OGDEN -- In a meeting to look at how Top of Utah's homeless agencies are doing as winter nears, the term "falling off a cliff" got tossed around a lot.
The term means "our funding is about to come to a screeching halt" if it hasn't already.
Fraser Nelson, executive director of Community Foundation of Utah, said a frighteningly large number of human service agencies in Utah are in extremely precarious financial positions.
The federal government's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds are coming to an end and are unlikely to be renewed. Local charitable foundations are still waiting for the stock market to recover so they can make more donations. Federal and state grants are drying up.
"The news for Northern Utah is really grim," Nelson told representatives from more than a dozen agencies. "Very few of the organizations in Northern Utah have any kind of cash reserve."
Their survey found that 62 percent of the organizations providing help to the poor and homeless had no more than two months' worth of cash in the bank, she said. Another 13 percent had none and are "operating paycheck to paycheck." The Children's Aid Society has already gone bust, and Nelson is worried more will follow.
"You're like the families you help. You're one crisis away from shutting the doors," she said.
The agencies at the meeting included private agencies, such as Catholic Community Services, St. Anne's Center and the Midtown Medical Center, and government agencies, such as Ogden School District, Ogden City and Weber County.
Leslie Herold, director of community impact for United Way of Northern Utah, has called a meeting of all agencies every year for three years to assess the needs of Top of Utah's poor and see what the agencies need to do to most effectively help them.
Faced with declining funding, those at the meeting agreed that they need to make their own efforts more efficient and cost-effective. The United Way will form a task force of agency directors to take a deeper look at what they do and how they are funded.
Almost every agency and organization at the meeting said the future looks very grim.
* Ogden School Superintendent Noel Zabriskie said "the pending funding cliff" was his biggest worry. Adult education classes already have a waiting list, his state funds were down 8 percent last year, and when ARRA dies "we'll be back to 2007-2008 funding levels."
* Jeanne Hall, co-director of the Alan and Jeanne Hall Foundation, said she is "doing a lot of payday loans, too, with desperate people saying they can't make payroll" even as the Hall Foundation struggles to find money. Most of its income comes from stock investments.
* Bridgett Tasker, Swanson Family Foundation, said the foundation is "very limited in our cash funding this year," and is focusing on its own internal programs rather than helping other agencies.
* Ron Thornburg, executive director of the Family Counseling Service, said two trends are battering his agency.
More people seeking counseling are those who haven't had work for several years so they're having trouble paying even the service's sliding fee, which is based on ability to pay. On the other hand, donations from foundations, like Hall's and Swanson's, have gone down. "The needs are much greater than we can serve."
* Weber County Commissioner Jan Zogmaister said the county jail and county health services are both waiting for the next session of the Legislature: "You talk about a funding cliff. We're waiting for the Legislature, and then we'll adapt to it."
* St. Anne's Center Executive Director Jennifer S. Canter said the shelter is already running between 80 and 90 percent of capacity and has seen demand for help from families more than double in the past year.
"Funding is a challenge because we have lost 10 percent, maybe 15 percent, in our federal funds. We expect that will decrease next year. Foundations are pretty much non-existent."
Individual donations have increased, she said, but not enough to make up for the loss of major donors.
* Representatives from the Northern Utah Chapter of the American Red Cross noted an "alarming increase" in requests for help with utilities, particularly among people on fixed incomes.
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