ALIVE (ALexandrians InVolved Ecumenically) Records (MS300)

Inspired by the recently established Annandale Christian Community for Action, 17 Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Baha’i congregations of Alexandria came together in May 1969 to form ALIVE! (Alexandrians Involved Ecumenically) to coordinate their charitable efforts to provide assistance to those in need in their community. The number of member congregations grew from 17 to 27 by 1973, 35 by 1983, 38 by 1994, to 42 today.

At least through 1994, presidents of ALIVE! served for only a single fiscal year with the exception of founding president Bob Young, who served two non-consecutive terms. Present-day executive directors by contrast have served as long as a decade. For much of the period of these records ALIVE!’s component committees operated with a high degree of autonomy, and while annual turnover was common for the chairs of committees in these early years, individuals could remain prominently involved in them for significant lengths of time.

The initial committees of 1969 were Furniture, Food, Housing, Clothing and Family Emergency, most of which survive to this day in some modern form. The ALIVE! House shelter was established in 1971, opening the following year. The Child Development Center was established in June 1972. Many other programs were also created over the years. If they proved less enduring, they were nonetheless significant to the people that they helped. Demand for services greatly increased in the early 1980s even as some established forms of financial support dropped off, this led to a series of articles in the Alexandria Journal in 1982 questioning whether the organization would even survive. It did.

In 1988, an outside management consultant was brought in to file a report on the administrative and financial management of ALIVE! In 1990, due the pressing necessity to qualify for assistance in renovating the ALIVE! House, which had been purchased the previous year, the organization instituted an annual audit and commissioned a history of the property. The auditor questioned the independence of ALIVE!’s component committees and suggested the appointment of a paid executive director, an issue that was the subject of considerable study and debate within the organization. This culminated in a 1992 decision that ALIVE! was not yet big enough to warrant such a position. The decision to hire an executive director would not be made until 2004, although it is interesting to note that ALIVE!’s fliers changed the heading for its list of officers and chairpersons from “Board of Directors” to “Executive Directors” in 1990.

Other changes during this period included the 1990 decision for ALIVE! to join the Combined Federal Campaign, the changing of the fiscal year in 1992 from one ending on August 31st to one following the Alexandria municipal fiscal year that ends on June 30th, and the beginning of the newsletter’s transition toward its modern incarnation, The ALIVE! Wire, in 1991.

The renovation of ALIVE! House was completed in May 1994 just in time for ALIVE! to celebrate its 25th anniversary later that year. Its commemorations included Alexandria Mayor Patricia Ticer proclaiming May 1, 1994 “ALIVE! Day” as well as a number of efforts to preserve the history of ALIVE! These included Eleanor S. Wainstein writing an official history and preserving oral accounts as well as the donation of a part of ALIVE!’s records to the Alexandria Public Library to form the present collection.