Valley’s Charity Gifts Dip in 1994 : Donations: The quake and a poor economy cut into contributions to key welfare agencies, hitting the Salvation Army and others especially hard.

The Northridge earthquake was almost a year ago, and the recession is fading away. But as San Fernando Valley charities began tallying their figures for 1994, they found more Scrooges than generous donors.

With Los Angeles County still rebounding from recent economic troubles, private donations to local charities have dwindled by as much as 50%.

So like any business going through hard times, charities had to adjust in 1994. Some cut staff or moved to cheaper locations, some ended programs for the needy, and, in some cases, they joined forces.

Other Valley charities had to streamline their operations and find other sources of funding if they were to survive in this sluggish era of giving.

Fund raising “is well under what it was last year,” said Troy Trimmer, director of the Van Nuys office of the Salvation Army, but “we’ve done a better job of keeping our costs under control.” His unit raised $70,000 in 1994, a 36% drop from the $110,000 in 1993.

During the Christmas season, the Van Nuys office usually hires 40 temporary workers, most of them homeless, to collect Salvation Army donations. But this year, Trimmer said they were able to hire only 20. The charity also eliminated its twice-weekly breakfast program for the needy because of a lack of funds, Trimmer said.

The United Way, which helps fund about 300 charities in Los Angeles County, including 63 in the Valley, cut back its giving dramatically.

There are still lingering effects of the earthquake, said Barbara Bickel, a senior communications specialist for the United Way.

“We’re going out and trying to find alternative sources of funding,” said Margaret Pontius of Guadalupe, an arm of the Catholic Charities, which provides food assistance to needy families in Canoga Park. Guadalupe has seen its United Way funding diminish as well, said Pontius.

But what has been a more crushing blow is a decrease in funds raised by direct-mail appeals to individuals in the local community.

Pontius said not many have responded, although the number of needy families turning to Guadalupe has almost tripled in the last year.

To offset costs, Guadalupe has sought other kinds of funding and has bombarded private foundations, the city and the federal government with requests.

The results enabled the charity to hold its annual Christmas party for 600 children of impoverished families last week.

But some organizations have taken even more drastic measures to survive. Glendale Family Services Assn. and Verdugo Mental Health Center merged this month to consolidate costs and expand their fund-raising efforts. Verdugo Mental Health Center is now the parent organization.

“We’re looking at it from more of a business perspective. . . . We needed to do something that would allow us some permanency,” said Jim Balla, director of operations for the Glendale Family Services Assn., which had a $900,000 annual operating budget before the merger.

Both organizations understood that many family-service charitable organizations with budgets under $1 million were going out of business.

The Verdugo-Glendale operation now has a combined budget of $3.3 million. The merger will place the organization in a stronger position to get government grants, Balla said.

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The move was necessary because fund raising decreased 50% for both organizations in 1994, said Lyn Brandstater, Verdugo Mental Health Center’s executive director. That drop forced the organization to set up an office solely for fund-raising development, she said.

Brandstater attributed the lack of donations to “a still downsized economy.”

The Western Los Angeles Boy Scouts of America, in Van Nuys, has also been trying to improve its finances.

The group ended up 1992 $1.8 million in the red, and “so we’ve been digging out,” said Del Hanks of the organization, which has cut its debt to $1.4 million.

Things are looking up. The Scouts group thinks it will raise $1.9 million this year, which will provide it a $300,000 surplus, after expenses, or three times what was netted last year.

“When this economy got tight, we cut staff, got out of our office and went to a more economical place,” Hanks said. “We ended up meeting our expenses this year,” It moved from a costly location on Ventura Boulevard to Sherman Way and cut its staff in half.

At the Salvation Army office in Van Nuys last week, 600 needy families were given toys, some donated by individuals and others purchased with funds.

Volunteers scurried through a courtyard to the front of the building as they filled bags with toys.

At the end of the courtyard was one tiny room filled with what little food the organization was able to collect this year for its emergency food assistance program.

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Each year, the courtyard is normally filled with non-perishable goods collected at food drives throughout the Valley.

The families would traditionally collect a bag of food along with a bag of toys.

This year, however, the courtyard was empty and the families left only with toys.