Shorter Season, Later Donations Pinching Charities

With holiday-inspired donations lagging this year, a number of Ventura County charities report that they are struggling to keep pace with the growing needs of Ventura County’s hungry, homeless and poor.

Although contributions of food, clothing, toys and cash show the seasonal upswing, they have fallen behind the largess of county residents last year.

“The giving seems to be coming in a little bit later this year, and that makes us a little nervous,” said Jim Mangis, director of FOOD Share Inc., the county’s largest food-distribution warehouse. “The money we receive during the holidays helps us feed people all year-round.”

Leaders of various charities are not sure what to make of this season’s sluggish giving. Some believe the presidential election and an unusually late Thanksgiving have caught their usual donors unprepared for the Christmas season.

Others see lingering remnants of the economic recession that gripped the county in the early 1990s. They point out that, although Ventura County’s economy has improved greatly, the local jobless rate of 7.4% is still higher than the statewide average of 6.9%. “I don’t know what the problem is this year, but donations are down,” said Carol Roberg, associate director of the Ventura County Rescue Mission.

Money has continued to flow into the rescue mission to help house the homeless and build a larger shelter in Oxnard, she said. But donations of toys and secondhand clothing are off from last year.

“Toys for Tots just called us and they are way down, too,” said Roberg, who helped coordinate a large-scale distribution of Christmas presents for needy children on Saturday. “We have only about a quarter of the [children’s] gifts that we had last year.”

The American Red Cross of Ventura County also issued a plea last week for donations, noting that the chapter’s disaster relief fund has been drained by an unusually high number of house fires.

“We are just six months into our fiscal year and we’ve spent well over $35,000 of our $51,000 budget,” said Richard Rink, the chapter’s director of disaster services.

The American Red Cross provides emergency food, shelter and clothing to disaster refugees immediately after they are displaced.

“We are optimistic that the donations will still come in and be enough to assist these people in need,” Rink said.

Compared with last year, the Salvation Army’s bell ringers also report that they have come up short in Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camarillo. The kettles are running about the same as last year in Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, although Salvation Army leaders there are concerned that the season between Thanksgiving and Christmas was shortened by a week this year.

The Ventura Salvation Army is a notable exception, boosted this year by a little notoriety when a major toy store and two shopping centers banished the bell ringers from their storefronts.

“A lot of people in Ventura have been extra generous; they wanted to express their opinions about these stores and their opinions about us,” said Ventura Salvation Army Capt. Michael Beauchamp. “It’s been a very good year.”

However, Beauchamp said his group is still short on toys as they prepared to distribute food and toy baskets to 400 needy families in Ventura.

County residents have been more generous with canned goods and other groceries to stock food pantries.

The discrepancy, according to some charity experts, may reflect public suspicions that cash contributions are devoured by administrative costs before they can reach the poor.

“The food is coming slowly but steadily and it’s wonderful,” said Pauline Saterbo, administrator of the Manna Conejo Valley Food Bank, which feeds about 3,000 people each month. “A lot of schools and churches and temples are putting together food drives.”

Although the pantry shelves are full, Saterbo said the cash drawer is running low. “We are in desperate need of cash donations, so we can buy chicken and ground beef and eggs and lunch meat,” she said. “We want to make sure everyone has a well-rounded meal.”

Though short on cash, FOOD Share appears on track to reaching its goal of 60,000 pounds of groceries by the end of the year, said Mangis, its director. “We are at 45,000 pounds now, but we think we are going to make it.”

The Oxnard-based regional food bank supplies groceries to 183 food pantries, churches and service agencies that dish out nearly 300,000 meals to 35,000 poor residents each month.

So far, the United Way of Ventura County is on track to meet its fund-raising goal of $5.35 million for the 1996-97 campaign. But it lowered its target this year, and donations remain dramatically lower than those of the late 1980s.

Furthermore, United Way volunteers and staff have had to redesign its strategy and work hard to court new business prospects given this decade’s retrenchment in the banking, petroleum and aerospace industries.

Unlike many other charities, United Way is not as reliant on seasonal contributions. Instead, it focuses on collecting a portion of workers’ wages year-round.

David Harris, a United Way vice president, said the 1990s have been a rough adjustment for the charity clearinghouse that funded 62 agencies last year.

“I don’t think people gave any less, its was just that there were fewer people to give,” Harris said. “Ventura County is still among the highest unemployment in California. We are doing well considering.”