Rising costs, falling donations hit nonprofits

By Bill Gallo, Special to the Rocky

Published July 18, 2008 at 7:37 p.m.
Updated July 19, 2008 at 12:23 a.m.

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Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

Lloyd Kreutzer, 65, heads back into his room after Katrina Twitty, a Meals on Wheels volunteer, delivers a meal to him in Denver. The rising cost of gas and food is squeezing the nonprofit and its volunteers.

For Judy Reader, the good minutes of each slender-thread day always come in late morning. That's when the Meals on Wheels volunteer stops by her Lakewood apartment with a tray of hot food and a morsel of small talk.

"It really nourishes my soul," she says. "I used to go two weeks sometimes without seeing another person."

After the daily visit, Reader settles back into bed with her 24-hour oxygen, her sudoku puzzles and her TV schedule - a solitary 62-year-old invalid suffering from serious heart disease, diabetes and an abdominal hernia the size of a watermelon.

Prognosis: "The doctors say I'm actively dying," Reader says.

Meanwhile, her lifeline could be cut. Most Americans are feeling the pain of $4-a-gallon gasoline and exploding food prices. But for the poor, the aged and the infirm, the current economic squeeze could spell the end of even minimal comfort.

'Hardest time I've ever seen'

The nation's nearly 20,000 senior nutrition programs, and nonprofit agencies that provide crucial services to patients with life-threatening diseases, are tightening their belts.

In the face of unprecedented operating costs, some are struggling for survival as volunteerism wanes and contributions falter.

"The handwriting is on the wall," says Nolan Knox, director of nutrition for the Colorado branch of Volunteers of America, whose Meals on Wheels program feeds 1,700 people a day in metro Denver. "We're just bracing for the big effects. I've been here 20 years, and this is the hardest time I've ever seen."

Gas costs twice as much as it did in 2006. Six months ago, Knox reports, a case of chicken thighs was $22.87, wholesale; now it's $30.94. A box of apples has risen from $30.91 to $41.78.

In the worst-case scenario, Meals on Wheels' hot-food deliveries, which depend on 900 volunteers driving their own vehicles, could be history.

For Reader, who cannot walk to her kitchen, much less stand and cook, that's a frightening prospect. "Without their help I don't know what I'd do," she says. "They are angels - all of them."

Knox says Meals on Wheels' volunteer drivers are steadfast. But he's lost almost 200 of them in the last year to normal attrition, "and it's been increasingly hard to find replacements. The trend in our volunteer base can be nothing but bad, and food costs are hurting us even more."

Project Angel Heart, whose volunteers deliver 700 frozen-meal packages each week to people in Denver and Colorado Springs with life-threatening diseases, is also feeling the pinch. "In hard times," executive director Erin Pulling said, "nonprofits get hit on both ends: We get a huge increase in client requests, but our donations decrease."

On June 1, Angel Heart eliminated fresh fruit, which it had included in deliveries since 1991, and reduced its weekly food package for individuals from six portions to five. In May, the agency's annual fund-raiser, Dining Out for Life, fell short of its $480,000 goal by $80,000, Pulling says, while the waiting list for services has tripled in the last two months, to 120 names.

"Still, we're hoping to increase our client numbers by 10 percent next year," she says. "There is just so much hardship out there."

'Food costs a huge problem'

The Colorado AIDS Project has not been stung directly by prices at the pump, because its 1,700 clients pick up their 8,000 monthly meals at the agency's north Denver food bank. It does provide 100 RTD bus tokens - worth 25 cents apiece - each month to 871 HIV/AIDS sufferers. But given gas price-induced fare increases, they don't stretch as far.

Meanwhile, "food costs are a huge problem," says spokesman Mike Lee. "Food is a big part of medicine for people with compromised immune systems, and we provide a wide variety of meals for clients with different dietary needs. The costs are increasing dramatically, and our funding sources are getting smaller."

In fact, AIDS Walk Colorado, the organization's mainstay fundraiser, has endured a 15 percent slide each year since 1997, when public AIDS awareness may have hit its peak. Lee says the agency, which operates on a $6 million budget from government grants and private donations, hopes to reach its $600,000 goal with this year's walk.

"But there are no guarantees," he says.

The agencies

DENVER MEALS ON WHEELS (Volunteers of America)

1,700 meals a day are delivered to the elderly and infirm.

* Location: 2660 Larimer St., Denver, CO 80205, and 8755 W. 14th Ave, Lakewood, CO 80215

* To volunteer: 303-294-0111 (Denver), or 303-237-7704 (Lakewood)

PROJECT ANGEL HEART

700frozen-meal packages are delivered each week to people with life-threatening diseases

* Location: 4190 Garfield St., Denver, CO 80216

* To volunteer: Amy or Megan: 303-830-0202

COLORADO AIDS PROJECT

1,700 clients with HIV/AIDS who are provided with medical case management, bus tokens, counseling, employment help and food bank service.

* Location: P.O. Box 48120, Denver, CO 90204

* To volunteer: 303-837-0166

• July 19, 2008

  11:07 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  fastnloose writes:

  Tax us more and watch donations drop even further.People go on the line of,I donated to the government,let them take care of the needy.This has been proven in other country's as well.

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