The Nonprofit Squeeze

At the Greater Twin Cities United Way in St. Paul, Minn., Sue Moyer manages 44,000 volunteers a year with the help of one full-time and one part-time employee. Losing either employee would be devastating, she says. So far, there is no indication of cuts to come at her group, which just closed out its 2008 fundraiser about even with the previous year's. But Randi Yoder, the organization's senior vice president of donor relations, is bracing for a funding shortfall in 2009 even as she anticipates that volunteer numbers will rise by as much as a third. That's a tough combo. Still, says Yoder, "if someone tells us they don't have money but they have time, we'll find a way to plug them in."