SPOKANE, Wash. — It's Billy's weekly trip to the store, where he's picking up the essentials Wednesday.
"I got some hamburger, some beans, my wife being pregnant she likes her little snacks with the meat and cheese," he said, rummaging through his cart. "She has her little crazy cravings."
Billy shops the shelves stocked by Salvation Army volunteers at the nonprofit's food pantry.
"I'm kind of the chef of the house," he smiled.
Providing for his soon-to-be family of six, who has lived for the last month in the Salvation Army's 90-day shelter. Otherwise, he doesn't know where he'd get those groceries or even where they'd live. Billy says problems making rent, and some personal issues like the loss of his mother, left them without a place to go.
"It'd be real, real hectic. Real bad," he said.
The Salvation Army's food pantry, shelters, and other year-round services depend heavily on the holiday Red Kettle campaign.
This year, says Captain David Cain, donations fell a bit short.
"We experienced a bit of a dip," Cain said. "We saw about a 10% decrease in our funds this year, which is a significant amount because our goal was to reach the $400,000 mark."
According to the most recent report from philanthropic researcher Giving USA, charitable giving nationwide fell in 2022 after a surge in giving during the pandemic. Adjusting for inflation, total giving declined around 10.5%, with inflation and economic uncertainty listed as contributing factors.
The decrease is being felt across nonprofits in the Spokane region.
The shelves at 2nd Harvest are pretty bare, which Eric Williams says is not how things looked just a couple years ago.
"Generosity, the number of people who are donating has stayed roughly the same but donations themselves have gone down some, roughly the same amount as inflation," Williams said.
An average donation was $150 a year ago. Now, he says, those are down around $5-6 per donation.
Williams says luckily for 2nd Harvest, a KREM 2 partner for Tom's Turkey Drive, most of the food is also donated.
"We're very fortunate in that that has stayed fairly consistent," he said. "Last year we distributed about 35 million pounds of food, not quite 17-18 semi-loads a week."
Right now, Salvation Army is getting creative to make up for the donation shortfall.
"The reality is we have to find ways to fund these programs or we might have to make hard decisions," Captain Cain said.
So far, what's being discussed is leaning more on volunteers, looking for food vendor discounts, and doing cost analysis on facilities to avoid spending on heating or other expenses for unused areas.
Captain Cain says as a faith-based organization, they're also relying on the belief that something will come through to keep their shelves full.
"Yeah," he said. "It means we're going to keep pressing."
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