I really hope that TheTruth is correct and JWs are starting to give a little bit back to the community. I believe that there really has been an effort to do better, even if it's just for the good publicity.
When I was a JW from 1967 (baptized) to 1981, it was unheard of to do anything charitable for a community. We even had a sister in 1970 nearly get DF'd for getting caught giving a load of clothes to GoodWill. She was repentant though, so she only got a private reproof (she thought it was only the Salvation Army she couldn't give to). We actually had a talk given on how, in some convoluted manner, the GoodWill Stores were related to the support of a religious charity.
I was in Missouri then, but after a tornado in NE Oklahoma back around 1973 we got some good publicity from a newspaper which said the JWs had really helped the community, but we knew it was only the JWs who really got helped. The only non-JWs who benefited were a couple of unbelieving husbands, but they were ones who had supplied a small bulldozer and a big truck of lumber, and they were doing a lot of the real construction work, while most of the other JWs were just doing cleanup.
Btw, a lot of other religions were credited with helping at Ground Zero. Even the Scientologists were there. If you go in their main "church" on 45th and 8th you'll see that they even put up pictures of how they helped. Religious groups had set up booths all over the area to pray with people and give out tracts, too. There were so many religious people around that I personally thought it was a little annoying. In Ciro's talk he said that Bethel sent some tools over to Ground Zero. That was actually a good move, but real work on Ground Zero was so tightly controlled that I don't really think anyone outside of city workers could do much.
I think they missed their best opportunity to really help, but that's water under the bridge.
Gamaliel