Ogechi Irondi’s future teetered between two wildly different scenarios: one that would lead to dual degrees after nine years of college, and one that would leave the single mother and her young children homeless.
Strangers helped seal her fate.
The 31-year-old had suffered unfathomable challenges during her studies at Georgia Tech – one of the most rigorous universities in the US. She was in a toxic relationship. Her mother was tragically killed. Shortly afterward, Irondi discovered she was pregnant with twins.
“I had been suffering so bad for the past four or five years,” Irondi said. “So I finally got the courage to say something.”
Strangers from the Atlanta-area nonprofit Giving Grace learned about her plight – helping pay her rent so she could finish school and buy weekly groceries so Irondi could finally eat more than one meal a day.
“Without them, I would be on the streets with my children,” she said.
Across the country, good Samaritans are donating directly to families in dire circumstances. Instead of giving to large charities and not knowing exactly who or where donations go, targeted giving tells donors exactly who they’re helping – often leading to inspirational success stories and new friendships forged by mutual gratitude.
“We are the antithesis of the big-box donors,” said Pam Koner, founder of Family-to-Family – which connects donors with individual families suffering extreme poverty and other crises.
“We are about creating a way for families who want to give – and want to give to a family they know about.”
Targeted giving is also effective and efficient – providing families in crisis with the exact items they need more quickly.
But immense challenges this year mean the need for direct giving is more urgent than ever before.
In this year’s troubled economy, more Americans are asking strangers for help with housing and food.
The unemployment rate rose to a four-year high of 4.6% in November, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. GoFundMe’s latest annual report shows a 20% increase in fundraisers for basic needs this year compared to last year.
And families on the brink of homelessness post new messages on local Facebook pages every day, asking for used children’s clothing or spare firewood to keep warm.
“A lot of people are losing their jobs,” Family-to-Family Program Director Nancy Hennessee said. “They’re going around collecting food everywhere they can.”
Family-to-family’s reach
- Family-to-Family helps about 950 households in about 16 states
- Selected communities typically have high poverty rates
- Individual families are vetted to make sure they are truly in need
This year is “100% the worst” in terms of need since Family-to-Family started in 2002, Hennessee said.
“One of our community partners who runs a food pantry has gone from having 220 families coming to her food pantry to having over 450 families in the last two months,” she said.
Some food banks have had to get creative, cutting egg cartons in half “and giving each family half a carton of eggs instead of a carton.”
Before Christy Betz launched Giving Grace, she volunteered with a homeless outreach program and saw a post asking for donations of durable men’s jeans.
“So I started collecting in my neighborhood, and I took them down there,” the suburban Atlanta mother said. “And then I just kept seeing more and more needs.”
Betz noticed a lack of basic supplies often prevented homeless people from being able to get a job.
“I met a guy who was homeless and needed steel-toed boots in order to take a job at a warehouse,” she said.
“But he didn’t have the funds to buy them, so he couldn’t start working without the boots. I posted on Facebook his story about what he needed. Somebody offered to buy them, and then he was able to start work. And now he hasn’t been homeless for eight or nine years.”
Such simple yet profound transformations helped spawn Giving Grace, which connects people with specific needs to donors who have a few bucks or spare items available.
“I just tried to fill the gap between what people were missing and items that a lot of people had just either sitting around,” Betz said. “To most people, $30 or $40 isn’t a big deal, and they’re more than happy to help the family.”
Betz now works 10 to 12 hours a day, up to seven days a week, trying to help families get bare necessities such as emergency rent money, a tank of gas, or an urgent car repair to get to work.
Giving Grace vets every client seeking help to make sure their stories are legitimate.
“We don’t assist people who aren’t assisting themselves,” Betz said. “I hate to use the word ‘freeloader.’ But people who just don’t want to work and don’t want to do anything to help themselves and their children – that’s not who our program is aimed at.”
She and a handful of volunteers verify claims by calling employers to make sure clients work there or by contacting motels to confirm families live there.
Some working families who can’t pay their rent get evicted and must live in extended-stay hotels – a catch-22 that sinks them deeper into debt and makes poverty more expensive.
And many landlords or apartment complexes won’t lease to those with an eviction on their record.
“That’s what keeps a lot of people in hotels and keeps them from (having their own home),” Betz said. “We work with private owners, and sometimes we’ll offer to pay several months’ rent up front or a double deposit. That’s one of our tools for getting people into housing if there’s an eviction on their credit.”
The novel strategy has been successful. “We have several people that we’ve been able to house with that model,” Betz said.
The struggles that plagued Irondi as she worked toward her degrees were matched only by her relentless determination. But it wasn’t enough to save her from homelessness.
Irondi studied chemical engineering at Clark Atlanta University before transferring to Georgia Tech – one of the toughest science and engineering schools to get into. She earned an award for “most outstanding fourth-year chemical engineering student.”
But outside of the classroom, her life was falling apart. She was in a toxic relationship that caused her grades to slip, Irondi said. Then the most unfathomable tragedy struck: Her mother was killed.
“My whole world was completely shattered,” she said.
Four months later, when Irondi was trying to leave her relationship in late 2018, she discovered she was pregnant – with twins.
“I fainted,” she said. “I was so overwhelmed, my body just shut down.”
She left the home she shared with her partner to remove herself from a toxic situation and ended up homeless while still attending school.
“I didn’t tell anybody. No one knew it was this (bad),” Irondi said. “After going through such a toxic relationship and seeing how people can take advantage of people in their vulnerable moments, I was afraid to tell anybody anything.”
Near the end of her pregnancy, Irondi reached out to an emergency housing program, which helped her move into a temporary apartment.
She tried to find a job while juggling college and parenting two toddlers, but that proved challenging due limited childcare, she said. She also didn’t have any family members in the state.
“I owed so much on my rent,” Irondi said, and her savings quickly evaporated. A few well-known charities helped, but sometimes the aid was “extremely limited and conditional,” Irondi said.
One organization can take days or weeks “to give you a decision on if they can help you,” she said. “You don’t want to be ungrateful, because help is help. But that type of help is not as effective” as direct giving.
Irondi knew her ticket out of poverty was to finish her education – even if that meant cutting back on classes and taking longer to finish. She found part-time work at a lab on campus, but it wasn’t enough to pay the bills.
In 2024, she lost her financial aid “because of the time limit,” Irondi said. “After a certain amount of time in school … or if you have so many credits, you’re not eligible for financial aid anymore.”
Adding more misery to the chaos: Her dented, 18-year-old car with more than 200,000 miles on the odometer died in late 2024 – forcing her to walk everywhere with her children.
“I’ve been walking in the cold with them every day, taking them to kindergarten. Cars passing by us, getting us wet. It was horrible,” Irondi said.
While some drivers offered a ride, others would shout from their cars when the family walked along a busy street.
“They would be like, ‘It’s too cold for you to be having those kids out like this!’” Irondi said. When it rained, some would scream: “Your kids don’t need to be walking in this!”
“If I had a choice, do you think I’d be doing this? In addition to not having food or a car and walking everywhere and needing to pay my tuition so that my classes don’t get canceled … I’m about to be evicted,” she said.
“I finally made it to my last semester – but I had no way of paying for it. So I got over my fear of not saying anything, because I really, really wanted to graduate.”
A week before her eviction date, Irondi met with her dean and asked if there was any way she could stay in school. That conversation changed the trajectory of her life.
The dean helped connect her with Giving Grace. Within a few days, Betz rallied supporters on Facebook and collected enough donations to pay Irondi’s back rent – preventing her family from ending up on the streets.
“It was like my prayers were answered in one day,” Irondi said. “My whole life went from hell to heaven.”
One donor offered to buy groceries for the family – an act that would lead to cascading rewards.
Jamey Jones, a real estate agent and mother of a baby girl, saw Betz’s Facebook post and was inspired by Irondi’s fortitude. She offered to send the family groceries every week via Instacart.
“My mom was definitely an advocate of ‘You’re blessed, so you can bless others.’ And that was something that was instilled in me my entire life,” Jones said.
She said it’s incumbent on those who live comfortably to help others who are less fortunate. Jones was particularly interested in helping families like Irondi’s – “the people that are doing everything right, but one little setback really destroys them or could destroy them,” she said.
“And they can’t get their head above water if they get a flat tire (or) other smaller things that people take for granted.”
Many Americans don’t realize how lucky they are to have three meals a day, Irondi said.
“I didn’t have dinner. I only would eat once a day – in the afternoon, before I got the kids, while I had just a little time for myself in between classes.”
Jones didn’t think much about sending Irondi’s family groceries every week. But that aid didn’t just allow Irondi to stay in school – it also improved the diets of Irondi’s children.
The family lives in an urban food desert, where the closest grocery store is several miles away and difficult to access without a car. So Irondi’s family sometimes had no choice but to eat food from a local convenience store.
Jones introduced Irondi’s children to an array of fresh produce. Now, the twin boys love eating fruits and vegetables.
“That’s all they want now!” Irondi exclaimed. “I’ve seen immense changes in their behavior after (Jones) changed their diet. Now, we are the healthiest we’ve ever been.”
Because Jones helped keep the family fed and healthy, Irondi was able to graduate this month. She now holds two degrees from Georgia Tech – one in chemistry and one in history, technology and society.
Irondi hopes to work in public health and has been interviewing for jobs. If not for the direct donations from strangers, she said, the trained scientist would likely have to “hustle” on the streets.
But now, “I am so hopeful for my future and my children’s future,” she said. “These people have completely changed my life.”
Many donation drives this time of year focus on toys for children. But most families needing help from Giving Grace or Family-to-Family don’t ask for anything nearly as luxurious as toys. They just want to survive.
Kim Neubacher and her family lived a perfectly middle-class life until their stability crumbled during the Great Recession. Her husband lost his well-paying job with no warning, no severance pay, and no health insurance for the family of eight.
“We had no way to make house payments, let alone buy food. I didn’t know what we were going to do,” the Michigan mother said.
“I literally got sick one night because my heart was just pulling out of my chest.” Neubacher initially refused an ambulance, fearing she wouldn’t be able to pay for it. But she relented after realizing her children might lose their mother.
For months, the family rationed milk and bread by storing them in the freezer to make them last longer.
When Neubacher learned about Family-to-Family, she immediately emailed Koner. Not long after, a family in New York state sponsored Neubacher’s family, sending a monthly donation toward boxes of groceries and fresh food from a local grocery store.
She vividly remembers seeing her kids overjoyed to receive help from a family who cared.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget that – they’re just busting into these boxes like it was their first Christmas,” Neubacher said.
At Giving Grace, the top request is consistent throughout the year: help covering basic living expenses or essential needs.
Back in 2012, about one or two families asked Giving Grace for help each week.
Now, “we get between 30 and 40 requests a day for assistance” – usually for rent, food, utilities, or gas to get to work, Betz said. And the numbers keep rising.
“The economy right now is tough. People are losing their jobs. The cost of housing is so crazy … It’s a combination of all of it.”
When the need is too severe, “We just have to say, ‘Sorry. We just don’t have the capacity.’”
The stereotype that people in need are too lazy to work is often a gross misconception, the founders of Giving Grace and Family-to-Family said. Most of their clients work full-time or were recently laid off.
But the national minimum wage hasn’t changed since 2009. And it’s impossible for many parents to feed their children and pay their bills when making $7.25 an hour.
Some clients work jobs that pay more than the minimum wage. But that’s still not enough, Betz said.
“These are jobs with people working in daycare centers taking care of your children. They’re the nurses at your hospital. They’re the teachers in your school,” Betz said. “We get single-parent teacher requests all the time. It’s people that are serving you in your community, servers in a restaurant.”
She cited a family with four children who are receiving help. Both parents work and make $14-$15 an hour. But they can’t feed their children and pay the rent on their own.
Betz posted their story on Facebook. Another family offered to pay not just the rent, but also for opportunities “that the mom and dad were never exposed to.”
Thanks to the donor family’s support, “the kids have played soccer. They’ve done swim lessons. They’ve done karate. The oldest son now plays football in school,” Betz said.
Ariela Berman, a psychiatrist and mother of two in suburban New York, said the transparency and simplicity of direct giving compelled her to help. She sponsors a single mother of five with groceries every month.
“There’s nothing ambiguous about how your money is being used,” she said.
Over the past five years, Berman has helped multiple families through automatic, monthly sponsorships – “which I highly recommend doing if people want to give.”
“It’s a lot easier to give a little bit every month,” Berman said. Sponsorships also provide families with consistency and stability until they’re able to get back on their feet.
Those who want to provide more than food can also send clothing, toiletries, or birthday boxes to children. One summer, Berman decided to send shoes and books to the family she sponsors. She was thrilled when the family sent a thank-you note and photos in return.
“These kinds of thank you cards are so moving and make you want to give more,” Berman said.
“It just makes it really special to know that little things you do can mean so much to people.”
While the need for help escalates, Family-to-Family has lost more donors this year than ever before, Hennessee said.
“We’ve had a lot of sponsors who are sponsoring families cancel because they’ve lost their own jobs,” she said.
But those who keep giving aren’t necessarily wealthy.
“We have a real cross section of donors,” Koner said. “We have donors who have tons of money and are very generous. They’ll take on 10 families. And then there are people that are really just barely getting by themselves but feel it’s important in their family to give something back.”
Virtually anyone can help struggling families – even those with limited means.
Donors who are on tight budgets can team up with another donor and split the cost of groceries for a family.
‘You can help somebody, even if you have nothing’
Over the years, Family-to-Family has been a lifeline for Neubacher’s family – keeping her children fed when her husband lost his job, when the family’s house burned down, and when Neubacher was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer.
But through it all, she also helped other families in dire situations.
“I had been so worried about my family, and then I realized how many other people … must be suffering, too,” Neubacher said.
So she helped Koner expand Family-to-Family to a city that wasn’t on the nonprofit’s radar – Burton, Michigan, about 65 miles north of Detroit. Neubacher coordinated with a local school’s social worker, who identified 20 to 25 families in severe need.
Neubacher also launched a local program that helps parents save money on children’s clothing. Families can donate clothes that their kids have outgrown, pick up free items from a family who no longer needs them – or both.
“I always say that you can help somebody, even if you have nothing,” she said. “And if we all just took care of each other like that, then we could lift ourselves higher and higher out of the trenches.”
Koner hopes more people will be inspired by such benevolence.
“My goal would be in a perfect world that everyone who can afford this would sponsor a specific family in poverty,” she said. “And that this would be something that was just part of our culture.”
