FAYETTEVILLE — Dr. Merlin C. Augustine Jr. can’t explain the devotion volunteers have brought to the M&N Augustine Foundation over the past 15 years, but he believes the answer can only be this: “It’s divine.”
The M&N Augustine Foundation is a nonprofit organization helping people who have nowhere else to go. Food, clothing, medicine, shelter — the M&N Augustine Foundation has helped people with all those things and more in locations from Fayetteville to Africa. The foundation asks only that those it helps return the favor through volunteer work, and it seems the philosophy works well.
Volunteers range from people who are between jobs to police officers to business executives. Augustine is a born recruiter to the cause and he said he’s never been turned down by some well-known figures in the sports department at the University of Arkansas. His publicity coordinator is retired UA baseball coach Norm DeBriyn.
Augustine, a member of St. Joseph Church in Fayetteville, truly believes it is divine intercession sending him such dedicated workers.
How else could he explain someone like Debbie Yeager? In 1992, she had lost her job and her home as a result of serious illness. Yeager and her young daughter lived with friends for 10 months because they had nowhere else to go.
She began fasting and praying for help to improve her family’s circumstances and soon heard the answer: Yeager was to find a man whom her former pastor knew. “I was told through prayer I was to help him but to accept no money.”
Her pastor scheduled an appointment for Yeager with Augustine at the University of Arkansas where he is vice chancellor for finance and administration. Augustine warned Yeager he couldn’t pay her to work with the fledgling foundation, but she was determined to obey what she believed was the answer to her prayers.
Yeager first helped with clerical work. She and her daughter found housing for themselves when St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish in Fayetteville offered to pay her deposit and first month’s rent.
She got a part-time job as a secretary and another part-time job cleaning the church at St. Thomas and eventually at St. Joseph, too. A Pentecostal, Yeager became curious about Catholicism as a result of her church jobs. She’d ask Augustine questions but he said now his answers were only cursory. Undeterred, Yeager read everything she could find to answer her questions.
Yeager no longer works at either of the churches. Today, she works at the UA police department and is a Catholic convert who, according to Augustine, is as knowledgeable about the Church as any priest or nun he’s ever met.
“She’s been with me since the beginning,” Augustine said of Yeager who also works as client services director for the foundation. She’s still unpaid and that’s still just fine with Yeager. In fact, no one is ever paid by the foundation, which has strict rules in place regarding how its finances are handled. No government money is accepted and expenses are never allowed to exceed 10 percent.
Yeager’s story is unique but her dedication to helping others through the M&N Augustine Foundation is not. Augustine said the foundation’s retention rate is about 85 percent. Once they volunteer, it seems, people stay around to help out again. Of those no longer volunteering, about 10 percent have died and the rest have moved away, he added.
Augustine founded the organization in November 1992 to honor his parents, Merlin Sr. and Nora Augustine. The couple were present for the founding ceremony and smiled throughout the festivities, but both already had Alzheimer’s so their only son didn’t know whether they fully understood. The couple has since died, and Augustine is certain they now know about and fully approve the activities of their namesake foundation.
“The spirit of my parents is alive,” he said.
It epitomizes the spirit of the way the couple lived when they were raising their family in Louisiana.
Merlin Sr. was a janitor who raised sweet potatoes and sugar cane on the family farm; mustard and turnip greens after the sweet crops were harvested. His salary may have been meager for a man with a wife and six children, but he never hesitated to hand out cash to a neighbor who was in need — or his son’s bedroom when a family needed shelter.
Merlin Jr. thought his father was too generous, but eventually he came to understand it wasn’t enough to toss a check in the collection plate. He had to do more, and that’s what the foundation aims to do. It is not designed to help those who have “learned to work the system,” Augustine said.
He clearly remembers his father helping out a family whose infant had just died but couldn’t afford any kind of funeral.
Almost unbelievably, the foundation regularly hears of families in northwest Arkansas who cannot afford any kind of funeral services. Merlin Jr. — “Doc” as many of the volunteers refer to him — has called on several funeral homes in the area and persuaded them to provide services for a nominal fee of $500.
While Augustine’s various family members, including wife, Beverly, are active in the foundation, he’s adamant that no one in his family handle any of the money that comes in through donations and fundraisers. He doesn’t want anyone to believe his family benefits financially from the foundation. He’s also strict at holding fundraising expenses to a minimum.
Volunteers meet weekly and attendance is always standing room only while other organizations he’s been involved with routinely cancel meetings for lack of a quorum, Augustine said.
“Our organization could not function without the 2,100 volunteers who give at least five hours a year,” Augustine said. And, “unlike most organizations, our board pays for the privilege of serving.”
The amounts they give vary — some have given $5,000; one gave $100,000, he added.
Augustine expects to retire from the UA at this end of this year, but he’s still actively soliciting support for the foundation, which is a 501c(3) organization and its help extends across all denominations, races and ethnic backgrounds.
The foundation’s biggest fundraiser is an annual international festival, which was held Dec. 1. It is usually held at St. Joseph Church but was moved this year because of a scheduling conflict. The event included dinner, entertainment, a raffle and silent auction.
Donations may be sent to the M&N Augustine Foundation, P.O. Box 4008, Fayetteville, 72702.
