Charities ring alarm over fundraising woes
Christmas has come early for the Salvation Army. And that’s a very grim sign for one of the world’s largest nonprofit organizations and the thousands of people it serves each holiday season.
The charity announced it would break with 130 years of tradition and begin its Christmas fundraising drive Oct. 1, more than a month before the normal start date.
This year, in addition to the iconic red kettles that sit outside local grocery and retail stores, the charity will allow for touchless donations via scanning QR codes, and it has launched a website that allows people to commit to long-term donations or to raise money through friends and family.
“Our ability to raise vital funds to serve those in need this Christmas and beyond is at risk,” said Salvation Army commissioner Kenneth Hodder. “We need everyone who has the capacity to come alongside us and ensure that the holiday season is bright for millions.”
The decision amounts to a Hail Mary attempt by the charity to “rescue Christmas” and combat dwindling donations and increased service demands brought on by CO
VID-19.
Already, the number of those in need of service is up by more than 150 percent, the charity said this week. Meanwhile, the nonprofit is anticipating it will collect only half as much in donations this year than it did in 2019, when it raised more than $126 million through red kettle donations.
That money helped fund the more than 350,000 free meals and 79,000 nights of shelter that the local branch of the Salvation Army gave out last year, as well as the large holiday events that provide meals and gifts to thousands of people each year.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t anxious,” local Salvation Army Maj. Zach Bell said.
Bell worries that the loss of foot traffic and concerns about the
spread of COVID-19 could also stymie the number of volunteers who typically ring bells and solicit donations. In November, the physical kettles will return to many locations, but volunteers will have to take preventative measures — including cleaning the buckets each time they receive a donation.
Impulse giving
He noted that it’s relatively easy for shoppers to fish a few spare cents or dollars from their pockets en route to their cars.
“When you go shopping, you can impulse buy,” he said. “We think of this as impulse giving.”
The charity relies heavily on those seemingly small donations, he said, but many stores have minimized points of entry and thus choked off a substantial fundraising opportunity.
“This Christmas could be lost if we’re not careful here,” he said.
Bell is hardly the only nervous one. Charities across the country have for months warned that their budgets, some already shoestring, were being decimated by an influx of service demands and a slowdown in donations. Recent, national tax reforms had already deincentivized philanthropic giving for many corporations and high earners, said an expert who studies nonprofits.
The effects of that slowdown have only been amplified by the pandemic. And changes in the broader nonprofit world can reverberate. If, for example, the Salvation Army had to decrease the number of people it served this year, many would just seek help from other places, thus potentially overwhelming them as well.
Houston’s Christian Community Service Center said it is already feeding more than five times as many people as they did last year.
And requests for rental assistance — a crucial program amid a wave of evictions nationwide — are also up substantially, with more than 60 percent of those seeking help doing so for the first time.
“What we’re seeing in the community is a whole lot of people who maybe had a somewhat stable situation back in February, and now are in a dire situation,” said Executive Director Michelle Shonbeck. “No one knows what the future holds.”
Aid running out
Meanwhile, many nonprofits are already close to running through money they received from the federal government to cover payroll and other costs, said Garet Robinson, a Houston resident who studies nonprofits at Harvard University. And recent tax reforms at the national level have also decreased the incentives for giving as a way of lowering one’s overall tax obligation.
Robinson said the Salvation Army’s early start is “indicative of what’s happening across the nonprofit world.”
“But it’s not surprising,” he said.
He noted that COVID-19 has posed an entirely different economic challenge than anything before it, forcing people and businesses to plan with little certainty as to what the future holds.
Many nonprofit leaders, he said, are already “pulling what’s left of their hair out” as they try to simply keep the lights on without significant cuts to services, staff or both.
“They’re all trying to figure out what they can do to proactively engage giving,” he said. “And no one has a good road map.”