Like many Kansans, Mike McGrew will keep an eye on the weather as the storm season kicks into high gear this spring and summer.

Mike McGrew

But McGrew’s view may be a bit wider than most. He’s serving on a national disaster relief board that gives out millions of dollars in aid to victims of natural disasters throughout the U.S.

“It has been a real learning experience about how bad things happen to good people, but the encouraging part is that there are an awful lot of good people willing to provide help,” said McGrew, chairman and CEO of Lawrence-based McGrew Real Estate.

McGrew is serving on the national board for the Realtor Relief Foundation. McGrew is part of the board, in part, because he serves as the treasurer for the National Association of Realtors.

The relief foundation raises funds from fellow Realtors and from other organizations and businesses that work with Realtors. The fund specializes in providing financial assistance to people who need help making mortgage or rent payments following a natural disaster.

“There are situations where your house may be gone but the mortgage remains,” McGrew said. “Until insurance kicks in, that can be a real problem.”

Other common scenarios are that people involved in a natural disaster may not have lost their home, but the disaster destroyed their place of employment. That can create a financial hardship for people trying to make a mortgage or rent payment. Sometimes the situations are even more tragic. In 2013, the relief fund provided $50,000 in funding to the 19 families of firefighters who were killed in the line of duty while fighting wildfires in Arizona.

The relief fund works with local or state chapters of the National Association of Realtors to make sure the money gets to where it needs to go at a disaster site.

“We work with the local officials who really know the situation to define what help we can provide and what the application process will be,” McGrew said.

The relief fund got its start not after a natural disaster, but rather after the terrorists attacks of 2001.

“There was this overwhelming patriotic response that we needed to do something,” McGrew said. “We didn’t know quite what to do, so we formed this foundation. We granted almost $8.5 million in funds in four months.”

Since the organization was founded, the foundation has dispersed a little more than $24 million in funding, McGrew said.

McGrew said the group primarily focuses on natural disasters in the U.S., although it did provide funding following the earthquakes in Japan and the tsunami in Indonesia. Closer to home, the group was active following the tornadoes in Greensburg and Joplin, Mo.

McGrew is in his second year of a three-year term as treasurer for the National Association of Realtors, the largest real estate organization in the country. That position provides him an automatic seat on the relief board, but McGrew said he may seek a way to stay on the relief board even after his term as treasurer for the national association ends.

“It is one pretty cool board to be on,” McGrew said.