{"id":26,"date":"2009-09-29T19:41:02","date_gmt":"2009-09-29T19:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/09\/charities-and-the-recession-weve-never-seen-anything-like-this.html"},"modified":"2009-09-29T19:41:02","modified_gmt":"2009-09-29T19:41:02","slug":"charities-and-the-recession-weve-never-seen-anything-like-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/09\/charities-and-the-recession-weve-never-seen-anything-like-this.html","title":{"rendered":"Charities and the recession: “We’ve never seen anything like this”"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you want to know how the recession is hitting some charities, this item<\/a> from the AP lays it out: <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

For many social-service charities across America, the recession has delivered a staggering one-two punch. Sharp drops in donations and investment income have been coupled by soaring demand for their services.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The casualties so far include countless needy clients losing assistance and thousands of nonprofit workers who’ve been laid off. Some local charities have shut down; even many of the largest nationwide operations have made painful cutbacks in staff, spending and programs.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Nonprofits are generally at the whim of the economy … but we’ve never seen anything like this,” says the Rev. Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA. “Increasing numbers of our own volunteers and employees have been forced to become clients of our services.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The cutbacks are forcing charities to rethink how they operate and make changes that are likely to outlive the recession. Nonprofits, like regular businesses, are learning to do more with less. Those that survive will emerge more efficient.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“It gives you a mindset to be more creative,” American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown says. “We’re thinking even better and more innovatively than we were 10 months ago.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Numbers help illustrate the magnitude of the challenges.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Giving to social-service charities fell by 12.7 percent in 2008, according to the Giving USA Foundation, and there’s been little evidence of a resurgence so far this year. Simultaneously, many state and local governments are cutting back on funding for nonprofits or delaying payments as they struggle to assemble their budgets.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That double hit to charities’ revenue comes at a time when the national poverty rate has reached an 11-year high of 13.2 percent.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nonprofit officials hope giving levels will rise once the recession ends, but for now many are thinking hard about how to use their dwindling resources.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“We can’t be in recession — there are too many people relying on us,” Brown says.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s more at the AP link<\/a>. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to know how the recession is hitting some charities, this item from the AP lays it out:  For many social-service charities across America, the recession has delivered a staggering one-two punch. Sharp drops in donations and investment income have been coupled by soaring demand for their services. The casualties so far include…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people-in-the-pews","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nCharities and the recession: "We've never seen anything like this" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/09\/charities-and-the-recession-weve-never-seen-anything-like-this.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Charities and the recession: "We've never seen anything like this" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you want to know how the recession is hitting some charities, this item from the AP lays it out:  For many social-service charities across America, the recession has delivered a staggering one-two punch. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}