Charitable Giving Sags In Holiday Homestretch, As Politics Takes Its Toll

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The New York Sun

The streets of New York may be lit up for the holidays, but New York’s social-service agencies are glum. Several report a decline in giving or a struggle to hold their ground, while they face increased need for their services.


Reported donations to the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund are down 15.7% from this time last year. The Food Bank of New York City reports a 43% decline. The New York City Mission Society reports a 10% decline, while both God’s Love We Deliver and Partnership for the Homeless are holding steady. The Salvation Army kettle campaign stands at $750,000, which is $100,000 ahead of last year but $300,000 short of the group’s projections.


The numbers are critical because many organizations generate the bulk of their donations in the November through January period.


“It’s a multiple of effects. The economy is a big one. … Add to that all the money raised for the presidential campaigns and the New York campaigns that is now not available for other things,” a fund-raising consultant, Sheila Stanford, said. “You just can’t replace that volume. And then you have the war on Iraq, the threat of terrorism – it’s a mess.”


The executive director of the New York City Mission Society, Stephanie Palmer, said the results of the election may be responsible. “I’m speaking about the coasts,” she said. “People were looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, a fresh outlook, and that didn’t happen. So that affects people’s spending and giving habits.”


City Harvest’s executive director, Julia Erickson, said: “The presidential fund-raising definitely hurt all of us: every charity we know about, except for an organization like Planned Parenthood that was really specifically political and had issues. We were competing with huge mailings, and huge requests for funding from a lot of different organizations – the political parties and other organizations like the People for the American Way.”


Not only were donors to political campaigns giving less to charities; so were foundations. Some foundations dispense 5% of their principal based on a three-year average. “This is the bottom of that last three years, and that gets passed on to us,” Lucy Cabrera, president of the Food Bank of New York, said.


The sluggish fund-raising climate comes as no surprise to City Harvest’s Ms. Erickson.


“We didn’t expect to raise much more than we did last year,” she said. “Talking to folks on our board who work in the financial-services sector, none of them was encouraging in terms of projecting much more.” The organization set a goal of $4 million, which accounts for more than 40% of its budget.


Executives of nonprofit organizations cautioned that there’s still time for the money to roll in.


“It could all be timing,” the president of the Partnership for the Homeless, Arnold Cohen, said. “It’s hard to tell if things are soft, because a large donor may make his donation later this year.”


The Neediest Cases Fund has brought in $3.5 million, compared to $4.2 million at this time last year.


“We’re alarmed by it, and we hope that between now and Christmas we’ll see some uptick,” the president of the New York Times Foundation, Jack Rosenthal, said, adding, “It’s exactly between now and New Year’s when the curve line goes up the fastest.”


In looking at the figures closely, Mr. Rosenthal was comforted that the number of donors is about the same.


“The lesson learned is that just as many people are giving, but they seem to be giving less. So what we need to try to do is encourage more people to give,” he said.


Since 1921, the New York Times has encouraged its readers to give by launching its appeals in the pages of its newspaper. Profiles of New Yorkers in need run for 90 days straight, from November through January. Coverage also includes four full-page stories, which get references on the front page, and four editorials. On Christmas Day, the words “Remember the Neediest” appear at the top of the front page.


What can the paper do beyond all that to encourage more people to give? “The only way we know to do it is to run an occasional ‘donor story,'” Mr. Rosenthal said. The first such story appeared about 10 days ago, “when we first began to notice the shortfall,” he said.


Another is planned for this week, he said, adding, “We’ll probably do one or two more than last year.”


Mr. Rosenthal also said the quality of the daily Neediest profiles has im proved in recent years. “The stories are more interesting, more varied by agency, and by type of people in turmoil,” he said. “Until last year it was unusual for there to be a picture. Now there’s almost always a picture. The stories have gotten, if anything, longer, and the total space has increased.”


The stories in the paper may have an impact beyond the agencies that directly benefit from them.


“The awareness that they help keep in people’s minds is really helpful,” Ms. Erickson said. “I think the profiles are great illustrations of how idiosyncratic the reasons are for people needing help.”


The New York Times turned to the agencies among which it divides the fund’s proceeds to help increase the quality of the stories. Those agencies are the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service; Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York; Catholic Charities, Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens; Children’s Aid Society; Community Service Society of New York; Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, and UJA-Federation of New York.


“We’ve worked hard to get the seven agencies to do the legwork for us, to find really good stories,” Mr. Rosenthal, a former Times editor, said. “Some agencies historically have done lots better than others. A couple of years ago, one agency had only two stories of the 90. So we’ve adopted a policy of rewarding the agencies who get the best stories into the paper.”


Mr. Rosenthal said disbursements to the agencies are based on “history, the size of the agency, and how well they do in getting stories into the paper.” The decisions are made at the end of the campaign.


But the additional effort on the part of the agencies may not, in the end, produce additional contributions. Indeed, the drop in contributions to the fund this year is part of a multiyear trend at the Times. The fund had a peak of $9.8 million in the 2001 solicitation. In the 2002 campaign the total dropped to $8.8 million, and in 2003 it dropped to $8.3 million.


“We are deeply concerned about the decline in giving to the New York Times Neediest campaign,” the executive director of the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service, Donna Santarsiero, said. “The continued weakness in the regional economy has led to restrictions in funding from government agencies. We are depending more than ever on the generosity of New York Times readers to help children living in poverty to have a decent and productive future, and to help adults with disabilities gain employment. The need for donations is critical and immediate.”


Another recipient agency, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, expects to receive the same level of support as last year, about $1 million. “We’re assuming the New York Times will make up the difference,” a spokeswoman, Jacqueline LoFaro, said.


The New York Times Foundation, which administers the fund, may be able to make up the difference. At its last board meeting in September, it agreed that it can spend down its endowment, which is now $26 million.


“But right now it’s highly speculative to talk about spending the endowment to meet the shortfall,” Mr. Rosenthal said.


“If by Christmas things haven’t looked up, there’s not a lot that we can do about it. That’s something to talk about the first of year,” he said.


The New York Sun

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