The Salvation Army units in the Aurora area came up short during the annual Red Kettle campaign over the holiday season, with some local group leaders saying a lack of bell ringers and changing methods of giving made it harder to reach donation goals.
The collection officially ended Dec. 23.
Steve Hawkins, resource development director for the Tri-City Salvation Army which covers the Batavia, Geneva and St. Charles area, said the group collected about $170,000 during the recent drive, which was $25,000 less than the goal that was set for 2023.
This marks the second year the Salvation Army unit has not met its donation goal for the Red Kettle campaign.
“We adjusted our goal from 2021 of $200,000 down to $195,000 (in 2022) which we just missed making last year,” Hawkins said.
Before the collection began this past holiday season, Hawkins said that goals had been adjusted a bit downward again “despite having more affluent communities in our service area than some.”
Hawkins said that donations to the Salvation Army during the recently completed campaign were down across the entire Chicago area.
“We got reports from every single corps in northern Illinois and Chicago, and every one was short,” Hawkins said. “The biggest reason for the shortfall for us was a lack of volunteers to man the kettles. I feel if we had more help we would have reached our goal. We rarely had more than 50% of our kettles manned at any one time.”
As a result of the donation shortage, Hawkins said the Tri-City Salvation Army is “going to have to be very careful with where the money goes, mainly the food pantry.”
“We’ll have to rely more on food drives rather than going out and buying (items) from the stores,” he said. “People donate food, they don’t always donate laundry detergent or soap or toothpaste and that sort of thing, so we often have to go out and buy that. We might not be able to supplement some of the other things.”
The Aurora Salvation Army reported similar donation results, missing its $200,000 goal for the Red Kettle campaign by more than $50,000, although the drive went better than it did in 2022, officials said.
With about nine collection days to go before Christmas, officials reported that $75,646 had been collected, but by Christmas that number had nearly doubled to $145,730, eclipsing last year’s total of approximately $125,000 donated during the campaign.
Bernice Mascorro, social services coordinator for the Aurora Salvation Army, said the unit was actually able “to hire more bell ringers this year as opposed to last.”
“We attribute the increase to having more personnel and we did have a lot of volunteers that took over some of the Saturdays – the whole day,” Mascorro said. “That has something to do with us taking in more money than last year.”
Hawkins said the calendar didn’t help out the Salvation Army during the recent drive.
“We’re a religious organization and Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday this past year so that did cost us a little as no one worked,” he said of the impact of not having a collection on Dec. 24. “It might have only been a 1% or 2% increase, but it would have helped.”
Hawkins said “it was too soon to tell” what the full impact of not reaching the donation goal will have on the group’s 2024 budget.
He said “the Salvation Army nationally is trying to emphasize more digital giving” as it moves into the future.
“A lot of people don’t carry cash anymore and that’s always a problem,” he said. “We do put QR codes on our kettles and try to encourage people to scan the kettle and give that way. I think we just have to get people used to that and I think it’s going to take a couple years even though we rolled it out two years ago. We see it growing every year but it’s going to take time.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
