While optimism abounds for 2021, many of the challenges of 2020 are continuing into the New Year. And so does our community’s response.
“Philanthropy is more important than ever as we navigate this pandemic,” said Mica Short, Vice President of Development for the Paso del Norte Community Foundation. “Nonprofit organizations have stretched resources to serve more people in need while working on tighter budgets due to canceled events and smaller staffs due to cuts to operating budgets.”
While nonprofits of all stripes have been impacted, food insecurity quickly rocketed to the top of the list among emergent needs for El Pasoans.
“Before the pandemic, we were minding our own business and serving 2,700 families a month with supplemental food and occasionally emergency food,” said Warren Goodell, executive director of Kelly Center for Hunger Relief. “Now we’re doing 18,000 distributions a month.”
Goodell, who has for two years lead the center which provides direct relief as well as financial literacy programming for its clients, said the tidal wave of need that crashed on shore with the pandemic has washed to virtually every corner of their operation.
“It’s been little things,” he explained. “Our trash collection went from 170 bucks a month to 1,000 bucks a month. All that miscellaneous stuff you need to keep your operations going adds up.”
It’s also been big things: “We never would have even thought about buying electric pallet movers. It seemed extravagant, but this year it’s necessary,” he said.
While Goodell said it’s important to address immediate needs like paying unexpected bills and making rapid response investments, he’s also focused on using the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic to augment the center’s long term resilience and sustainability.
In 2020, the Sundt Foundation made a $4,000 grant contribution to help the center do just that.
“The donation from the Sundt Foundation is helping us participate in a community-wide database so we get a much better feel for whose coming and how often,” he said.
The database will help Kelly and other hunger relief organizations more nimbly respond to changing needs of those they serve for years to come.
“Much of what we do at Sundt is about creating infrastructure of concrete and steel,” said Joseph Riccillo of Sundt’s El Paso office. “In this case, we’re investing in the infrastructure of our community to emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever.”
Like all of us, Kelly is looking beyond COVID-19, but Goodell notes that the long-awaited vaccine won’t immediately inoculate the community to the negative impacts of the pandemic.
“If the virus went away tomorrow, the economic impact of this past year will continue on for a long time,” he said.
So organizations like his are continuing to build a more robust network to comprehensively address their service areas. While he’s keeping an eye on the future, he’s hopeful El Pasoans will remember to continue their generosity; he believes donations to organizations like his can help light a spark of philanthropy which is now more important than ever.
“No donation is too small. It goes way beyond the value of the dollar,” he said. “Everybody who contributes can encourage someone else to contribute in some way.”
