BENTONVILLE, Ark., April 2, 2009, Associated Press — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its charitable foundations gave $423 million in cash and in-kind gifts for the company's 2009 fiscal year, a 25 percent increase from a year ago.
Salvation Army
Grizzard Communications Group recently held a conference, Winning Strategies in Challenging Times, focusing on effective and efficient ways of communicating to donors during difficult economic times. The conference was held February 24th – 26th and featured a live panel discussion presented in the online virtual world of Second Life. Major George Hood, National Community Relations Secretary of The Salvation Army, along with other IT communications associates from Alexandria, VA and Reston, PA participated in a panel discussion as animated “Avatars.”
On Feb. 25, FundRaising Success hosted the webinar, “Integrated Direct Mail 101: An hour with Roger Craver.” Joining Roger, a fundraising guru and founder of Craver, Mathews, Smith & Co., for this lively conversation was his colleague Ryann Miller, managing director at the newly formed consultancy, DonorTrends.
Often the last resort for those in need, the Salvation Army in some cities is experiencing a budget crunch of its own despite a sharp increase in donations.
Donations to The Salvation Army's iconic red kettles set a new national record of $130 million in 2008, surpassing the previous record of $118 million set in 2007. The $130 million raised represents a 10 percent growth in donations year-over-year — the largest one-year jump since 1997.
The scenes here are now familiar in places deeply bruised by the recession: The Salvation Army gets so many calls from people desperate for help with overdue utility bills that, one morning, its phone system crashed. The Family Service Center of South Carolina is deluged with clients seeking free counseling for delinquent mortgages. And the shelves at the Life Force food pantry run out of rice, canned stew meat and black-eyed peas in less than an hour.
When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.
Grizzard Communications Group today announced it will serve as Union Rescue Mission of Los Angeles’ (URM) full-service agency. As the agency of record, Grizzard will be leading the organization’s direct marketing efforts and will work with the URM to perform a comprehensive donor data analysis and develop a more integrated approach to their current fundraising program.
Faith-based charities, which provide an enormous array of private social services to the nation's sick, elderly and poor, are facing unprecedented cutbacks from one of their biggest funders: the government.
Once a crutch for the most needy, food pantries have responded to the deepening recession by opening their doors to what Rosemary Gilmartin, who runs the Interfaith Food Pantry here, described as “the next layer of people” — a rapidly expanding roster of child-care workers, nurse’s aides, real estate agents and secretaries facing a financial crisis for the first time.