Kettle Campaign misses fundraising goals in the Cariboo

The Salvation Army’s Kettle Campaign fell short in Williams Lake and Quesnel.

Pastor with the Quesnel Salvation Army, Randy Gatza says they were just over $3,000 shy of their $40,000 goal. He says also missed their $50,000 goal for their letter appeal by $16,000.

“I’m not sure of all what contributed to that, but part of the issues with the kettles themselves was the lack of volunteers,” Gatza says. “The letter appeal campaign, of course, depends upon the donations coming in by mail or by being dropped off and we have no control over that.”

Also missing their fundraising goal for the Kettle Campaign was the Williams Lake Salvation Army according to executive director Dawn Butt.

“We’ll still be able to manage to do what we do,” Butt says. “We might have to make some adjustments in other places but the community really rallied so I’m really pleased with how much the community was able to give back despite it being a tough economic time.”

Butt says they had managed to raise $86,239 dollars making them shy of their goal by over $8,700.

Gatza and Butt both say it is too early to tell what kind of impact the fundraising shortage will have.

“Since last spring we have had quite an influx of people coming in,” Gatza says. “Mostly people coming from outside of the community in here and then we’ve had some increase in the use of our foodbank as well.”

“I think we’ll be okay,” Butt says. “It might mean that some of our clients need to participate a little bit more actively in trying to get to things like addictions treatments and it may just require a little bit more team effort between us and other organizations to help clients get to where they need to go, and that’s something that we really look forward to doing is helping other agencies and having other agencies work alongside us as well.”