Salvation Army of McLean County on target to hit $500,000 goal

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    BLOOMINGTON, IL (The Pantagraph) — Officials with The Salvation Army of McLean County say they are confident they will reach their fundraising goal by the end of the month.

The annual Christmas fundraising campaign ends at the end of January and officials report they are only about $4,000 short of reaching the $500,000 mark.

“We are pretty optimistic, in comparison to years past,” said Maj. Dan Leisher. “It started out very slow and our kettles did not do as well as in years past, the bell-ringing especially. But other donations, people mailing and sending in donations, and our online campaign has been tremendous, so we have been blessed.”

The campaign is the largest fundraiser of the year for The Salvation Army, whose services include the Safe Harbor homeless shelter, the food pantry, case management to help people out of poverty, rent and utility assistance, veterans’ services and youth programs.

Last year’s campaign set a goal of $520,000 but raised $497,814.52, including $173,613.96 from the kettles and $324,200.56 from mail and online appeals.

“We dropped this year’s campaign goal by about $20,000 because we recalculated some things and decided to have it a little lower than last year,” Leisher said. “We were not even sure until almost at the start of the campaign if we would even be allowed to have the kettles out and bell-ringers out. But a number of stores stepped up and helped us.”

Because of the coronavirus, some locations opted out.

“There were a few stores who told us that they didn’t think it would work for them this year and we respect that and aren’t mad about it at all, because we understand,” Leisher said. “They are good folks and we hope to partner with them next year. It’s just been a crazy year.”

More than 150 bell-ringers and groups participated.

“There was a challenge with that as well,” he said. “There were some faithful ones who will be with us through thick and thin. Of course, we required mask wearing and to be very careful when donations were given to sanitize and all those types of things. There was a little more work to it. A lot of people count on their smile and with a mask on, that can’t be seen. But we saw a decrease in volunteers and a number of cancellations.”

Leisher said the online donations saved the campaign, though.

“We learned a lot this year because we had to do things differently, but we were very happy with our online donations and we will continue to do that more in the future,” he said. “Also, we learned some things about sanitizing and wondered why we weren’t doing more of those things in the future, so that is something we will keep going forward.”

People can still donate online at SalArmy.US/BloomingtonKettle or at sabloomington.org.

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