Economy Stretches Charitable Groups for Holidays

By Odette Yousef

Atlanta, GA – Thanksgiving normally kicks off the giving season, when charitable organizations pull in the donations they need to get through the year.

But with the recent economic downturn, Atlanta-area non-profits are struggling to keep up with an overload of needy families. Donations haven't kept up.

WABE's Odette Yousef found that at least one organization is having to pull out of its own operating budget to fulfill its holiday mission.

Juanita Hudson of Southeast Atlanta waited on a bitterly cold morning for 3 hours, to get into Hosea Feed the Hungry. Some had waited close to six.

HUDSON: Had to stay out there and keep on not thinking about it. You know, the cold. And I had my gloves and coats and sweaters and boots and

Hudson, a certified nurse's assistant, has been unemployed, looking for a job for a year. She's one of 40 crammed into this small room. Babies, elderly, disabled people sit barely arm's length away from each other. It's a sight that Elisabeth Omilami has seen only once before:

OMILAMI: Katrina, after we had served the Katrina. And I keep referring to that, because well it feels like Katrina now, it feels like there's an overload of people coming here.

Omilami runs the organization that her father, Hosea Williams, founded 37 years ago.

On this day, feeding these people isn't her only worry. She's stressed out about the massive annual Thanksgiving meal they'll serve at Turner Field on Thursday.

OMILAMI: Well, we have to go out and buy everything, because we didn't get the donations. so my husband had to place an order yesterday for things like takeout plates, cutlery sets, large aluminum pans, shrink wrap, that we normally would have had donated, say this time last year, that we didn't get this year.

Food, too, has been a challenge. Normally, they'd dish out 1000 turkeys, 800 hams, vegetables and more for the meal.

They have the turkeys, half donated by the rapper T.I. But there aren't any hams, so this year they'll go without.

Omilami says they've spent $21,000 out of their own operating budget for the meal, and doesn't know how to make it up:

OMILAMI: I don't understand truly what is happening. Because we certainly have friends in the food industry, people love what we do. So there must be another reason that the in-kind donations have not come in. The only thing I can attribute it to is the economy because this has never happened to me before.

BOLLING: I'm literally getting calls this year, from people who have donated in the past, who have been regular donors, often call, a little embarrassed, to say bill I can't make a donation, in fact, can you help me, I lost my job.

That's Bill Bolling, who runs the Atlanta Community Food Bank. His organization is feeling the same squeeze as Hosea Feed the Hungry. Bolling also compares it to the post-Katrina influx, but says there are some key differences:

BOLLING: Forty percent of the people coming in have a job, doing the best they can. oftentimes without health insurance, oftentimes having mortgage problems. So that's a significant change in profile of who we've served

Back at Hosea Feed the Hungry, Elisabeth Omilami is considering her organization's future. The best business decision, she says, may be to turn people away.

Odette Yousef, WABE News.

For more information, please visit Hosea Feed the Hungry and The Atlanta Community Food Bank online.