Jackson House facing $60K budget shortfall
Jackson House could face a budget shortfall of up to $60,000 this year as donations to the nonprofit continue to decline and the number of individuals and families in need of food, medicine and other supplies only continues to increase.
This is the third consecutive year the organization, which provides tens of thousands of free lunches and bags of food annually to those living in poverty in the area, has had funding gaps, Janie Smith, executive director of Jackson House, said Tuesday. In 2017, the nonprofit barely made its numbers with a last-minute donation. Its annual budget is about $400,000.
“This is a trend that is growing faster and faster,” Smith said. “There are just more and more cases, and donations are going down. We have reached a point where it is going to start seriously affecting what we can do.”
Nearly 30 percent of residents in the city of Hot Springs live in poverty, according to the United States Census Bureau. In Garland County, roughly 18 percent of residents live below the poverty line, the Census Bureau reported.
In 2017, Smith says Jackson House added over 1,000 new cases, which consist of individuals or families who need food or some other form of assistance. That number combined with existing cases brings the total caseload to around 11,000. Smith estimates the total number of people, including children and other family members receiving support, is at least 20,000 or more. “That’s a conservative estimate,” she said. In 2017 alone, Jackson House served 56,425
lunches and donated 17,026 bags of food to families. Smith says that many who once donated — either financially or with food, clothing and other household items — now also need help as middle class in the area have continued to slide into monetary distress. “We have been slowly losing our donation base,” she said. “Donors are either passing away or they were middle-class families who now are turning to us for help.”
More elderly are turning to Jackson House, too. Many victims of hurricanes who moved here in the aftermath of Katrina in 2005 and other major storms in recent years have stayed in the community and continue to rely on Jackson House and other charities as they struggle to rebuild their lives, Smith said. Volunteers at Jackson House are also seeing more young people with college degrees who cannot find jobs or who have lost jobs and are struggling to make ends meet.
“We are seeing people from everywhere,” she said.
There has also been a proliferation of thrift stores and charities in the community. Smith estimates the Hot Springs area has several hundred charitable organizations, which means donations are increasingly stretched between so many vying for support.
Jackson House is also losing funding from more affluent families who have fled inner city Hot Springs for growing middle-class neighborhoods in Garland County, Smith said. These families, she says, are becoming immune to the poverty that is occurring because they no longer see the decay of once prosperous neighborhoods in the city.
“We need people to not forget that Jackson House is here,” Smith said. “Don’t assume that because we have been here for so long and are so well-known that we are fine. We are not fine. We are hurting, and when we hurt, the services that we provide hurt.”
Donations are also sought for Jackson House’s thrift stores, which help fund the purchase of supplies. Jackson House is located at 705 Malvern Ave. and operates thrift stores at 212 Jefferson St., behind Jackson House, and at 623 Albert Pike Road. Call Smith at 501-623-4048 for information on making donations, which are tax-deductible.
Smith said she encourages members of the community to inform Jackson House of possible grants that might help them secure more funding and that any amount of food or financial assistance will help the center.
“There will come a point when I am going to have to start reducing (what we give) to children, to the elderly, to pregnant women, to the homeless,” Smith said. “Then it will be a crisis in another way. We are standing on a precipice here.”