Some local thrift shop operators in Jackson County or crying foul over a nonprofit accepting donations in Sylva despite not having a store in the county.

Goodwill Industries of Northwest North Carolina has a trailer (as in the second half of the word tractor-trailer) parked alongside N.C. 107 near Wal-Mart. The nearest Goodwill stores, however, are located in neighboring Macon and Haywood counties, with the one in Waynesville opening just last month.

Ina Claire “Sam” Bryant, a board member for Jackson County Habitat for Humanity, doesn’t deny that Goodwill does good work. That said, Bryant firmly believes the huge nonprofit needs to recognize it’s severely damaging the abilities of smaller good-work agencies to help county residents more directly.

“I think it is outrageous,” Bryant said. “My concern, as a citizen of Jackson County, is that whatever is collected in this county should benefit Jackson County — because our people need these collections and the donations. And the need is growing.”

Because Habitat for Humanity doesn’t accept clothing, it isn’t being as profoundly impacted as some nonprofits in Jackson County that rely on thrift-store money to operate, she said.

Goodwill is one of the world’s largest nonprofit providers of education, training and career services for people with disadvantages, such as welfare dependency, homelessness and lack of education or work experience, as well as those with physical, mental and emotional disabilities.

Goodwill Industries set up its Sylva donations trailer in 2009. Jaymie Eichorn, who handles marketing and communications in this region out of Winston-Salem for the nonprofit, said she understands the concerns of some in Jackson County, but added she doesn’t believe the entire problem rests with her agency. Not, she said, given the national downward spiral of the economy.

“Our donations are down, too,” Eichorn said.

Janet Mason, finance director for REACH, said the anti-domestic violence agency is experiencing more than simply a downturn in donations resulting from difficult economic hard times and a harsh winter season. Mason said the Jackson County nonprofit saw an immediate decline in donations when Goodwill moved in.

She attributed the donation drain to two issues: local residents not realizing that when they give to Goodwill the donations don’t directly benefit Jackson County residents, and the convenience and ideal location of Goodwill’s trailer setup. REACH thrift store moved from a near-downtown spot to a smaller store and along a fairly obscure part of Skyland Drive to save on rent.  

REACH of Jackson County’s financial problems are so dire the agency is facing the possibility of shutting down. This is a larger problem than anything Goodwill can possibly be blamed for, Mason acknowledged. But since the larger nonprofit came in, she said, the agency’s thrift store is barely breaking even. And, when you are just hoping to cover payroll and find enough pennies for the phone bill, Goodwill and its donation drain aren’t exactly helping the situation.

“I can’t sell it if I don’t have anything to sell,” said Mason, who in a cost-saving move recently took over management of the thrift store in addition to overseeing the agency’s budget.

REACH in 2001 opened a transitional village for women to the tune of $1.1 million, using a federal loan and a state loan. The agency overreached in its ability to pay for that dream of helping abused women find temporary homes, jobs and other help. Today, the village is in foreclosure proceedings. The problems don’t stop there: because of how the state handles grant money — not starting payments until about four months into the beginning of each fiscal year — REACH must find money before July (an estimated $100,000 to $150,000) to ride out that financial drought.  

Eichorn said Goodwill uses a trailer-donation setup elsewhere, not just in Sylva. It is an excellent method for the nonprofit to gauge whether a community has the interest and ability to support a store, she said.

“We’d love to have one there,” Eichorn said, though there are no plans for one at this point.

The donation center employs two Jackson County residents, Eichorn said.

It has been a difficult year for environmental nonprofits. State budget cuts have meant fewer grants and philanthropic endowments have suffered with the stock market. Meanwhile, the focus of giving has shifted towards social issues, like providing food, housing and services for the working poor or jobless.

How do you convince someone of the necessity of protecting the environment when people are suffering? That’s a question that Kate Parkerson, development director for the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee, has to answer.

“Finding ways to help communities get through these times is very important but preserving natural resources in rural counties is a way to ensure that they continue to support themselves,” Parkerson said.

Parkerson said environmental causes always represent the smallest slice of the philanthropic pie, but the current economic climate has squeezed their resources from two directions.

“Foundations and state funding have been cut, so the Catch2222 is that you rely more on private donors at a time when they are stretched,” Parkerson said.

Parkerson said LTLT has been fortunate with its private donations this year, but even after cutting its budget by 20 percent, the organization is looking at starting next year in the red.

LTLT received over $1 million from a scenic byway grant to protect the Wood Family Farm in Andrews, but the money hinges on their ability to match it at 30 percent.

Parkerson said in today’s fundraising environment, it pays to have a clear message.

“Clean water, healthy forests, productive farmlands are the basic things that support rural economies. If these things are healthy, the people have a way of supporting themselves,” Parkerson said.

Another hit to environmental initiatives is waning support from state and local government, according to George Ivey, a grant writer and project manager for nonprofits.

Haywood County ceased even nominal contributions to nonprofits, including local environmental groups. Meanwhile, the cash-strapped state froze and even robbed trust funds designated for land conservation. That impacted Ivey’s work with Haywood County tobacco farmers looking for new crops that would make farming viable again, which in turn would preserve the agricultural landscape.

“There simply wasn’t as much grant money to go around to help farmers trying to transition away from tobacco. That money definitely seemed to dry up,” said Ivey, who lives in Haywood County.

Corporate donations were down as well, given the troubled economic times.

“When they are laying off staff, it is difficult for them to make a sizeable donation. There was a definitive drop-off there,” said Ivey, who often courts large corporations and corporate foundations to support environmental initiatives.

Ivey said some funders recognized the hard times environmental groups were facing and increased their giving. But environmental groups had to write better proposals and be more judicious about which projects to pursue, judging the effectiveness of each and weighing how well they fit their mission. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“The best projects would still rise to the top and get funded over the ones that weren’t as well thought out or seemed redundant,” Ivey said.

An easy area to scale back was special events that gained public awareness for a group’s mission and built support for their work, but didn’t net a return, like fundraising dinners.

Another side effect is that environmental groups collaborated more. Sometimes groups with overlapping missions ended up working together at the request of donors themselves.

“They said maybe y’all need to talk together or work together better,” Ivey said.

Some environmental groups simply couldn’t maintain the staff they once had. The National Parks Conservation Association shut down a field office in Asheville and laid off a staff person who worked to protect the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Blue Ridge Parkway.

But the news isn’t all bad. Houk Medford, executive director of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, said his organization is doing better than it did last year.

The foundation serves as a fundraising entity for the National Park Service’s work to maintain and improve the land bordering the parkway.

“I think the support is a reflection of the strong interest people have in the Blue Ridge Parkway because for a lot of people it’s the national park in their backyard,” Medford said.

Medford said they key to fundraising for environmental causes is to realize that the preserving natural resources is work that looks to the future.

“The message has to be future-based with a present moment sense of urgency,” Medford said.

Non-profit agencies and county departments in Haywood County are still reeling from massive budget cuts announced by commissioners last week.

The county commissioners cut funding to all non-profits for the rest of the fiscal year, and called for county departments to scale back their budgets by 7 percent.

The cuts will affect everything from arts to recreation to schools. Leaders continued to call emergency meetings this week to grapple with the grim financial picture.

Some non-profit agencies were hit harder than others, like the Haywood County Arts Council. The group receives $15,000 per year from the county, an amount that will be cut by $11,250 in 2009.

“That’s a lot of money — it’s hard to make up that amount,” said Arts Council Director Kay Waldrop, who called an emergency meeting Monday (March 16) to discuss the cuts with her board of directors.

Waldrop said across-the-board cuts to the arts at federal, state and local levels are making it hard to cope.

“It’s the snowball effect,” Waldrop said. “Just one thing you can try to overcome pretty easily, but when your grants are cut, government funding is cut, donations are down and ticket sales are down — when all of those are cut, it’s a double whammy.”

Waldrop said her organization will battle to keep itself afloat.

“We’re fighting to keep the arts alive in our community,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Waynesville Recreation Center is doing its fair share of fighting. The Center receives $70,000 per year in county support, but won’t get any more for the rest of the year.

The county supplement has allowed county residents to pay the same amount as town residents for a recreation center membership despite not paying the taxes that town residents do to support the center.

Now, the recreation center must find some way to make up for the shortfall — and raising rates for county residents is one option on the table.

“We don’t have differential rates right now for the town and county, primarily because Haywood County was giving us money to supplement the difference,” said Rhett Langston, director of recreation for the Town of Waynesville. “We’ve got to come up with the money to supplement the difference some other way. We want to be very, very careful and be as fair as possible.”

Langston said the cut won’t affect programs or classes, but that the recreation center, “will definitely feel it.”

Other non-profits to feel the cut most include the Haywood County Agricultural Activities Center, the low-cost Good Samaritan Clinic, and Haywood Mountain Home.

Feeling the pinch

County departments are also reeling from the round of cuts. Some have struggled to trim their already slim budgets. A week after a county mandate to departments to cut 7 percent of their budget, across-the-board cuts only totaled 3.7 percent, Haywood County Manager David Cotton told commissioners at their Monday (March 16) meeting.

The county has tossed around various ideas to save money, including making employees take mandatory leave or cutting work weeks to 36 hours. The most drastic step will be unavoidable, Cotton said.

“We’re looking at layoffs. That’s where we’re going,” Cotton told commissioners.

Cotton said the county will take a look at the departments that have seen a slowdown in a need for their services as places to cut positions.

Robert Busko, director of the Haywood County Public Library system, said his employees have already volunteered unpaid time off and are bracing for more.

“I’m taking a week off without pay, and most supervisory staff are taking five days without pay,” Busko said. “Whenever you have to have employees take time off without pay, that’s one of the last resorts.”

The budget cuts mean the library system is holding off on developing its collection at a time when library use has increased with people seeking low-cost entertainment. The library constantly reviews it collection, ordering new materials on subjects that may be lacking and replacing out-of-date materials.

“We got a few materials ordered before we had to make the cut, but we’re ordering bestsellers only right now,” Busko said.

“A tremendous hit”

Meanwhile, the school system is figuring out how to cope with budget cuts. The school system has already slashed its budget by 3 percent to comply with a state mandate, and is bracing for additional state cuts that could total up to 9 percent — in addition to the county reductions.

“This last (county) one was totally unexpected,” said Mike Sorrells, chair of the school finance committee and member of the school board. “We are taking a tremendous hit.”

School superintendent Anne Garrett called the cuts, “serious — very serious.”

So far, the school system has been able to avoid layoffs. But various projects will have to be put on hold. One of them is a five-year project to get all student records put on microfilm, since some of the paper copies are old and deteriorating. Other cuts will mostly be supplies and materials to various programs, including vocational, special needs, the Gateway Program for at-risk students, and staff development for substitute teachers, who will not be attending conferences in the near future as a result of the cuts.

School officials expressed concern about the impact the latest cuts have had on the system’s general fund balance, or money not targeted for a specific purpose, which has been slashed in half.

The 2004 floods highlighted the importance of having a fund balance. When the school system was hit with unexpected costs, it had reserves to pull from to pay for upfront repairs before federal and state reimbursements came in.

“If we have some kind of crisis where a major piece of equipment goes down and we don’t have money in the fund balance,” that’s not a desirable situation, said Larry Smith, Chief Financial Officer for Haywood County Schools.

The county’s fund balance has dipped as well, and mandatory budget cuts are a necessary way to get the fund balance back to acceptable levels, said commissioners. Plus, cuts have been felt in private industry for some time, so it was only a matter of time before local governments were forced to follow suit.

“The private sector has been having to cut back for several months, and now the county has to cut back,” said Commissioner Kevin Ensley.