Salvation Army Nearly Makes 2019 $1.2M Christmas Goal
WICHITA, KS (February 7, 2020) – The Salvation Army strives to restore hope and healing to people who find themselves in the midst of extremely difficult situations including emergency assistance, buying groceries, utility assistance, providing shelter and much more. The Salvation Army is pleased to report serving over 11,000 individuals, 2,700 families, 7,400 children and distributing over 22,000 toys this past Christmas season.
However, those challenged in our community need support every day of the year and any short fall of funding has significant impact.
“We typically end our official season at the end of January due to late arrival of Christmas donations. For the first time in recent years, we had promising donation growth. General donations increased 11% percent after a six year decline helping us reach to 97% of our Campaign goal. Unfortunately, with one less week to bell-ring this past season, our Red Kettle donations did fall short $80,000 of goal,” Wichita City Commander, Major James Curl explained.
“We face the potential of even greater need, in the coming months and hope community will come alongside us to help those we serve. We will be debuting our inaugural Food Share Month food collection campaign in March, hoping to raise goods and donations for our new and growing client choice Food Pantry. Thank you Wichita and Sedgwick County for what you have done and will do.”
In addition to the refreshing general donation growth is optimism from online donations nationwide, thanks to emerging digital resources. The Salvation Army looks forward to increasing awareness about the convenient, safe and secure digital donation applications becoming available in our community.