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First Presbyterian makes largest-ever contribution for COVID relief efforts

First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, hoping to ease some of the pain of COVID-19’s economic devastation, has made a historic donation of over $500,000 to Central Florida’s nonprofits, individual families and worldwide mission efforts, Senior Pastor David Swanson said.

The church pooled the money from virtual collection plates, leftover funds of a capital campaign, bequests and an annual missions drive after leaders started seeing a dramatic uptick in pleas for help.

“We have what we call our Good Samaritan Fund to help people pay the light bill, pay the rent, make a car payment, pay the mortgage,” Swanson said. “Normally we get three, maybe four requests a month. But since COVID started, we’ve had 170. People are desperate.”

The requests are accepted from church members and nonmembers alike, and a committee vets all applications and pays out directly to landlords, banks or vendors. So far, it has approved over $141,000, and there are applications still waiting to be processed.

But church elders also wanted

to support the region’s nonprofit agencies that feed, shelter and serve the tens of thousands of Central Florida workers who have been furloughed or laid off.

As a result, 14 charitable agencies are getting checks of $5,000 to $50,000 each, including Grace Medical Home, United Against Poverty, Christian Service Center and Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida.

“This is great news,” said Dave Krepcho, the food bank’s president and CEO. “Since mid-March, we’ve been providing enough food for about 300,000 meals a day — and it takes a lot of finances to do that. We can leverage their [$25,000] donation into about $200,000 worth of groceries. That feeds a lot of people.”

The money also will help victims of human trafficking at Samaritan’s Village and victims of domestic violence at Harbor House of Central Florida.

First Presbyterian — with annual revenues of about $7 million — typically donates at least 10 percent of worshipers’ offerings over the course of a year. But it has never given out so much at once, Swanson said.

“What actually started it was a study I read that said 50 percent of nonprofits could fail as a result of COVID-19,” Swanson said, citing an expected drop in philanthropic donations and grants. “That was very sobering. So I started calling around to see how people were doing.”

He also recalled the struggles his own organization endured during the Great Recession and housing market bust that began in 2007. Staff took acrossthe-board pay cuts and some 50 people lost their jobs.

He was afraid the same thing would happen in the current recession. To his relief, it hasn’t so far.

“Since the start of the pandemic, our donations are up about 20 percent,” he said. “I think part of it is that people appreciate the effort that the church is making to take care of them and meet their spiritual needs at this time.”

Not only are Sunday services virtual, but so too are daily prayer meetings, small groups gatherings, morning inspirational offerings and a support group for those who have lost their jobs. The church likely won’t meet in person until fall.

Swanson said the donations have come not just from well-heeled members of the congregation.

“There’s one woman in our congregation who was furloughed and then lost her job, and she called and said, ‘I don’t have much to give, but I want to give something,’” he said. “This is someone who is immunecompromised and hasn’t left her house since March 22. She’s pretty amazing.”