A Thaw in Giving : After a Three-Year Freeze, People Are Donating Again

After three years of The Big Bah Humbug, Southern California charities are noticing signs of a thaw in the philanthropic deep-freeze brought about by the lingering recession.

More businesses are adopting schools or preparing holiday baskets or collecting toys and canned goods, nonprofit organizations say. And more individuals are donating money and time now that they are confident the economy is revving up again.

It’s not exactly a visit from St. Nicholas yet: Most nonprofit charities are measuring increases in the single digits or are thankful that totals are no longer dropping. And some, particularly food banks, still face tough sledding. But for many, change is in the air.

“We’re seeing a lot of lapsed donors who are coming back to the fold,” said Mike Tomasello, development director for Catholic Charities, a $27.5-million human-services agency operated by the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese.

Catholic Charities is expecting an 8% to 10% increase in giving compared to last Christmas, he said.

This, not surprisingly, is the nonprofits’ biggest fund-raising season as holiday goodwill coincides with the year-end rush to donate for tax reasons. But the take has been noticeably smaller in recent years, thanks to the dismal performance of the local economy. That Grinch now appears to be heading out of town, and consumers are responding not only by spending at the malls but by giving to their favorite causes.

“If we’re any indication, then yes, things are better,” said Karen McGlinn, executive director of Share Our Selves, a Costa Mesa-based social services agency. SOS has seen increased donations of food, money and time, she said.

“This year we’re having wonderful contributions from the private sector.”

McGlinn tells of businesses where employees voted to forgo the annual Christmas party so that the money could go to SOS. Some companies that can’t afford to write a check are hosting food drives, she said.

Hope is also glimmering again at the Pacoima headquarters of Meet Every Need with Dignity, which discovered deficit spending during the recession. Donations were up slightly to fill 1,200 Christmas baskets with toys, food and blankets for needy families, and November brought in a few thousand dollars more than last year, said Executive Director Marianne Haver Hill.

“I’m feeling encouraged that we’re ahead. It’s just not enough,” Hill said, noting that the nonprofit is still running a small deficit.

The Los Angeles Unified School District will record about 10% growth in its program to match businesses with schools, said Eiko Moriyama, coordinator of the nation’s largest adopt-a-school project.

“People say, ‘With the economy, your program really must be slowing down,’ and I say, ‘To the contrary,’ ” explained Moriyama. Even companies that are cutting back elsewhere are maintaining or even increasing their participation because they consider school funding to be “preventive medicine,” she said.

Less surprising, given strong growth in the national economy, charitable giving nationwide will probably will be up for 1994, said Ann Kaplan, research director for the American Assn. of Fund-Raising Counsel Inc., which each year measures how much was given to nonprofit groups. In 1993, charitable donations by individuals and corporations rose 3.6% but, adjusted for inflation, were virtually unchanged from the year before.

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“If consumer confidence is up and spending is up and income is at least slightly better, then we should see an increase” in charitable giving, Kaplan said. “The question is to what degree and how the gifts will be distributed.”

One type of human-service nonprofit that is having a difficult time is the food bank. These organizations, which distribute food to the needy, flourished in the 1980s but in the 1990s have had to compete with a growing for-profit market for the types of goods that food manufacturers used to donate.

Products that are dented, close to expiration or are in outdated packaging, for example, are increasingly being sold to a secondary market so that food companies can boost their bottom lines, food-bank managers say. As a result, many pantries have more clients than food.

“Our food program director is having to work a lot harder to get the same amount of food,” said Hill of MEND. “She’s constantly having to find new donors. She can’t rely on the same donors to come back time and time again.”

Other charitable causes are still having a tough time as well. The U.S. Marine Corps Reserve’s Toys for Tots in Orange County may not reach its goal of 51,000 toys for needy children, said Staff Sgt. Michael Diaz, coordinator for south Orange County.

“Maybe some people are waiting until the last minute, but that would be a shame,” Diaz said. “There are some agencies that are not going to get their requests filled.”

Los Angeles businesswoman Beate Chelette is new to the world of philanthropy. After reading a Los Angeles Times series on hunger, Chelette decided not to buy gifts this year for the clients of her Melrose Avenue photo production agency, called Beate Works. Instead, she bought toys and is faxing her clients and urging them to do the same. The goal of this one-woman drive is to distribute 250 toys, and Chelette said she is about a third of the way to her target.

“Nobody’s in such great financial condition these days, but at least we eat. I looked at my child and I thought, ‘This is something I can do,’ ” said Chelette, who has a 2-year-old daughter. “Whether I cover one day-care center or 10, that doesn’t change the quality of my idea or our will to do what we can do.”

Meanwhile, the recession never dulled the adopt-a-family program undertaken by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, St. Vibiana’s Cathedral and the Downtown Los Angeles merchants who belong to Miracle on Broadway.

Last Wednesday, Christmas was celebrated early at Clifton’s Cafeteria on Broadway, just as it has been for the last five years. Santa was hauled to the popular eatery in a caravan of siren-blaring, traffic-stopping MTA police cars. Clifton’s served turkey and all the trimmings to about 125 people, and 25 families went home with toys and bags of food.

“We get more out of this than the kids do,” said Robert Clinton, vice president of the family-owned cafeteria chain.