Coping with Hard Times: Area not-for-profits struggle to do more with less

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John P. Cleary

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May 25, 2009

Anonymous The Herald Bulletin Mon May 25, 2009, 02:27 AM EDT

By Aaron Vogel

For The Herald Bulletin

ANDERSON — Every year, thousands of Madison County residents go to not-for-profit organizations for assistance.

And as the number of people who need help grows, budgets are dwindling — so local agencies are trying to find ways to keep up with the needs of the community.

The Society of St. Vincent DePaul, a Catholic charity that helps people pay their utility bills, found that funds allocated for the program went quickly this winter.

“Because of the number of people who requested help in February, we had to lower the amount of assistance we were giving,” said Margaret Dodd, a volunteer with St. Vincent DePaul.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” explained Sally DeVoe, executive director of the Madison County Community Foundation, an agency that provides grants and scholarships to organizations and people in the area.

“All the needs the not-for-profits face are magnified in these times. Agencies are forced to do more with less because the funders are also caught up in the down economy.”

Even long-established organizations are having trouble. For example, the Wilson Boys and Girls Club facility in Anderson has been closed since November because it didn’t have the money to keep the doors open.

Similarly, the United Way of Madison County is in its seventh straight year of declining donations. Since 2002, the United Way has seen its annual campaign contributions fall from $2.4 million to $925,000.

Nancy Vaughan, president of the organization, said the shrinking budget hasn’t come as a surprise.

“We saw this coming a long time ago,” she said. “We knew our economic base was too dependent on the automobile-manufacturing business. We also knew it was heading out of here at some point, so we did some significant strategic planning that put us in a better position.”

To that end, the United Way has implemented a community-focused agenda in order to determine the most important needs of people in the community. Vaughan said the new focus also positions the organization to seek funding outside of the annual campaign and to “leverage assets” among existing partner agencies.

“This idea pulls in all the data and lets us know the greatest needs in the community [so that we know how to] have the greatest impact on the community as a whole,” she said.

Based on this model, the United Way focuses on education, income and health.

Other organizations have followed the lead of the United Way and have started restructuring their operations. According to DeVoe, prioritizing for basic needs and collaboration between agencies have become the keys.

“We have to prioritize the grant writing more than ever before,” she said.

Additionally, agencies are working together to form a collaborative system to pull all of the community’s resources together.

“We are beginning to see that no one organization can do this alone,” Vaughan said. “We need more communication between agencies, and we all need to work as partners.”

To learn more about the Madison County Community Foundation and the United Way of Madison County, visit:

http://www.madisonccf.org

http://www.unitedwaymadisonco.org

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