Charities Feeling Pinch of Low Donations : Philanthropy: Nonprofit groups say giving is up in recent months but doesn’t match the generosity seen before the recession.

Still reeling from recession and reluctant to whip out checkbooks, Ventura County residents are continuing their slow pace of charitable giving this year, representatives of several philanthropic organizations said.

With the holiday season at hand, donations of cash, food and clothing have picked up from earlier months, charities say. But, overall, giving lags far behind the generous contributions seen in the late 1980s, said Deborah Giles, a spokeswoman for the United Way of Ventura County.

And it has been a struggle persuading people to reopen their wallets, Giles and other charity leaders say.

Donations are down about 10% at the Ventura County Rescue Mission in Oxnard, budget Manager Wayne Hopkins said. It is hard to say why, Hopkins said. But many givers seem concerned about how their gifts are being spent.

“They want to know our administrative costs and they want to know where their money is going,” he said.

Petroleum, aerospace and banking are among the industries hardest hit by the recession of the early 1990s, and continuing corporate mergers and layoffs are taking their toll, Giles said. Contributions from those key sectors are down at least 10%, she said.

Unocal has moved out of the area, she noted. And the closure earlier this year of Bank of A. Levy means that the United Way will no longer receive the bank’s $70,000 annual corporate gift, Giles said.

“That hurts,” she said. “There hasn’t been that much interest [from those industries] because everyone is worried about keeping their job.”

The good news, however, is that donations appear to have stabilized instead of continuing to drop, leaders of nonprofit groups say. Pledges to United Way rose in the 1994-95 drive, reversing a five-year decline, Giles said.

And county residents in general remain committed to a core of social service agencies that provide free food, clothing, shelter, psychological counseling and rehabilitation services for the area’s neediest citizens.

At the Manna Food Bank in Thousand Oaks, for instance, Director Pauline Saterbo said she was concerned as Thanksgiving drew near and many of the program’s shelves remained bare.

But when an employee at Thousand Oaks City Hall learned of the food bank’s plight, he issued an E-mail appeal for turkeys, cranberries and other fixings, Saterbo said. City employees responded with gusto, she said.

“The turkeys are coming in by the bushel,” Saterbo said last week. “We’ve had a wonderful response.”

Manna serves about 3,500 Conejo Valley residents a month, Saterbo said. And the need seems to be growing, she said.

“It goes out as fast as it comes in.”

The Ventura County chapter of the American Red Cross also gets a good response whenever it appeals to residents for extra dollars, said spokesman Richard Rink.

In the past four months, Red Cross officials have helped 34 families who were victims of fire, using about half of their annual $60,000 disaster relief budget, Rink said.

With eight months to go in this year’s budget, the Red Cross will need more cash to keep up with demand, said Brian Bolton, the chapter’s executive director. The agency has put out an appeal for added funds and expects to see the community respond generously, Bolton said.

To make up for the loss of corporate and individual giving, nonprofit groups have become smarter about finding new sources of funding. The Ventura County Rescue Mission, which used to rely solely on direct-mail appeals, recently jumped on the thrift-store bandwagon, Hopkins said.

Proceeds from its two stores in Ventura and Oxnard now make up half of the budget, he said.

United Way planners, looking toward a goal of eventually raising $6 million in Ventura County each year, have begun targeting pledge drives at small companies instead of huge corporations, Giles said.

“With the mergers and the downsizings of the past few years, there just aren’t as many large companies to go hit,” she said. “So we have had to change our focus to the 50- and 25-employee companies as well.”

Manna Food Bank recently held its first fund-raiser, a silent auction and dinner that raised $14,000, Saterbo said. With other sources drying up, the food bank may need to hold one every year, she said.

“Without cash donations, we would be unable to buy Depends, diapers, chicken, ground beef, margarine, eggs,” Saterbo said. “These are all things that people really need.”

Despite the leaner times, some companies have managed to boost charitable contributions.

Buenaventura Medical Clinic--with eight offices in Oxnard, Ventura and Camarillo--has raised $20,000 for the United Way this year, said clinic coordinator Maggie Subic. That is triple the amount pledged in 1994-95 and comes at a time when the 350-employee clinic is being acquired by UniHealth, a Los Angeles-based health care provider, Subic said.

“The employees have all been told that nothing will change,” she said. “But [job security] is always on the back of people’s minds because they all know a lot of people who have been laid off.”

The company also offered incentives to turn in pledge cards, including favored parking spaces, raffles and dress-down days, Subic said. And it set a pledge standard of $3 per two-week pay period, or about $75 a year, she said.

“I spend $3 on one lunch,” Subic said. “I can give up one lunch a week and that certainly won’t affect me in any way.”