POCATELLO — Donations to the Salvation Army’s Pocatello outpost are significantly down this year and local organizers are concerned.
Lt. Ernie Evans, who heads the organization locally, said donations to his outpost decreased from $110,000 last year to just over $72,500 this year as of Monday.
With less than a week left in 2021, Evans said the decrease will have a ripple effect on the local Salvation Army outpost’s ability to provide community services and to pay and continue to employ its lone employee.
“We did not bank on getting $100,000 this year because we didn’t think we could replicate it and we thought that there was just a lot of grace and a lot of amazing donations last year,” he said. “However, we did budget for $95,000 and we’re short.”
The Salvation Army, a Christian church-affiliated charity that helps thousands of people each year and increases fundraising efforts around the holidays, offers religious, health, educational and food services to families across the globe.
“The most tangible impact of this decrease in donations is that we will have to retract services, which we have grown and try to keep up based on community needs these last couple years,” Evans said. “Now, we’ll likely have to retract back to just doing one or two small things rather than trying to help the overall community.”
The decrease in donations came amid recent controversy over an ill-received “Let’s Talk About Race” discussion guide to racism that the organization’s international headquarters in London put out ahead of sending its bell ringers out for the holidays.
The guide, which was intended only to be distributed internally but went on the organization’s public website, encouraged church members to “stop trying to be ‘colorblind’” and “stop denying the existence of individual and systemic/institutional racism.” Critics claimed the Salvation Army supports the dissemination of “critical race theory,” an academic movement that seeks to acknowledge racial disparities.
Evans said his outpost in Pocatello has nothing to do with the racism pamphlet the organization sent out, and while he couldn’t say for sure whether the literature directly impacted fundraising locally, he suspected it was a contributing factor.
“Because of misinformation, many, many donors are hesitant to donate and that’s really the truth,” Evans said. “But it’s unfortunate and out of our control locally.”
The racism guide was pulled from the Salvation Army’s website after backlash, and the organization’s Commissioner Kenneth Hodder, the national commander of the ministry in the United States, issued a video statement about the guide on Sunday.
“(The guide) was for voluntary use among our church members,” Hodder said in the video. “We have made it clear that the Salvation Army has never been about politics. We are not on the left and we are not on the right.
“Despite the occasional attempts by pundits to use our reputation for their own political gain, we have always remained focused on one thing: to preach the gospel and serve people in the name of Christ.”
Evans said he and his bell ringers have gotten notes in the donation kettles at local stores that direct “very vulgar” terms at the volunteers and the organization.
“We’ve been really working hard and so we’ve taken the notes very personally, you know, like, ‘What? I didn’t do anything,’” he said. “It’s really hard for us because we’re personalizing it a little bit because we have been working very hard and we have been doing everything we’re doing for our community. It’s just unsettling.”
Evans said people who have concerns about the Salvation Army and its stance on certain issues should come start a productive conversation with him.
“If people really have a concern or they really would like to have their voice heard in a constructive way, they should come talk to us,” he said. “I’m just here to serve and to focus on our community. I’m very sad that this (guide) may be a portion of this loss because my wife and I, specifically, have been working our faces off for this community. If anyone wants to talk about it face to face, they should by all means come talk to us.”