A very nice story in today’s St. Paul Pioneer Press about colleagues being there for each other and investing in each other.Thanks to everyone who has made this special employee investment program possible, especially Ecumen charitable contributions team members Mary Ann Dorsher, Robin Krois and Jean Robson, and the many Ecumen team members who contribute so generously.If you’d like to support Ecumen’s work in ‘creating home’ for America’s seniors, please go here. Happy Holidays from all of us at Ecumen.Workers support each other in crisesEcumen provides payroll-deduction fund for employees to contribute to – and turn to in need.By Julie Forster, St. Paul Pioneer PressJennifer Redman was devastated when southern Minnesota floods heavily damaged her Owatonna home in August.The first floor – her family’s main living area – filled with seven feet of water within an hour. Today, she’s still trying to make the house livable for herself and her family and recover from the $68,000 in damage the storm caused their home.Help came from an unlikely source: Her employer, Shoreview-based Ecumen, cut her a check for $2,500. It’s a gift from her fellow employees that she doesn’t have to pay back.The Family Helping Family program at Ecumen, an operator and owner of senior housing and services throughout Minnesota, enables employees to help their co-workers through financial emergencies by making regular payroll deductions to a special fund. It’s an unusual program aimed at helping co-workers who face home foreclosure, a medical nightmare or other crisis situations that pop up suddenly. No one has to contribute to get an interest-free loan or grant, and most of the requests are approved within a day.Redman, who works in Owatonna managing senior apartments, used the money to replace the blown windows on her house. Now she has a percentage taken out of her check each pay period, not because she has to repay the grant, but to help her co-workers when they face some kind of financial crunch. ‘It can really come back in a big way to help you,’ she said. ‘I realize that what happened to me can happen to anyone.’Rising gasoline and heating costs, diminishing home values and the skyrocketing rates on adjustable-rate mortgages all are taking their toll on workers’ paychecks these days, said Mary Ann Dorsher, the Ecumen executive who shaped the employee-giving program. ‘Those costs are rising much more rapidly than salaries in general, so as a result people do not have the savings they’ve traditionally had. In a moment of crisis they are really caught.’People whose houses burned down this year also received money. About a dozen people who needed money to help keep their homes out of foreclosure received loans and grants. Some receive money to pay for classes to help them advance in their careers. In other cases, they need a car to get to work.More than 300 employees contributed to the fund in 2007 through one-time gifts or regular deductions from their paycheck, sometimes of as little as $1. Any of the company’s 4,000 employees are eligible for grants or loans. All they have to do is write a one-page note on why they need the money and the amount of the request. After a 15-minute interview, Dorsher, who is the nonprofit’s vice president of charitable contributions, and two other colleagues make a decision on the application; they have approved 98 percent of the requests. They don’t mull it over; the key is getting money to the recipient swiftly.This week, for example, a nurse’s aide in northern Minnesota found that her furnace was leaking carbon monoxide. The furnace had to be turned off immediately, leaving the woman without heat. She had to choose between buying a new furnace and paying the mortgage. In a panic, she called Ecumen at 10 in the morning. A few hours later, the check for $2,500 was in the mail. ‘A lot of people just don’t have that additional $2,500 above and beyond what they budget for,’ Dorsher said.A year ago in December, there were a few applications for $500 to $700. But this month a small flood of applications rolled into the office, Dorsher said, and the requests are much larger, in the area of $2,500 to $3,000. The total amount of grants and loans this year is expected to exceed $200,000, a tripling over three years. By year-end, more than 200 loans will be given out. Next year the amount of giving likely will increase, Ecumen said.Wendy Traffie, a housing manager at Lakeview Commons in Maplewood, needed money recently to cover the closing costs on a home. Overwhelmed by a death in the family in late summer, she misunderstood the closing date and thought it was further out. ‘A little bit of communication skills would have prevented it,’ Traffie said. She was in a bind she hadn’t banked on. She received a $1,200 interest-free loan that she paid back. On her staff this year, 26 people have received loans or grants.Because the need keeps growing, Dorsher and others are working hard to try to raise new contributions each year. New money and loans that are repaid, along with a modest return on the fund investments, help keep the fund thriving. The emergency fund is operated within the larger Ecumen Foundation that has $11 million in assets. The portion going to emergencies is invested with a professional brokerage firm in easily accessed liquid assets.A nonprofit organization affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Ecumen generated $117 million in revenue last year and operates more than 60 senior housing and assisted-living homes in Minnesota and surrounding states. Given the increasing shortage of caregivers and the high turnover rate, the emergency fund program also helps Ecumen differentiate itself as an employer and keep good employees, said Eric Schubert, Ecumen’s spokesman.’Obviously we can’t give out stock options, but there are creative things we can do, and this is one of those,’ Schubert said.