Giving hope: How FODAC transforms lives through medical equipment

The first person to ever receive a wheelchair from Ed Butchart was a girl he met while deployed to Vietnam as a Marine.

That experience stayed with him after he retired from the service and settled in Stone Mountain, Georgia. So in 1985 when he saw people locally who needed wheelchairs and other home medical equipment, he acted. From his garage, he started repairing and donating used items to those in need. 

Friends of Disabled Adults and Children was born. 

Over the years, the organization outgrew Ed’s garage, and he moved into space his church gave him. 

Ed stepped back from running the organization in 2001, passing the responsibility to Chris Brand of carrying forward FODAC’s mission to glorify God by providing home medical equipment to people in need to enhance their quality of life.

“It’s been a joy to grow and be a part of this organization every day,” Chris said. “The transactions we make for people are phenomenal.”

Chris started volunteering with FODAC 28 years ago after being inspired by his childhood friend who had muscular dystrophy. Chris, who was raised by a single working mother, spent most days of his childhood at his friend’s house under his parents’ care. He was extremely close to the entire family and witnessed the challenges they endured with modifying their home and purchasing medical equipment to accommodate their son’s illness. 

As his friend’s condition worsened over the years, Chris played an active role in his daily care.

“When he died, it was a crisis moment in my life and really shook me up,” Chris said. “I felt like God was calling me to do something in the healthcare field or the disability field after all this time and relationship with this family.”

He brought the memories of his friends and the challenges the family endured with him to FODAC.

“It’s all the kinds of things we touch here now at this organization, so I think it all prepared me for what I’m doing now,” Chris said.

Under Chris’ leadership, FODAC has continued to grow. Today it operates out of three Georgia locations in Savannah, Griffin and its 65,000-square-foot warehouse in Tucker, and serves about 4,800 people in Georgia annually. 

The organization also serves thousands of others nationally and internationally through its disaster relief program — most recently sending pallets of medical equipment and items to California in the aftermath of the Los Angeles-area wildfires, to Tennessee and Kentucky after recent floods there and to six states after Hurricane Helene struck the South this past year.

Chris said FODAC exists because the home medical equipment industry is a for-profit industry. This equipment, which includes items like hospital beds, walkers, shower supports and wheelchairs, can cost tens of thousands of dollars and be difficult to obtain through insurance, Medicare or Medicaid. Repairs to these items can also be costly and slow.

“It’s just a terrible thing to have to wait for weeks to get something repaired that you shouldn’t have to do without,” he said.

FODAC enlists the help of volunteers to accept, sort, triage, repair, clean and sanitize any medical equipment that comes into the pipeline, to meet as many requests as they can.

“We call them ‘God moments’ here,” Chris said, “because we’ll get a call requesting an item and we’ll say, ‘Well, we hardly ever get that sort of thing.’ And then we turn around, and it’s literally here or coming in on the dock. And these are hard to find items. They just kind of show up at the right time for people here. So we definitely see God working all the time in moments where He’s providing for the people we’re serving.”

For items FODAC can’t provide, like stair lifts, which require state regulations to install, or modified vehicles, the organization refers people to vendors and suppliers they trust. They also offer a low-interest loan program called CreditAble, that provides favorable terms for people to purchase medical equipment FODAC can’t provide.

FODAC provides approximately $10 million worth of used medical equipment and services each year and relies on donors to keep operations going.

One of those supporters is the Community Foundation of Northeast Georgia, which has donated to FODAC since the 90s for the work the organization does in Gwinnett County.

The relationship has recently expanded with FODAC becoming a fundholder with CFNEG. This allows some of FODAC’s long-term capital reserves to grow instead of sitting idle.

“We trust them, and they’re really good at what they do,” Chris said. “We’ve seen for many years how they’ve maximized returns for their shareholders, so we’re very thankful.”

Chris said being involved with CFNEG also allows organic community partnerships to grow, benefiting the organizations and the people they serve.

“We’re built on partnerships,” he said. “And we love to see other places grow that are doing what we’re doing as well. 

“Whatever we learn, we’re willing to share with other organizations that want to do what we’re doing. Medical waste is something we can never capture and repurpose, so in every major city there needs to be some kind of a reuse program that’s done the right way.”
To support FDOC’s fund, please click here.