Here come the holidays and their perennial philanthropic push, the bread-and-butter fundraising days of many local nonprofits.
"A large portion of charitable contributions happen in December, just in general," according to Justin Pollock, chief operating officer of Maryland Nonprofits, the state's association of charitable organizations.
The holiday spirit and the end-of-year tax incentives for giving are always great for charity coffers, Pollock said. But in a lagging economy, and despite national and local data that show nonprofits have proved to be highly resilient amid the downturn, he said there's still concern among organizations that their already-pinched purses won't be refilled this winter, at least not to the extent of years past.
"We're just working twice as hard to do more, because the need is more," said Audrey Cimino, executive director of the Community Foundation of Carroll County, which facilitates collective investments among non-profits in the county.
"It's still time to keep digging in," said Betsy Nelson, president of the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers.
Nelson said her association's member organizations — foundations, funds and corporate grantmaking programs — are dealing with the reality that the volatility of the market, once assumed to be a "blip," isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
"It is still tough out there," she said. "We'd hoped by now that we'd be out of the recession, and maybe officially we are out of it, but in our own individual lives that doesn't necessarily ring true."
The picture doesn't look so bad if you consider that, even as the nation's overall unemployment rate shot to more than nine percent, Maryland's more than 30,000 nonprofits have added more than 22,000 jobs since 2005 — bumping the state's total number of nonprofit workers to more than 250,000 people.
That work force accounts for about 11 percent of the state's entire workforce, according to Maryland Nonprofits' 2010 "Nonprofit by the Numbers" report.
Locally, though, Carroll County's more than 600 nonprofits saw a 3 percent overall job decrease in 2009.
Nevertheless, they paid more than 5,000 workers almost $180 million in wages — accounting for 10 percent of the county workforce and more than 9 percent of overall county wages, according to the study.
Nationwide, nonprofit employment has seen slight growth in recent years, according to a report released in September by the Johns Hopkins Nonprofit Economic Data Project.
Nonprofits nationally saw a 1 percent increase in employment between 2009 and 2010, and almost a 5 percent increase between 2007 and 2010, according to the study.
In contrast, the for-profit sector between 2007 and 2010 saw more than an 8 percent drop, the study found.
'Triple whammy' threats
Nonprofits are facing a "triple whammy" of threats in 2012, Pollock said.
First, there are the poor markets, which have diminished endowments and the ability of grantmaking organizations and foundations to dole out funding to smaller organizations, Pollock said.
Second, there is the 10 to 15 percent decrease in giving among individual donors that local organizations have seen in the last few years, he said.
And last, there are cutbacks in funding from government agencies at the local, state and federal levels that have both already occurred and are expected to increase, Pollock said.
"If you make a judgement one day, stay tuned next week, because you could have lost 5 percent of your assets," Nelson said of the uncertain markets.
Cimino said her foundation's collective investments have taken a hit, but not an unmanageable one.
"We do have some endowments and they are down a little, but not as much as the economy in general," she said.
Jaclyn Mathias, the foundation's assistant director, said scholarship programs – which the foundation funds with interest earned on accounts – have been hurt the most. The foundation doesn't receive government funding.
But government cutbacks are the "biggest red flag" among organizations that receive government funding to provide services like shelter, meals and health care to area residents in need, Pollock said.
"They are anxious and concerned, because they could see a fall in their revenue models, and many of these organizations have very little room for absorbing anything like that," he said.
Larger organizations that have strong, loyal donor bases are doing fine, and even smaller organizations will survive into the future because "one of the truisms for nonprofits is that they are very resourceful organizations" that "know how to leverage every dollar they get," Pollock said.
As dollars decrease, nonprofits may rely on commitments rather than contributions.
"People maybe don't have the money to donate, but I've also seen a lot more people wanting to donate time," Mathias said.
"I think what we're likely to see moving forward is that organizations are going to be turning to those non-financial resources, probably looking to volunteers a little more," Pollock said. "Looking at the overarching need that seems to be getting created now, I wouldn't hold my breath that the nonprofits can solve it in its entirety."