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Orlando-area charities see drop in donations as needy seek more help (with video): Like people they help, charities are in need this holiday season...(Orlando Sentinel, The (FL) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dec. 5--It's that time of year again when those ubiquitous red Salvation Army kettles typically jingle with change. But this is no typical year. With housing sales down, gas prices up and the economy as a whole shaky, local charities are being flooded with requests -- while donations are mostly flat or falling fast. "It's becoming a crisis," said Steven Gilmore, spokesman for The Salvation Army of Orange and Osceola Counties. "The people who have worked here for 10 years have never seen anything like it." The charity's kettle program is off more than 40 percent so far, even at prime collection spots such as Wal-Mart. And mailers for donations have sparked only a trickle of responses so far. The Salvation Army relies on the money to fuel its $6 million budget for things such as homeless shelters, emergency rent- and utility-bill assistance and housing for seniors who live below the poverty line. "It really has gotten to a point where we have to tell the public that we ourselves are in need -- like the people we are serving," Gilmore said. The Salvation Army is hardly alone. At the Christian Service Center, for instance, demand has grown steadily for several years, while donations have stayed flat. "We're serving 25,000 more meals a year than we were in 2000," said Robert Stuart, executive director. "But we're still struggling with the same $1.2 million budget we've had for the past seven or eight years." Worse, overall giving appears to be down about 5 percent -- although the organization won't know for certain until the dollars are counted at year's end. A 5 percent drop, Stuart said, would be "a pretty significant hit." Many charities rely on year-end giving for as much as half of their yearly total. Not only do donations usually ratchet up from Thanksgiving to November, but a lot of people make year-end contributions to lower their tax burden. "Every day you can expect something in your mailbox from a nonprofit -- whether it's for juvenile diabetes or the SPCA or anything in between," said Es Cohen, director of development for Jewish Family Services of Greater Orlando. "I believe that people by nature want to give. I just think that now they're becoming more introverted and being more cautious because they don't know what their own particular future is going to be."Nationally, the picture is still unclear. A survey released this week by charity watchdog GuideStar found that just over half of the agencies contacted reported an increase in contributions during the first nine months of 2007 compared with the same period in 2006. Some 25 percent said there was no change, and 19 percent reported a drop. But that doesn't mean the future is rosy. "While the . . . 2007 indicators are strong so far," the GuideStar report said, "many charities are increasingly concerned about the continuing housing crisis and fluctuating stock market and their impact on charitable giving." There are also scattered reports of trouble. In San Jose, Calif., for instance, there's an uptick in need at the same time as a downturn in giving. The likely culprit? Mortgage foreclosures that have turned formerly charity-minded homeowners into hard-luck cases who need help themselves. In Pittsburgh and Roanoke, Va., donations at Salvation Army kettles are as meager as they are in Central Florida. And in northeast Michigan, where an estimated 94,000 people are out of work and job-hunting, charitable giving is also down. But the hardest hit have been the nation's food banks -- including Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida. Like food banks across the country, Second Harvest relies on surplus bought from farmers through the U.S. Department of Agriculture food-commodities program for much of what it distributes to the needy. But that surplus has plummeted -- just as the need has soared. "We've seen between 2 and 3 million pounds of food per year dwindle down to less than half a million pounds," said Greg Higgerson, the agency's development director. "We really, really need the community to fill that gap." People can help by donating food, volunteering to work in the warehouse so Second Harvest doesn't have to pay additional workers or having a food drive themselves. At Jewish Family Services, for instance, one girl turned down presents at her bat mitzvah in order to bolster donations for a food drive. "On her invitations, she wrote, 'In lieu of gifts, please donate to the Jewish Family Services for the pantry,' " Cohen said. "This child, between her family and friends, raised nearly $5,000 in cash for us to be able to go shopping at Second Harvest. It was really a cool, cool story that a child could turn something around." Kate Santich can be reached at [email protected] To see more of The Orlando Sentinel or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.OrlandoSentinel.com. Copyright (c) 2007, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |