Without a $22,000 advance from the county last week, the local
food bank would not have had the money for this week’s payroll.
That was how dire things had become for Community Food Bank of San
Benito County before supervisors Tuesday approved an advance for
the organization
– along with two others in fairly desperate need, the San Benito
County Homeless Shelter and the Emmaus House for battered women and
children.
Without a $22,000 advance from the county last week, the local food bank would not have had the money for this week’s payroll.
That was how dire things had become for Community Food Bank of San Benito County before supervisors Tuesday approved an advance for the organization – along with two others in fairly desperate need, the San Benito County Homeless Shelter and the Emmaus House for battered women and children.
The emergency loans to the three organizations mostly reflect delays at the state and what food bank Executive Director Mary Anne Hughes surmised is a “contrived” effort to “keep cash there as long as possible.” For the food bank, though, the dip in available funds compounds an existing, increasingly larger roadblock of decreased donations.
“We’re down almost 40 percent from donations the prior year and 25 percent on fundraising,” said Hughes. “That’s a significant amount of money for us.”
It’s a challenge seen throughout the country in a down economy with fewer and fewer people having money to donate to such causes. But the state’s continued delay in handing down annual Community Development Block Grants – allocated to California from the federal government – had put the food bank and others in a particularly urgent pinch.
That grant for the year totals $110,000 for each of the three organizations. The allocations traditionally are handed down in monthly increments of $9,000. The food bank was approved for the funds – its third consecutive year with the allocations – in October of last year. Hughes did not expect the money immediately, but she budgeted it to arrive by January.
With an annual budget of $520,000 – already cut back this fiscal year from $600,000 – the block grant aid makes up more than 20 percent of the organization’s revenue stream.
The organizations’ receipt of advances from San Benito County should not complicate matters that much, meanwhile, because the county already serves as the last arm of allocations. The funds go from the federal government, to the state and to the county before reaching the applicants.
Look for the full story in the Free Lance on Tuesday.
