North County’s Interfaith Community Services announced a new fundraising drive Thursday.
They’re not the only ones.
Several organizations that work with vulnerable and homeless San Diegans are asking residents to give more at a time when the government shutdown and federal funding cuts threaten to shrink a number of programs.
“Interfaith was founded on the belief that everyone in our community deserves to live with dignity,” Greg Anglea, the nonprofit’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “Our People for People fund would immediately ensure that recent policy shifts don’t erase decades of progress.”
The fund is able to match up to $1 million in donations because of a gift from Price Philanthropies, a family foundation that recently partnered with the Prebys and San Diego foundations. Nonprofit staffers said the funds will cover food, housing and other services for Interfaith clients.
The drive runs through the end of the calendar year.
Meanwhile, Father Joe’s Villages is trying to raise $75,000 by the end of October to mark the nonprofit’s 75th anniversary, following an annual golf tournament that brought in more money (about $291,000) than the previous year’s total ($219,000). The Lucky Duck Foundation and U.S. Bank gave $200,000 to the National Conflict Resolution Center to support job training for homeless individuals. And earlier this year, Spectrum awarded $10,000 to Alpha Project’s Shorty’s Home Goods program, which provides furniture and other household items to people leaving homelessness.
“We were already in a difficult situation and are nearing even more urgent times,” Deacon Jim Vargas, the head of Father Joe’s, said in a statement about the potential loss of food aid during the shutdown. “Who are we as a nation if millions of people in our country are forced to go hungry or homeless?”