are helping the fund grow stronger and stronger. I want the fund to eventually grow large enough that if we would have another Katrina or a natural disaster of that magnitude The Soggy Donuts Fund will be able to help every officer who needs it!

I have included our mission statement-

Again, Thank You!

Brad Newman
President