When a Helene-type disaster strikes, Boone-based Samaritan’s Purse moves with a purpose.
At any given time or place in the world, 257,000-plus Samaritan’s Purse volunteers are busy distributing food bags, rebuilding homes after hurricanes, packing toy boxes for needy children, performing heart surgeries and treating airstrike victims in war-torn countries. It’s a small army that outnumbers the lineup of active-duty troops and reservists in the Marine Corps.
As in the military, readiness and adaptability are everyday business for Samaritan’s Purse. Drawing more than $1 billion in contributions and grants annually, the 54-year-old Christian humanitarian organization has steadily built up a sizable resource pool: 24 aircraft, offices in 15 developing countries, five emergency field hospitals, 2,318 employees in the U.S., and thousands of additional people on call who are trained to deploy at a moment’s notice.
More than 1,950 employees work in North Carolina across its Boone headquarters, Wilkesboro warehouse, Charlotte processing center and Greensboro airlift site, where crews manage its Boeing 757 and Douglas DC-8 cargo planes.
“It’s hard to plan what we’re going to do tomorrow because it can change depending on the news that night,” says Franklin Graham, 72, the longtime president and CEO. “We can change the direction of a big part of our ministry overnight if we need to.”
Such a day came in on Sept. 27 when Hurricane Helene drowned western North Carolina’s rivers, streets, highways, homes and tourist gems. It was a 1,000-year flood of biblical proportions, killing 103 people and racking up $50 billion-plus in damage, including more than 100 staff members’ homes.
In response, the organization quickly mobilized about 33,000 volunteers in North Carolina and set up bases in Asheville, Burnsville and Boone. Another 4,660 people have supported recovery efforts in Florida and Georgia.
Graham, the son of legendary preacher Billy Graham, has never seen such a storm in his native state. “Just follow the rivers. On both sides, there’s more need than you can shake a stick at. Everywhere, you’ll find a place to help,” he says.
“When a person’s home has been destroyed or damaged, they don’t know what to do. They just stand there, almost in a daze. And when you bring in an army of volunteers to help clean up the home, they suddenly begin to see daylight.”
By mid-December, volunteers had delivered 3,847 generators, 7,768 heaters, 24,666 food bags and 22,473 gallons of fuel across 15 counties statewide, reaching 3,820 homeowners and 200 churches. Eighteen aircraft carried 700,000 pounds of supplies across 359 missions. It was the “largest civilian airlift operation in U.S. history,”officials said.The group also installed or repaired 139 SpaceX Starlinks for satellite internet service.
Samaritan’s Purse plans to rebuild 500 houses and replace 500 manufactured homes over at least three years, paid for by hundreds of thousands of devoted donors nationwide. The preliminary budget lists material costs at $155,000 to $300,000 per home, and $150,000 each for mobile homes.
It joins dozens of nonprofit and faith-based organizations working alongside state and local agencies as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Voluntary Organizations
Active in Disaster network. The goal is to help survivors with needs that may be outside the scope of government disaster recovery programs. FEMA’s voluntary agency liaisons identify unmet needs and work directly with Samaritan’s Purse in coordinating response and recovery.
“Our nonprofit and faith-based partners like Samaritan’s Purse play an essential role in disaster response and recovery, offering critical assistance to survivors in their time of greatest need,” a FEMA spokesperson says.
When Helene hit, FEMA leveraged the organization’s unprecedented volunteer turnouts to muck out flooded homes, tarp roofs, remove downed trees with chainsaws and transfer debris for pick-up.
Samaritan’s Purse worked alongside FEMA long before Helene, though it doesn’t receive funding or grants from the agency. Samaritan’s Purse equipped its first disaster relief semi-truck in 1998. Other examples of collaboration include: wildfires in New Mexico last year, tornadoes in Mississippi in 2023, and hurricanes Harvey in Texas, Michael in Georgia and Ian in Florida.
FEMA also points to the Maui wildfires in 2023, when Samaritan’s Purse deployed crisis-trained chaplains through its sister ministry, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. “Chaplains were on the island to provide emotional support and spiritual comfort to residents suffering in the wake of so much loss,” the spokesperson stated.
Graham, who also leads the evangelistic association as president and CEO, says these rapid-response chaplains are mainly there to listen to people in the immediate aftermath of natural disasters, shootings and other crises. “It’s important for people to be able to tell their story because it may be the most traumatic thing in their life,” he adds. “Our chaplains listen to their stories, pray with them, and help local authorities bring calm to the situation. It’s one of the most important areas of our ministry.”
SAMARITAN’S PURSE
BOARD MEMBERS
Franklin Graham,
president and CEO,
Samaritan’s Purse; president and CEO, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
Don Campion, president,
Banyan Air Service
Michael Cheatham, M.D.,
Orlando Health Surgical Group
Corey Furman,
president, Boone Drugs
Edward Graham, chief operating officer, Samaritan’s Purse
Melvin Graham, president and CEO, Graham Enterprises
Jeff Greene, vice president, Hollar and Greene Produce
Skip Heitzig, senior pastor,
Calvary Chapel
Thomas Hodges, executive vice president, Truist
Bobby Idol, executive vice president, Carroll Companies
Cissie Lynch, senior adviser/spokesperson,
Samaritan’s Purse
Dr. Felix Martin del Campo,
general dentistry
Brian Pauls, president, Pauls Corp.
Phyllis Payne, executive adviser to the president, Samaritan’s Purse
Paul Saber, president and CEO, Manna Development Group
John Scott, senior vice president, Wealth Management, Truist
Robert Shank, founder and CEO, The Master’s Program
Richard “Stick” Williams, retired president, Duke Energy Foundation
Paula Woodring, executive vice president, Samaritan’s Purse
Evangelical DNA
Samaritan’s Purse remains unapologetically Christian, a clear distinction from many humanitarian aid nonprofits. “We’re an evangelistic organization that happens to do relief work. We come right out and say, this is who we are,” Graham says. “I want everyone to know God loves them, that Christ died for their sins. We share that with everybody, but we never make it a condition for us to help them. We help them all, regardless of what they believe.”
Evangelism is in Graham’s DNA, having grown up witnessing his father’s sermons and broadcasts. “I never wanted to try to be Billy Graham because I knew I never could,” he says. “My father was a special person that God called and used.”
While he never planned to join his father’s operation, Graham knew he wanted to join the ministry world since his late teens. This realization came after a formative trip to northern Jordan, treating tuberculosis victims at a missionary hospital near the Syrian border. He figured he’d start by learning how to manage money. After returning from Jordan, he enrolled in Appalachian State University to get a business degree.
Around this time, the late Baptist pastor Bob Pierce asked Graham to join a new ministry, Samaritan’s Purse, that he started in California in 1970. When Pierce got sick with leukemia later that decade, Graham asked about his vision for the organization’s future. Pierce referenced the namesake New Testament parable delivered by Jesus, in which a priest and a Levite chose to ignore a half-dead traveler crying for help along the side of the road. The third passer-by, a “good Samaritan,” broke the pattern and stopped to help.
“I want Samaritan’s Purse to be exactly what Jesus said it was to be,” Pierce is quoted as saying. “Who was that Samaritan? Likely a layman. The professional religionists, the priests, and the Levites had taken a casual look at the wounded traveler – and gone on their way quite unaffected by his critical need of help. Then along came this Samaritan whom the religionists despised.”
After Pierce died in 1978, the board tapped the 27-year-old Graham to take over as president and board chair a year later. “I took office chairs and a few files from his desk in California to North Carolina, and we set up Samaritan’s Purse here in Boone with some ladies from the local church who helped me,” Graham says. The original office was in the attic of a medical practice run by the founders of World Medical Mission, which became the medical arm of Samaritan’s Purse. Since 1980, the operation has deployed more than 14,500 trips of medical personnel in 82 countries.
Samaritan’s Purse now manages more than $1 billion in net assets and armies of volunteers across 100 countries. Medical teams have served 60,000 patients through emergency field hospitals, and the Children’s Heart Project has performed surgeries on about 1,500 children with heart defects.
Among its best-known projects, Operation Christmas Child, has delivered 220 million gift-filled shoeboxes to impoverished children. Operation Heal Our Patriots hosts an annual marriage retreat in Alaska, where hundreds of military couples come to fish, bear-watch and take marriage enrichment classes.
“We’ve grown almost every year for the last 40 years,” Graham says.“We never try to focus on growing per se, but we just want to be faithful and carry out the work God wants us to do.”
Samaritan’s Purse paid Graham an $812,909 salary in 2023, according to the latest tax filings. Another 12 executives each received more than $300,000 in total compensation, including Graham’s son Edward, who is chief operating officer. Other family members affilated with the organization include Franklin’s wife Jane Austin, and his daughter, Jane “Cissie” Lynch.
Graham’s upper-six-figure salary is not uncommon in large Christian ministries. Some execs earn more than $1 million in annual compensation, particularly those in media enterprises. Other relief and development ministries pay their presidents six-figure salaries, including World Vision ($534,742), Compassion International ($419,184), and MAP International ($352,693).
Graham also receives an undisclosed salary from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He believes his 45-year track record justifies his compensation. “A lot of pay is tied to longevity,” he says. “I think I’ve been at this job more than anyone else in the evangelical world, so if the Lord gives me health and strength, I’m going to keep doing it as long as I can.”
2025 and World Peace
Graham says Samaritan’s Purse will expand on several fronts in 2025. Immediate plans include adding a Boeing 767 cargo plane to its fleet, opening a new ministry center in Baltimore, and continuing its Helene rebuilding operations. Two new planes are on order for Alaska and Africa, but likely won’t be ready until 2026.
Asked about emerging crises he’s tracking, Graham mentions the situation in Sudan. Over half the population has minimal access to food, 3 million refugees have fled, and 8 million remain internally displaced, making it the largest displacement crisis worldwide. “We have an office in Port Sudan, which is functioning as the capital city since Khartoum has been abandoned and sacked,” Graham says. “We are doing all that we can to help feed people and care for their medical needs.”
For now, Samaritan’s Purse will continue its longtime operations in Ukraine. Before Russia invaded in 2022, the organization was working with 3,000 churches through Operation Christmas Child. “We’re still there helping them,” Graham says. “We’ll be in Ukraine for some time now. We hope that President Trump can work out some kind of deal, as he promised he would, to see this war come to an end.”
Graham isn’t shy about his support for the incoming president, continuing his decades-old history of outspoken views that have drawn sharp criticism from more liberal leaders and organizations. In 2015, he called for barring Muslims from emigrating to the United States, similar to bans on German and Japanese immigration during World War II. A regular poster on social media, he opposed efforts to make same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states and is staunchly anti-abortion, except in cases involving the mother’s health.
Graham prayed for Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2020 and 2024. In the first administration, Graham spoke highly of Trump’s peace agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and his diplomatic engagements with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. In their various meetings over the years, Graham has encouraged Trump to pray daily when he wakes up. “I believe he’s doing that,” he says.
Interviewed a week after the November election, Graham remained optimistic about world peace. “Trump is not a person who wants war. He’s a person who wants to make a deal, he wants to see people prosper. And whatever crises around the world, I think he’ll be very supportive of a humanitarian organization like Samaritan’s Purse in responding.” ■
