Nonprofit Blues

Sunlight spills through the front door of Hope Animal Shelter, and
across a pair of cats wrestling among a scattering of toys. One of
them, a tabby named Calvin, suddenly leaps atop a carpeted cat stand
and pivots like a dancer, while jet-black Carly nearly knocks over his
food dish.

Just then, a volunteer grabs the dish and pushes it to one side,
smiling slightly before moving off to clean another pen at this cheery
midtown shelter. Pet food doesn’t come cheap these days. And at
Tucson’s only no-kill sanctuary for dogs and cats, paying to care for
some 80 animals is a constant challenge in the best of times. But in
today’s tough economy, survival for crucial charities such as Hope is a
daily balancing act.

“The donations that we’re getting in are definitely less than we’ve
gotten in the past,” says Susan Scherl, Hope’s executive director.

“We don’t get those big $500 or $1,000 checks that we were getting.
Now for the most part, the checks are in the $25 range.”

Scherl founded Hope in 2007, following stints at the Humane Society
of Southern Arizona and other shelters. After growing dismayed at
seeing animals routinely euthanized, she created this refuge where no
animal is killed for lack of space or money. But such compassion does
not come cheap: Hope’s monthly rent and utilities top $3,000. Add
another $5,000 for medical expenses. All said, keeping her busy shelter
alive costs about $12,000 a month.

To boost its bottom line, this weekend Hope will host its annual
“Barkin’ Ball” fundraiser at St. Philip’s Plaza. The event has now
become a make-or-break affair, says Scherl. “For example, I have a
$2,500 bill over at Southern Arizona Veterinary (Specialty and
Emergency) Center, for a cat that developed respiratory problems and
had to go on oxygen. If there was a nice amount of money set aside for
things like that, it would be great. But that’s what we’re struggling
with now.”

Hope isn’t alone, says Steve Alley, president of the Community
Foundation for Southern Arizona. “The challenging thing is that this
has come in waves. You had the stock market stuff in the fall of last
year, and then there are the unemployment numbers. Just about every
part of the economy is hurting, and so it’s caused a real challenge for
a number of nonprofits. No matter how you’re funded, whether by private
donors or by government sources, in all cases, everything I’ve heard is
that it’s down.”

Just how down is it? According to the GivingUSA Foundation and other
groups, charitable donations across the country dropped by 2 percent
last year, to $307.7 billion. Donations by individuals fell 2.7 percent
to $229 billion, and corporate philanthropy dropped by nearly 5
percent.

Of that, environmental and animal welfare groups such as Scherl’s
Hope shelter received $6.6 billion, compared to $106.9 billion for
religious organizations, 40.9 percent for education and $21.6 for
health-related organizations such as community clinics.

Those decreases carry broader societal implications as well.
Consider that there are roughly 1.4 million federally registered
nonprofits in the United States—a 27 percent increase over the
last decade. They now account for about 5 percent of the gross domestic
product, and 8 percent of salaries and wages paid in this country. At
the same time, the nonprofit sector provides critical services ranging
from mental health and food banks to care for abandoned
animals—all of which are exacerbated by a tough economy.

That reality has prompted much soul-searching, says Alley.
“Certainly, this time period has forced every nonprofit to think about
its business model—where it gets funding, how it survives.”
Small, meagerly funded arts organizations are particularly compelled to
re-evaluate their goals, if not their identities, he says. “It puts
even more pressure on those folks to think creatively, not only about
how they provide their service, but what the structure of that might
look like. We’re certainly hearing a lot more about things like mergers
and collaborations than we did before.”

Among those pondering big changes is Voices, a community-based
organization providing a forum for youths to compile personal stories
and collaborate on arts-in-education projects. Stephanie Balzer is
Voices’ executive director. She says the recent loss of longtime
funding sources has prompted the 10-year-old group, with a $324,000
annual budget, to rehash its options. “One was to shrink back and
recoil and handle this stress, which seems negative and out of our
control. Another was to look at this issue and address it head-on, to
buckle down and get creative and say, ‘What kind of agency do we want
to be?'”

Recently, Balzer turned to serious discussions with ShareMore
Children’s Productions, a local group that uses performing arts and
literature to educate children. Instead of competing for donors, went
the thinking, they could simply combine their forces. “I knew that they
had very strong programs and that we were very like-minded,” Balzar
says. “So we began a conversation about what we could do together,
because there is strength in numbers. And it wound up becoming merger
talks. We’re both looking to change youths’ lives, so why not do that
together?”

Over the past year, there had been similar rumors that Susan
Scherl’s Hope Animal Shelter might merge with another local animal
sanctuary. But that talk has since subsided. Instead, Scherl continues
to remain tenuously afloat on her own. Still, she’s determined to
weather this storm and keep Hope’s doors wide-open, especially as more
and more animals are being abandoned by financially strapped
families.

The alternative, she says, is too heartbreaking to consider. “I just
got an e-mail from a woman who found a blind dog back in July that was
living outside her mother’s house. While her mother was alive, the
caregivers were taking care of it. Now the dog is by itself, with
nobody taking care of it except to bring it food.

“So we have a blind dog living alone in a backyard. What am I
supposed to say to that? How can I say no?”

This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.