File photo (image credit - CFJC Today)

By Michael Reeve

SALVATION ARMY

Salvation Army struggling to reach Christmas fundraising goal

Dec 21, 2022 | 11:49 AM

KAMLOOPS — This year, the Salvation Army set their Christmas fundraising campaign goal at $450,000.

As of this week, the organization was still short by more than $170,000. The fundraising efforts by the Salvation Army includes their kettle campaign as well as donations from community groups, businesses, and individuals.

As of Saturday (Dec. 17), the kettle drive, which ends on Christmas Eve, has raised almost $180,000 – $60,000 short of their goal.

Captain Cory Fifield noted that a slow start to the campaign added with bitterly cold temperatures this week is putting a strain on the campaign.

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“For us everybody sees our Christmas kettles at this time of year and so that’s something that is kind of in the forefront of everybody’s mind when they see it as their stores. But that is just a part of our fundraising campaign at this time of year,” Fifield said. “We have a mailer campaign and of course we have a ton of people that stop by our office to drop of a donation or go online or contact us by phone to make a credit card donation. That is where we have seen a real drop off this year. We are not even at 50 per cent of our $200,000 goal at this point.”

Despite the challenges faced this year, the Salvation Army has still been able to help more than 300 families through their food hamper program and will continue to help Kamloops residents in need this holiday season.

“That’s the one thing that we remind people of. Whatever happens this year, we want to get closer to our goal for financial reasons, but we are going to continue support and serve the community in the year to come. This will not negatively impact our services. We will just have to go back and look at how we do things and make sure we run as lean as we can in the coming year. We want to say thank you because there is so many people who set up at Christmas to support us,” Fifield added.