Salvation Army falls short of goal for kettle campaign, will likely face budget cuts

The Cape Girardeau Salvation Army likely will face budget cuts after its most recent holiday-kettle season brought in $50,000 less than expected.

Capt. Ronnie Amick, who leads the Cape Girardeau office, said even though the organization collected about $250,000, the result is disappointing.

“Every Salvation Army has years where they don’t hit their goal, but this is $50,000,” he said. “This is significant.”

Richard Spicer rings the red kettle bell for the Salvation Army on Dec. 21 outside West Park Mall in Cape Girardeau.LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

The organization hired more than 20 paid bell-ringers and had 426 hours of volunteer kettle service at 17 locations during kettle season, which ended Dec. 30.

While the Salvation Army is grateful for volunteer help, which was enough to cover about 50 shifts, Amick said most of those shifts were on low-traffic days such as Mondays and Wednesdays and therefore weren’t as lucrative.

Amick also said it was more difficult to keep bell-ringers than in previous years.

“This is the second time in five years the goal hasn’t been met, but not by this much,” he said.

Two years ago, the local Salvation Army chapter’s goal of $327,000 was met, but it has struggled since.

The poor result during the recent holiday season is compounded by the fact the Salvation Army’s other donations dropped by nearly half last year.

Amick declined to say how much the organization’s budget is left with after those local sources of revenue were cut.

“I’m more worried about the next fiscal year coming up, due to the amount of clients we’ve had coming to us over the past 18 months,” Amick said.

The need for Salvation Army services is growing, he said.

“It’s just people needing a little extra push,” he said. “Whether that’s utility assistance or an extra box of food for the month, rent assistance, you name it.”

The organization has no choice but to look for ways to shrink its budget, Amick said.

“Our first step is to go through to see if there’s any unnecessary things in the budget, but there’s not usually any things like that,” he said. “Then we’ll have to move on and look at ways to shrink programs without dramatically affecting them.”

At this point, it’s too early to tell specifically where the cuts may happen, he said.

“We never want to have to cut our programs, because the community deserves our best product, and we can only be at our best when our programs are in full force,” he said in a news release. “The hardest thing we have to do is to tell people we don’t have the funds.”

Amick encouraged residents to consider donating to the Salvation Army.

“People can give, and their gifts will be used throughout the year to cover that gap,” he said.

tgraef@semissourian.com

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