Charities Feel Sting of Falling Contributions : Fund raising: Program cuts, layoffs seen as an ailing economy puts a damper on donations.

Many of San Diego County’s professional solicitors for the poor are reeling from what they say has been one of the most dismal holiday fund-raising seasons ever.

The month of December, usually rich with philanthropic donations and the time when most local charities fill their coffers for the next six months and beyond, was unusually skimpy.

As a result, there are rising concerns that many traditional and longstanding year-round programs for the poor and homeless may be shaved or even cut entirely in the months to come.

Furthermore, pointing to ever-worsening signs of a lasting economic recession, at least one North County charity has begun to lay off staff members for the first time in its history. And others say similar measures could follow.

Even Father Joe Carroll, president of San Diego’s St. Vincent de Paul Center and nationally acclaimed hustler for the poor, acknowledges that times are particularly tough.

“This is the worst year I’ve ever had, period,” he said. “And this just isn’t another December song and dance for donations. For us, donations have always gone up, and this December, for the first time, we had a dip.

“This is the first time we’ve had to sit back and say, ‘Whoa! What’s going on here?’ What do we do now?”

This December, for example, the St. Vincent de Paul Center is $200,000 short of the $700,000 it raised last year. Services such as the organizations’s downtown 450-bed homeless center have not felt the crunch yet.

But they will, unless ways are devised to raise money quickly, Carroll warned.

“We don’t blame the public for the lack of donations,” he said. “We prefer to blame ourselves and the way we go about fund-raising. What we have to do is look at things like the mailers we sent out before the holidays.

“Were they any good? Maybe we didn’t include enough sob stories. Maybe we didn’t include enough success stories. Who knows?”

At the San Diego County offices of the Salvation Army, the annual fund-raising drive is more than a half-million dollars behind its $2.5-million goal.

“This is an important drive because it fuels us for the rest of the year,” said spokesman Russ Russell. “And, so far, it’s just not happening. But we still have hopes the money will come in by the end of January.”

If not, he said, the group will be forced to review staffing levels across the board to possibly “drop a case worker here or a cook there so we don’t have to decimate our programs.”

Russell said the group received many donations for the San Francisco earthquake last year, and that possibly tapped dry the San Diego donation well.

“We’re just down--and that means from our donators across the board, from the wealthy, the middle-class and the not-so-wealthy,” Russell said.

Charity fund-raisers speculate that the supposedly pending recession is surfacing in numerous forms. For one, they say, the usually generous banking and development industries also have had off years--cutting down on their donations.

“We usually get a few thousand dollars every year from Ernest Hahn, a major downtown developer, but so far this year we haven’t heard from him,” said Patricia Leflie, coordinator for the San Diego Food Bank’s holiday food drive.

So far, the group had collected $26,000--less than half of last year’s holiday total, she said. “Maybe the more stringent tax write-off laws are having an effect, but some companies are giving less. We just don’t know.”

A spokesman at Hahn’s downtown office said the developer often made personal donations exclusive of that of his firm’s, adding that she could not comment further.

The Persian Gulf crisis also has had its effect, Carroll said. With many families losing one wage-earner to a possible war, spouses are faced with using any extra cash for baby-sitters and other costs.

Some military families that usually contribute generously during the holidays are forced to apply for the help of the charities they have in the past supported, some charities said.

“You’ve got 30,000 families without one of their wage earners,” Carroll said. “At $5 a head--the usual donation they might make--that’s $150,000. It adds up very quickly.”

The Salvation Army, which offers such varied services as senior nutrition programs, residential care homes for pregnant teens, mens’ shelters, drug and alcohol programs, and infant and day-care facilities are concerned that those programs could be in jeopardy.

“It’s really scary for us,” Russell said. “What are we going to do if we don’t reach our funding goal? Last year, we helped a quarter-million people in San Diego County--one-tenth of the entire population.

“But a recession will bring more requests for everything from food baskets to long-term care. We’re facing a real dilemma here. We might not just have to cut our holiday programs next year but other programs throughout the year.

“I mean, a toy for a child is nice at Christmas. But what about that battered and abused mother? We just can’t tell her, ‘I’m so sorry, but we can’t help you. We’re out of cash,’ ” Russell said.

Gene Louden, a spokesman for the United Way in San Diego, said the countywide referral line for local charity groups it operates was busier than ever this season.

“We network about 30 programs and keep in touch with each other for referrals of donors and recipients,” he said. “And anyone who had a listing had it filled with needy families by the second week of December. It was amazing. The need was really out there.”

Meanwhile, he added, although the group will meet its $30-million annual fund-raising goal, most of the donations were at-the-office pledges that were made before the recession set in.

“It is not a good year to be in the charity business,” Louden said.

Sister RayMonda DuVall, executive director of Catholic Charities in San Diego, said donations to most of the group’s 27 charity programs were down in 1990 from the previous year’s fund-raising totals--some by half or more.

“It feels like 1980 again,” she said. “That was when we were struggling through another recession, and San Diego and the nation were then just discovering the homeless and grappling with what to do about them.

“In 1980, we weren’t aware of the numbers. Now we are, and we’re overwhelmed by them. And the recession has come again. It’s just a feeling of deja vu. People are holding onto their money. They’re just afraid they’re going to need it for themselves.”

In the North County, the charity picture isn’t any better.

“I’ve never experienced this kind of situation in all the years I’ve been doing this,” said Suzanne Stewart Pohlman, executive director of the North County Interfaith Council, which operates several shelters and job development programs throughout the inland North County.

“These are terrible times, and we’ve seen that in a lot of disgusting ways,” she said.

The recession, she said, has driven their calls for services up by 165%--including many blue-collar workers and tradesmen who had never before sought out the help of charities. At the same time, donations are down.

“Most of the funding comes from private sources, and we started getting letters from the businesses and companies we depend upon, saying they too were feeling the pinch--so much so that they had to limit or curtail entirely their donation this year,” Stewart Pohlman said.

Recent drives for canned goods donations were less successful than ever, she said.

“Three elementary schools who collected for us decided to keep the canned goods they collected for their own students, for the needy people they knew.”

Like others, Stewart Pohlman has had to make some tough choices--even within her own staff.

“We’ve had to lay off staff,” she said. “And that’s a real first for us. We’ve never had to do it before. And I hope we don’t have to do it again.”

Father Joe Carroll said the war over charity donations will not be won until the public is convinced that all is not well in charity land.

“I think we at St. Vincent de Paul have the image among the public that we have all we need. And we usually don’t,” he said. “Because we have Joan Kroc’s name on our building, people think she’s paying our way.

“We say, ‘Well, yeah, she built the building. But we still have to worry about the day-to-day business of raising money for the poor.’ ”