‘Alot of people hurting’ ahead of holidays
With lower budgets, nonprofitswarn of ‘sustained’ needs in the community
Amonth after one of the world’s largest nonprofits launched a fight to “rescue Christmas,” local charities are warning that COVID-19 and an ongoing recession will jeopardize services that in a normal holiday season would feed or shelter thousands of vulnerable residents.
“The needs are so much greater than they have been in the past,” said Amanda McMillian, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Houston. “It’s across the entire community. It’s dramatic and it’s sustained.”
In September, the Salvation Army announced that it would start its famous red-kettle drives nearly a month sooner amid a 50
percent drop in donations and a 150 percent increase in service demands.
It’s a problem felt by many local nonprofits, and one that’s become especially concerning as the holiday season nears.
Congress took the unprecedented step of allowing churches and nonprofits to receive loans through the first economic stimulus package. Though therewas some debate within the religious community about whether such loans came with “strings attached,” many nonprofits ultimately turned to the program.
Six months later — with talks over a new stimulus seemingly at a deadlock — many nonprofits and churches are back to shoestring budgets, having exhausted funds for paychecks and other operating costs that were allowed un
der the federal program.
Many charities rely heavily on the holiday season, when people tend to open up their checkbooks and charities usually hold end- of-the-year fundraising events.
It’s a potentially serious problem for places such as the Beacon, a homeless shelter that in normal years serves about 300 people daily in downtown Houston. This year, the group has served only about 100 people daily because of safety precautions, and it had to postpone an annual fundraiser that usually brings in about $600,000.
“It’s a huge piece of our operating revenue, and we can’t have it this year,” said Julie Falcon, chief financial officer for the Beacon. “There’s just a lot of uncertainty.”
Other nonprofits are telling similar stories of skyrocketing service demands, fewer donations and volunteers, and little hope for a second federal stimulus package.
At Houston’s Christian Community Service Center, leaders say the number of people turning to them for food has increased five-fold during the pandemic. Requests for housing assistance are also up substantially.
More worrisome, Executive Director Michelle Shonbeck said, is that roughly 60 percent of those seeking help from the center are doing so for the first time.
The same has been reported at other local food banks. By July, Chapelwood United Methodist Church had already doled out more than 100,000 free meals at its Fair Haven Food Pantry. The chapter has now passed the 200,000 mark, and lead pastor John Stephens said he does not expect demand to wane soon.
“A lot of people are hurting,” Stephens said. “A lot of people.”
Fewer volunteers
Local charities are not strangers to budget pinches, and leaders say the nonprofit sector has become more collaborative during a decade that has brought four major floods and an economic recession that tanked the oil and gas sector.
In past years, such calamities have brought waves of volunteers. But not this year.
Volunteer Houston, which helps link workers with local nonprofits, noted significant decreases in volunteerism since the beginning of the pandemic.
In some cases, nonprofits have scaled back operations and don’t need workers. But other volunteers are worried about getting infected by the novel coronavirus, according to a survey done by Volunteer Houston in the early weeks of the pandemic.
“They’re concerned about safety, they have family members or they themselves are atrisk populations,” said Brooke Parkinson, director of Volunteer Houston.
Respondents also reported they were less likely to volunteer because “people are not taking social distancing seriously” and because they found virtual volunteerism less appealing.
“The main motivation for a volunteer is personal interaction, either with your fellow volunteers, the clients you’re serving or the staff at that nonprofit,” Parkinson said. “And that’s the piece that’s missing.”
Nor are virtual services an option formany of the most vulnerable, who are often without computers, smartphones or other necessities. Some groups are trying to fill the gap — the Christian Community Service Center, for example, recently opened a new headquarters with a center for computer training and job searching.
COVID-19 has exacerbated long-standing disparities in health, education and income.
“There is significant need in minority, displaced and dispossessed areas in Houston,” said Garet Robinson, a local pastor who studies nonprofits at Harvard University. “A lot of the impacted people are right on that margin to begin with and they have nowhere else to go.”
‘Inequities laid bare’
Just how bad is it? In 2018, the UnitedWay estimated that a local family of four needed to make about $61,000 annually to pay for food, housing and child care. Today, it would cost $79,000.
“We’ve seen inequities laid bare,” said McMillian, of the United Way. “We’ve already seen and we already know that the opportunity gap is wider for people of color. And so when you layer on top of that a recession and pandemic, it’s daunting.”
Still, McMillian sees an opportunity to further strengthen collaboration among nonprofits.
She hopes that the problems exposed by COVID-19 will prompt more urgency from lawmakers on bills dealing with predatory lending, housing or the “digital divide” in education.
McMillian is calling on themto prioritize inequality. Nonprofits can do only so much, she said. “There is a point at which there needs to be a policy change or policy- oriented solution,” she said.
Other leaders hope that the pandemicwill, over time, bolster empathy for the less fortunate — and prompt people to give money or their time.
“You don’t have to change the world or usher in world peace — you just have to do something,” she said.
“You don’t have to change the world or usher in world peace — you just have to do something.” Amanda McMillian, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Houston