With fall approaching, it should be time to kick off the Capital Area United Way’s workplace giving campaign, which brings in the bulk of revenues every year that the agency redistributes to needy nonprofit organizations throughout the region.
The annual campaign has faced challenges enough in recent years, as giving habits have changed along with federal tax laws that have disincentivized charitable giving. Still, in early 2020, things appeared to be looking up, as the agency closed out the books on a campaign that was up, year-over-year, for the first time since the 2016 flood.
Then, the pandemic struck and now the CAUW is trying to figure out how, in the era of social distancing, to launch a workplace-giving campaign, which has traditionally relied on in-person visits to workplaces that include speeches, presentations and, on occasion, special guests from vulnerable populations.
“We know we’re going to be playing in a game,” says CAUW CEO George Bell. “We’re just trying to figure out what kind of ball we’re going to use, what the field will look like and what the rules will be. Everything that applied to the games we played in the past has changed and our ability to go into companies and do campaigns and presentations has all changed.”
The campaign typically accounts for about 75% of CAUW’s revenues. The 2019-2020 campaign brought in about $6.5 million, a nearly 5% improvement over $6.2 million the previous year but far less than the $10 million the campaign netted in 2015.
Other annual moneymakers for the agency, like the fall Jambalaya Jam!, are also up in the air and being refashioned.
“We’re planning on doing virtual or scaled-down events,” Bell says. “It’s really challenging our ability to do business as we’ve done it in the past but it has been exciting to come up with new ways of doing things.”
On the bright side, the CAUW, which runs on a fiscal year that began July 1, finished 2020 in the black, thanks to a surge in pandemic-related donations, and was able to fulfill its commitments to the dozens of organizations it funds.
But the challenges it faces pivoting to online development at a time when the needs of nonprofits and those they serve will continue growing are daunting.
“We’ve seen increased demand (for our food) since the early days of COVID,” says Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank President Mike Manning. “It has stabilized and with enhanced unemployment payments it dropped a little but now (with those benefits ending) we expect it to go right back to where it was.”
Though the food bank, which is a CAUW partner agency, is hanging on at the moment—thanks to federal relief provided by Congress earlier this year—Manning sees tough times ahead for his organization and those it serves.
“Food prices are up more than 50% in many cases and donations are down,” he says. “The whole grocery store paradigm has changed. We used to be able to buy all the food that was at the ‘best by’ date. Now, they’re not pulling the ‘best by’ products any more because it all flies off the shelf so fast.”
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