Charities Feel the Pinch of Hard Times : Social programs: Across the Southland, donations to nonprofit groups are drying up. The economic downturn and plain old apathy are blamed.

Bells a-ringing, the Salvation Army hauled out the familiar red kettles Thursday, soliciting spare change in front of a Pomona department store and a LaVerne grocery.

“It’s Christmas in July,” said Lt. Col. David P. Riley, the Salvation Army’s Southern California divisional director.

This was not, however, a festive occasion. Seeking to make up an expected $12,000 cut in income from the United Way and to save a day-care program for preschool children, the Pomona corps of the Salvation Army was staging an emergency collection drive--well in advance of its normal holiday solicitation.

Across Southern California, many charities and nonprofit groups are finding that the pool of money that had been keeping a host of social programs afloat is stagnating--or, in some areas, drying up--because of the economic downturn and plain old apathy, industry experts said.

As a result, the groups are scrambling this summer to recoup funding--turning to novel fund-raising campaigns or resignedly planning fee hikes for people who can ill afford them.

Some charitable agencies in Orange and San Diego counties report that they are holding their own--but then, some are not. And in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the outlook is particularly grim.

The Greater Los Angeles chapter of United Way voted late Thursday to authorize deep funding cuts, triggered by a 17.1% shortfall in its 1990-91 fund-raising campaign.

The giant charitable agency raised $90 million, but had sought $102 million.

Only $85 million of the money raised is actually available for distribution and the charity’s board voted to hand out just $67 million in its vast service area--$10 million less than last year, said United Way officials.

Specifics of the cuts, to take effect Aug. 1, were not disclosed Thursday because the charity wanted to notify its agencies before making details public, said Sandra Manning, a United Way spokeswoman.

The $102-million goal for 1990-91 was, in retrospect, “overly aggressive” because of the recession and the Persian Gulf War, said Maury DeWald, chairman of the agency’s 102-member board of directors.

The recession cost the jobs of 50,000 potential donors and tightened corporate wallets, he said. The war just made people more cautious about everything, especially spending money, added Manning.

Riley, the Salvation Army division commander, said he thought there was another factor at work.

“I think apathy is the real reason,” he said. “I’ve had people tell me, right to my face, ‘I don’t want any more of my money going to these bums.’ (Donors) are good people. They’re just tired of giving to what they think is a social problem brought on by individuals themselves.”

Anticipating a $350,000 cut in its United Way funding, the Salvation Army plans to eliminate an early-morning food line in downtown Los Angeles. It already has trimmed the number of transients it houses at a shelter in Bell, from 200 a night to 100. And counseling, social services and day-care programs will be dropped or cut, Riley said.

In La Canada, anything near a 17% cut in the annual $100,000 United Way grant will imperil a child-care center, a youth counseling plan and a high school physical fitness plan run by the Crescenta-Canada YMCA, general director Dennis Croxsen said.

“We’re scrambling at this point,” looking for alternate funding sources, including a benefit golf tournament in October, he said.

Earlier this month, the Home Visitation Center, a Pacoima food bank that gets 40% of its $120,000 budget from United Way, announced it would have to look for less expensive office space in the San Fernando Valley.

The cash crunch has hit hard at small charities, too.

In Ventura County, donations to the Zoe Christian Center in Oxnard dropped from about $300 a day to about $60 a day over the last eight months, said the Rev. Jim Gilmer, director of a homeless shelter. During the same period, the number of people seeking shelter and food jumped from about 120 a day to about 160, he said.

“It’s a Catch-22 because with the recession we are getting more and more people that need help,” Gilmer said, including a few people who had even donated regularly to the shelter during better times. In one case, the shelter had hired a teacher part time to educate the center’s children, he said. He said that recently that same teacher visited the center for a food basket.

In Orange County, the United Way in Orange County actually reported a 4% increase in donations-- $21.4 million was raised in its early 1991 campaign, up from $20.6 million the year before, spokesman Jeff Rocke said. The key seems to have been a new program allowing donors to earmark funds, he said.

“Contributors are more selective, more skeptical and more independent than at any time in the past,” Rocke said. Charities that permit donors to “channel their money” are “going to be more successful than those who aren’t,” he said.

At the Volunteer Center of Greater Orange County, budget planners anticipated a 20% decrease in donations, and that’s what it has turned out to be, said Vici Woods, vice president for development. Explaining why the United Way campaign succeeded while the center has struggled is not easy, she said.

“At a time like this, when people have to pick where they’re going to give, that’s the whole purpose of United Way, the one-stop gift,” Woods said.

In San Diego, meanwhile, Sharp Memorial Hospital just completed its largest development campaign, raising $16.9 million, nearly $2 million more than originally planned, for a $40-million facility. The goodness of the cause overcame “the negative economic situation,” said Bob Kelly, senior vice president.

But at San Diego’s public television station, the economic situation is mostly negative. KPBS-TV fell $300,000 short of a $4-million goal in the fiscal year that ended June 30, said Pat Finn, the station’s director of advertising and promotion. The station is considering programming and production cuts, Finn said.

Times staff writers Jonathan Gaw, Hugo Martin and Thuan Le contributed to this story.