It seems there’s a lot of weight on the shoulders of consumers these days.
While we wait for a real rebound from the economic recession, the lack of consumer spending is holding down the critical gross domestic product rate. Their household debt is stymieing any real recovery.
And charity organizations are leaning on donors to help meet the rising needs of their consumers.
But you hang around nonprofit officials long enough, and you’ll learn the pressure’s not squarely on consumers.
Charities are helping charities.
“In our community, the nonprofits help each other quite a bit,” says Jim Harriger, executive director of Springfield Victory Mission, which was on the receiving end of some 12,000 pounds of beef donated through the American Cancer Society Cattle Baron’s Ball last fall.
The beef at Victory Mission – from more than a dozen steers auctioned during the 2011 ball – was enough to feed 55,000 individuals.
It was valued at roughly $30,000. But it’s all gone, now.
Harriger says Victory Mission doesn’t know if the 2012 Cattle Baron’s Ball next month will produce the same kind of results.
Including the steers, the value of donated food to Victory Mission last year was $257,000. Those donations free up cash that the nonprofit can spend on other essentials such as utilities and payroll.
Harriger is quick to point out Victory Mission is not just a taker.
When Convoy of Hope, for instance, delivers Victory Mission a truckload of bottled water, Little Debbie snacks or cleaning supplies, the mission uses what it can until another nonprofit calls with a need.
“God sends it into us, and I believe it’s our job to get it into the place where it’s going to be used, not to store it in a warehouse,” Harriger says, pointing to such items as building supplies, clothing and books. “We’ve worked hard to make it go back out.”
When longtime Big Brothers Big Sisters director Lisa Slavens started her own charity in January, Victory Mission was there to help. Called Wish I May, Slavens’ nonprofit provides underprivileged children supplies for birthday celebrations.
She says Harriger offered Wish I May access to the Victory Mission warehouse to use books and supplies the mission receives through Scholastic Book Fairs.
Slavens says Wish I May stocked up with a half-dozen boxes of books along with related hands-on activities.
The group has filled 117 birthday bags for children, and it’s still passing out the items from Victory Mission.
“I think we’ll go back,” Slavens says, noting an open invitation. “He was just so generous the first time, we haven’t been able to use all the product.”
Victory Mission is a conduit for supplies to groups such as Harmony House, Crosslines, The Kitchen, Salvation Army, Pregnancy Care Center and Set Free Ministries in Cabool. Through a program called Framing Hope, Victory Mission was able to leverage about $70,000 worth of building supplies from Home Depot for construction improvements in several city neighborhoods.
Victory Mission pays roughly $600 per year, Harriger says, to partner with Home Depot and a national group called Good360 to be on the receiving end of donated building supplies.
“If somebody has that need and we’ve got the stuff, we try to approach it with an open hand,” he says. “It’s what’s been given to us to go out to be used in our community.”
Harriger has maintained this approach even as his organization faces a budget shortfall.
In May, Harriger announced an anticipated annual shortfall of $130,000, and he made a call for help. By July, Victory Mission had closed the 2012 budget gap by $50,000.
He says the cash came in from the community, largely by individual donors – the largest gift tallying $25,000.
The veteran charity administrator says he wasn’t surprised by the response.
“I’ve found during 19 years here in Springfield that if it doesn’t come from one direction, it comes from the other,” Harriger says.
Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.[[In-content Ad]]
