Charities Need Help Year-Round

With tuition payments due, Christmas bills in hand and tax time only a few months away, January can be one of the cruelest months for charities. Their work goes on year-round, but donations tend to fall off sharply when the new year begins.

For some Orange County organizations, that is especially unfortunate. Serving People in Need, for instance, a Newport Beach-based agency that provides poor people with housing and counseling, said donations fell steeply last year. Also reporting a decline was FISH of the Harbor, which provides emergency rental assistance, food and utility payments.

Fortunately, other groups reported doing well last month, usually the biggest for nonprofit groups. The combination of a holiday season that puts people in a happier mood than usual and the Dec. 31 deadline for tax deductible contributions makes the month all-important for many agencies.

Toys for Tots, the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve program that collects toys for needy children, reported distributing more than 200,000 toys throughout the county, an increase of 40% over last year. United Way said contributions were up and Casa Youth Shelter in Los Alamitos said food and gifts were plentiful. Charitable giving in Orange County has ebbed and flowed over the years. A recession and the county’s bankruptcy understandably hurt residents’ economic confidence and made people draw the purse strings tighter.

But a special poll done last year as part of the Orange County Annual Survey, conducted by UC Irvine professor Mark Baldassare and research associate Cheryl Katz, found that the median contribution had increased by nearly 50% over the 1995 figure.

The increase was encouraging. So was the eagerness of many residents to volunteer their assistance to churches, synagogues and charitable organizations. People are as likely to be short of time as of money; spending a few hours helping to collect and package toys or paint or clean a church is a valuable gift. Although the holiday season is behind us, the needs of the county’s less fortunate should not fade from our minds.

The survey by Katz and Baldassare found uncertainty about just what services Orange County charities were providing. That might be surprising to most donors but it does indicate nonprofit groups have room for improvement in selling themselves to those who can help. Orange County still has many people who need assistance, be it counseling or food or housing. Those needs continue at a time when government assistance is declining, leaving charities to assume still more of the burden. To provide those services, nonprofit groups will need more help from the county’s residents.