Economy takes harsh toll on relief agencies

Donations fall off the table
The struggling economy is hammering America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s largest hunger-relief agency, representing more than 200 food banks and food-rescue missions.

Individual contributions fell by 38 percent, from $28.4 million to $17.5 million, from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2007, according to the nonprofit agency’s financial reports. Grants from foundations fell even more sharply, by 72 percent.

In 2006, America’s Second Harvest ended the year with a $13 million surplus. It ended 2007 with a $20 million deficit. And the figures for fiscal 2008, which ends June 30, are likely to be even worse.

Poor Americans “are in desperate circumstances, struggling to keep a roof over their heads and to keep their children fed,” said Vicki Escarra, president and chief executive of America’s Second Harvest. “The recent spike in food and gasoline prices has only made a terrible situation worse.”

‘We do turn away some people’
Money is tight.

“It’s a difficult economic time right now, and individuals are holding on to a little more of their disposable income,” said Ashley Delamar, operations director for the Salvation Army of Wake County, N.C., who said the shelves were empty at the Raleigh food bank.

In Holyoke, Mass., the Salvation Army’s Christmas kettle drive fell $30,000 short of its goal of raising $150,000 this winter. The agency is planning an all-out “Christmas in July” kettle drive this summer, hoping for enough donations to keep going.

“We do turn away some people because we don’t have the funds to help,” said Capt. Persida Sanclemente of the Holyoke Salvation Army. “Everyone is struggling and everyone is feeling the pinch, so the need becomes greater.”

The Rev. Scott George, founder of the Greater Orlando (Fla.) Food Bank, said he was struck by how many people were showing up who had never used such services before.

“It seems like every day, more people are coming, and the stories are getting more and more desperate,” George said. “You can see it in their eyes.”

For Linda Lera-Randle El, executive director of Straight from the Streets, a homeless outreach group in Las Vegas, there is little to be optimistic about. She said that even as the line of hungry men and women grew longer every day outside her door, fewer dollars were coming in to help feed them.

“Once the economy goes down, the least among us are going to suffer even worse,” Lera-Randle El said. “Not only are we worried about the back door of the people who are already here, but we’re afraid the front doors are going to come off the hinges, as well.”

NBC affiliates KTVB of Boise, Idaho; KVBC of Las Vegas; WESH of Orlando, Fla.; WHAG of Hagerstown, Md.; WJHG of Panama City, Fla.; WNCN of Raleigh, N.C.; WNYT of Albany, N.Y.; WSMV of Nashville, Tenn.; and WWLP of Springfield, Mass., contributed to this report.

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