Charitable donations significantly decrease in January, but there is still a big need
Around the holidays during the “season of giving,” donations to nonprofits skyrocket. However, charitable donations go down significantly in January. Nonprofits like the Capital Area Food Bank and Central Union Mission said given the year, they are hoping people will continue to be generous and help their community overcome the impacts of the pandemic.
Radha Muthiah, the CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank said donations, “do tend to reduce usually in the first few months of the new year, but this, as many people now know I think with the pandemic and the resulting economic downturn, is much more of a marathon rather a sprint. We certainly see levels of food insecurity remaining quite high, well into 2021 and potentially in early 22 as well.
“As far as contributions are concerned our donors are pretty faithful with giving throughout the year, but like most charities we see a surge from October 1st through the end of December period, we call it generosity season, and I think it’s mostly because folks are inspired by the holidays and they’re also thinking about tax implications. They are trying to get their charitable donations out before the end of the year,” Joseph Mettimano, the President and CEO of Central Union Mission said. “Like most charities, we do tend to see a little bit of a drop off in the early months of the new year, so January through maybe April we typically see some softening there and that’s a real challenge for us because of homelessness and poverty and year-round problems.”
This year the need has been huge, and these nonprofits have stepped up to help fill it.
“We’ve gone from about 400,000 food-insecure individuals in our area to 600,000 food insecure individuals and many of those individuals were first and hardest hit, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic and so many of them are probably going to take some time to recover. They work in industries that were in hospitality, in restaurants, in retail, and those are likely to be the last to recover,” Muthiah said.
Muthiah said the Capital Area Food Bank spent $20.5 million worth of purchases of food this year, which means they have bought six times more than in the past.
“As we look back now, we’ve provided enough food to provide the equivalent of one million meals a week this past year, so we distributed enough food for 52 million meals in 2020 and we couldn’t have done that on our own," she said.
Mettimano said at the Central Union Mission’s Family Ministry Center, they’ve seen a 50 percent increase in people coming for food assistance.
“The vast majority of those new folks are people who lost their job due to the COVID pandemic,” he said. “We don’t think it’s over yet, we don’t believe that the full negative impact of COVID has completely hit the economy yet in the D.C. area. We expect to see more people losing their jobs and eventually unless folks are provided with a safety net.”
Both the Capital Area Food Bank and the Central Union Mission expect to be distributing just about the same amount of food this coming year because the need will still be there.
“It takes a while for those who are our clients to be able to regain their footing, to be able to regain those paychecks, and to be able to be a little bit more self-sufficient,” Muthiah said. “We’re going to see many food insecure individuals hundreds of thousands right into 21 and 22, so we urge our community to continue the spirit of generosity that we’ve seen from them certainly this month and the last couple of months, but certainly what we’ve seen all year.”
You can donate to the Capital Area Food Bank, here.
You can donate to Central Union Mission, here.
Whether you need food, assistance with housing, transportation, or help with another issue you may be facing, there are numerous community organizations that can help. You can find a local group, here.
