Shelter looks for Web site to provide needed boost
By GENE ZALESKI, T&D Staff Writer Friday, July 11, 2008The Orangeburg Samaritan House homeless shelter is on the front lines of helping others help themselves.
But in light of rising gasoline and food prices, the shelter, like many non-profit organizations, have seen donations decline over the past year by about 25 percent.
In an effort to help spark giving, the shelter is ramping up public relations efforts through the creation of a Web site, brochure and logo highlighting its renewed mission and vision: “Changing Lives -- Helping People.”
“We are not in trouble ... but right now we just need some income. We have to keep the doors open,” Samaritan House board President Dr. Marvin Wilson said. “The Samaritan House has always been an organization that has sustained itself on personal and corporate donations. It has fallen off of late because of the downtown in the economy.”
As part of its fund-raising effort, the shelter has created a brand new green “The Samaritan House of Orangeburg” logo with two hands symbolically cradling a green leaf. This heightens the desire to show the shelter’s mission to give new life and opportunity to those less fortunate. The “of Orangeburg” is appropriately written in orange.
“Preventing homelessness is important in our community,” Wilson said. “This has always been our staple.”
In addition to the logo, the glossy six-page brochure provides readers information on the Samaritan House, its needs and donation and volunteer opportunities. About 2,000 brochures have been initially printed and will be sent to all the shelter’s corporate sponsors, churches and past donors.
The brochure highlights four ways individuals, businesses, churches or corporations can support the shelter by becoming either a partner, patron, sponsor or friend. The levels are based on the amount given.
The shelter’s new Web site -- www.samaritanhouseoforangeburg.org -- follows the same color scheme as the brochure and provides visitors an opportunity to make an online donation directly from the Web site. Donations online may be done via credit card. The Web site has a secure feature.
“This brochure, this logo and this process of being able to go online is very, very critical to our sustaining ourselves,” Wilson said. “This takes us to a whole new level.”
The homeless shelter, which needs about $10,000 a month in financial and in-kind donations to sustain itself, saw donations for the month of May and June hovering in the $1,000 to $1,500 range.
The shelter’s fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30. The shelter’s annual budget is about $126,000 a year with about $101,000 coming from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The shelter needs to match about 25 percent or $25,000 of this $101,000.
For the year, donations have been down about $10,000 or $15,000 or 25 percent.
| Want to help? For those interested in helping the Samaritan House either through donations -- financial or in-kind -- or to volunteer, visit the shelter’s new Web site at www.samaritanhouseoforangeburg.org or call 803-516-0088. Donations may be made online or via mail at P.O. Box 2384 Orangeburg, South Carolina 29115. |
Vertelle Pondexter-Jamison, Samaritan House chief operating officer, said the shelter has never had a formal fund-raising campaign but would raise monies rather sporadically through volunteers here and there promoting the shelter primarily by word of mouth.
But Pondexter-Jamison said the need for a more comprehensive campaign was deemed appropriate as fund-raising has fallen off and the shelter’s former COO, Rev. Justin Eshleman, earlier this year assumed pastoral duties at a Cayce church.
“We have to stay afloat,” Pondexter-Jamison said, noting that eventually the shelter looks to kick off a capital fund-raising campaign and to hire a full-time fund-raiser.
The shelter receives its funding primarily from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which helps pay for staff salaries and transportation costs. Orangeburg County also gives the shelter about $18,000 annually. Private and corporate donations go toward the day-to-day operations such as food, shelter repairs and medications for the residents.
“Most donations have come from local churches,” Pondexter-Jamison said. “Also, if any resident is working they are required to do about 30 percent of their net income.”
But Wilson said not all the residents work and each individual has a unique situation and cannot support the payments.
“We found ourselves in a dilemma recently where we could not spend any HUD monies at all because matching funds ran out,” Wilson said.
“We are doing much more than we were in the past as for the residents” Pondexter-Jamison said.
“Gas costs have also skyrocketed.”
The kickoff of the fund-raising campaign comes at a time when the homeless shelter looks to expand its operations by building a five-duplex housing development called “Carolina Place” at 1630 Carolina Ave.
Orangeburg County Council has given first-reading approval to sell the buildings that formerly housed the old nursing dormitory.
The prospect of the development has drawn the ire of some businesses and residents on Carolina Avenue who fear it could drive down property values and increase crime.
Shelter officials conducted a survey looking at the crime statistics and property values of both its current Middleton Street shelter and the Carolina Avenue neighborhood.
The informal survey revealed no significant crime or property value decrease.
Wilson said the feedback from the residents shows, despite some people not wanting the shelter in proximity, there seems to be approval of the shelter’s mission to help homelessness.
“The Orangeburg community supports the Samaritan House and has supported it since 2001 and still supports the Samaritan House,” Wilson said. “We are the only one in this region that caters to homeless families.”
T&D Staff Writer Gene Zaleski can be reached by e-mail at gzaleski@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5551.
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