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St. John's Day Center begins fundraising campaign

A long-time homeless shelter is reaching out to the business community for financial support.  The Saint John's Day Center begins a new fundraising campaign starting Wednesday.

Saint John's wants to become more financially stable after a close call earlier this year.  Since 1986, Saint John's has given homeless men a place to escape the heat or cold during the day.

It was the vision of Sister Kathleen Sheehan, who founded the shelter after two homeless men were found frozen to death.  Sister Kathleen has retired, but her good works have been taken up by others.

However, earlier this year the shelter was in danger of cutting back its hours and services after an $80,000 budget shortfall.  But after its plight became public, donors came to the rescue.  Executive Director Maria Price expains, "Many current donors gave again, many donors who have been part of us for years prior, but we haven't seen for awhile, they stepped up and gave again."

Other than grants, 95% of the donations to St. John's are from individuals.  Price says, "We're still living hand to mouth, we still just have six weeks operating funds in the bank."

To try to get away from that hand-to-mouth existence, the homeless shelter is looking to businesses and corporations for money.  Ron Sweat, Director of Mission Advancement, says, "So we've embarked on the campaign to approach not just our faithful donors, but new donors, especially in the business community, who have a stake in St. John's Center, who may not even know they have a stake in the center."

The campaign is being called "One Makes All the Difference," and with the help of a marketing firm the shelter has produced a video to appeal to new donors.  The shelter serves up to two hundred homeless men a day and provides medical and dental care with a yearly budget of $800,000.

Sweat says, "We've embarked upon this mission in order to, over the course of the next couple of years, not only to generate enough money to fund our operations but also to start building reserves."

Sweat says healthy non-profit organizations have a year's worth of reserves in the bank, and that's the goal of St. John's so it can continue to serve the growing problem of homelessness.