Red Kettle campaign wraps up slightly under goal

By Harry Loomis

Despite falling short of a $330,000 goal, the funds raised through the Salvation Army’s 2023 Red Kettle campaign will still be used to help several groups in St. Joseph.

“The numbers I have (Wednesday morning) are about 85% of our goal,” said Major Ronald Key.

Some funds are still coming in that will be added to the total, as money was being collected up through New Year’s Eve.

This confirmed Key’s earlier belief that some late donations would come in to help get closer to the goal.

“It’s not so much organizations, more individual people that have been supporters of ours for quite a while,” Key said. “So most of them like their tax write-off, so they kind of give us that check toward the end of December. We can count them as our Christmas goal.”

It is pre-determined where some of the donations will go, however some people give with the intention of the donation going to a specific need.

“Some people may give a donation that they want to go to a specific purpose,” Key said. “Maybe like for the shelter or for food or for clothing, those kind of things. Sometimes they just give us a check in that way or give us some money that way we can use it for whatever we have a need for. They can make it very not restricted, or they say, ‘I want it to go to a certain thing’, where most people just give it to you and say, ‘You spend it how you need it.’”

Work does not end for the Salvation Army after Christmas. The organization will spend the whole year collecting donations and helping those in need.

“One thing we can impact community with is with our homeless shelter,” Key said. “So many of our families that come out of there have been living in the street, crashing on couches, living in a car. Probably about 80% were successful with getting permanent housing.”