Challenge for Metro Detroit Charities: Fewer Donors, More People in Need

Eugene Niece, veteran volunteer bell ringer for the Salvation Army, stands in light snow flurries outside metropolitan Detroit's Westland Shopping Center and offers his friendly red-kettle greetings.

"God bless. Merry Christmas," says Niece, 64, to patrons who deposit coins and dollar bills.

A short break occurs, and the Ford Motor Co. transmission plant retiree pauses to reflect.

"It's tougher than four or five years ago," Niece says. "Just as many people are giving, but they have less to give. I don't see the $5 bills, the $10s and the $20s, like in the past.

"People haven't changed. They're as generous as ever. It's the economy that's changed, and people don't have as much to give."

Detroit Reflects National Hardship

Detroit, where official unemployment approaches 30 percent in the city and 20 percent in the metro area, offers an intense example of challenges that nonprofit charities and service groups are facing nationwide.

Fewer residents have the economic means to donate at past levels, and more are in need during this holiday season, says Maj. John Turner, general secretary of the Salvation Army's Eastern Michigan Division.

The Salvation Army of Metropolitan Detroit is just one example. Emergency shelters, United Way agencies, food pantries and other outreach projects are in the same boat.

Staffers at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics measure unemployment rates in 372 metropolitan areas. A year ago, even with the national economic recession already taking hold, only 13 of these areas had official unemployment above 10 percent. The count rose to 124 in October 2009.

"Requests for Salvation Army assistance in the Detroit area have increased by 60 percent this year. That's 'six-oh' percent," says Turner, emphasizing his point.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a 16.7 percent unemployment rate when the city of Detroit is combined with a pair of suburbs, Warren and Livonia. In the city of Detroit alone, the number climbs to 28.9 percent. This represents the highest jobless rate among the nation's major cities, "and that doesn't even measure the long-term unemployed" because they are discounted from the statistics, Turner says.

"The challenge is to absorb significant cuts, while trying to provide more assistance at the same time," he says. "These funds are critical because the Salvation Army provides so many services. We help families meet emergency needs such as utility bills. We serve hot meals and we also have a pantry. We have shelters, after-school programs, a legal aid clinic, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation."

Needs exist all year, not just during the holiday season or cold weather, Turner adds.

Metro Detroit Salvation Army leaders set last year's Red Kettle Campaign goal at $8.5 million but fell short at $7.7 million. This year, aware of the dismal economy, they reduced the target to a more achievable $7.8 million.

Some agencies are taking even bigger hits. Three years ago, the United Way of Southeastern Michigan raised $61 million. This year's United Way Torch Drive effort was for $41 million, and the umbrella agency has streamlined priorities into three goals: basic needs, financial stability and education.

To demonstrate how the web of assistance is intertwined, Turner points out that the Salvation Army receives a share of its funding support from United Way.

Metro Detroit Shelters Filled

Turner is 54 years old, with 22 years of Salvation Army experience in places such as Chicago and St. Louis. He says he has never encountered hardship as severe as this year's Detroit scenario.

Even a comparative newcomer such as 25-year-old Anna Kohn says she has seen plenty in her role as Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries' director of corporate and government relations.

"Detroit is at roughly a 30 percent unemployment rate, but we've been here for a while now," says Kohn, noting that Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries reached its 100th anniversary earlier this year.

Advertisements for the Detroit operation, and for other Rescue Mission programs across the nation, often break down how donations are spent. For example, a certain dollar amount provides 10 hot meals, or 50, or 100, or more. Still, gifts to Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries are down about 20 percent, Kohn says.

Some onlookers may view shelters as places for wayward single men to eat and sleep, but half of all people who receive services nowadays come from families and 25 percent are children, she points out.

"We feed 3,500 meals per day, over one million meals per year, and many other smaller organizations and churches have stepped up to the plate to start caring for this increasing number as well," Kohn says.

"We house 1,200 every night between our eight different facilities, and we're trying as quickly as possible to increase our capacity. One of the largest problems [is that] without funding, we cannot increase capacity. Without increasing capacity, we will continue to be full."

Detroit Rescue Mission shelters never turn anyone away, Kohn explains, and so, once the beds are filled, others sleep in chairs.

Support Strategies Refined

Nonprofit outreach projects are looking for alternatives to large cash contributions, especially in a place such as metropolitan Detroit, where the Big Three automakers no longer are producing massive support.

One emphasis is on diversifying donor bases, even though many middle and smaller enterprises are also facing hard times. Turner notes that the Salvation Army kicked off this year's Red Kettle Campaign in a downtown park near the Compuware Building, a cornerstone of inner-city redevelopment along Woodward Avenue.

Agencies are collecting everything from used cars to used coats. The Salvation Army operates 24 thrift stores in the Detroit area.

An hour's drive north of metro Detroit, in Saginaw, 59-year-old social worker Leslie Bacon, as part of her Gleaning for Jesus program, recycles and repairs furniture, appliances, toys and various household items that otherwise may have been thrown away along street curbs. She will use fabric from a broken-down couch, for example, to repair a set of kitchen chairs. Bacon is a former Detroiter who says donations not only meet families' basic needs, but also lift their spirits.

Nonprofits are urging citizens to volunteer, sometimes as a form of job training, sometimes simply as another means to add a line item to a resume.

Meanwhile, Niece continues to take his bell and red kettle to Westland Shopping Center storefronts. The father of three grown children and 14 grandchildren says he moved to Detroit from rural Kentucky in 1965 as part of the clarion call from the then-thriving auto industry. Since then, for hundreds of thousands of metro Detroiters, thriving has been transformed into surviving.

"People don't come to the mall like they used to, especially on the weekdays," Niece says. "Years ago, there would be a stampede during the holiday season. But people still have hearts. If it's 15 degrees out and the wind is howling, people will notice me out here in the bitter cold and they still will give something, whatever they can give."

Sources:

http://www.salvationarmyemich.org/

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/08/unemployment-in-detroit-climbs-to-289.html

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.nr0.htm

http://www.drmm.org/

http://www.salarmythrift.com/index.php

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2007-united-way-campaign-raises-millions-momentum-continues-59858437.html

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/869307/detail.html

http://helpinghomeless.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/homeless-for-the-holidays/

http://www.polltrack.com/presidential/tag/unemployment_rate