Visitors to The Open Hearth men’s shelter in Hartford’s South End typically get the full tour, meeting residents and staff and stopping by the cafeteria, laundry and job center.
“I wanted people to come in to meet our clients, kind of dispel the myth of what a man is who is experiencing homelessness,” said Marilyn Rossetti, executive director of The Open Hearth. “They see the work we do first-hand — there’s nothing like that.”
Now Rossetti worries that pandemic restrictions will keep her indefinitely from promoting in-person the work of The Open Hearth, which has been offering services to men experiencing homelessness in Hartford since 1884.
“That was a big marketing tool for us,” said Rossetti, who also serves as a member of the Hartford city council. Tours of the shelter allowed her to directly relate the experiences of her clients to potential donors, volunteers and staff members.
The loss of in-person interactions with potential supporters is one of many blows sustained by the state’s nonprofits since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent survey of more than 250 agencies. The poll was taken in June and July as a joint effort of the CT Community Nonprofit Alliance, Fio Partners, the New Canaan Community Foundation and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.
Many nonprofits have had to cut services and suffered steep drops in revenue just as pandemic-related costs increased, the survey found. Sixty-five percent of all nonprofits polled reported cutting services, while 23% increased their offerings, mostly in the form of COVID-19-related programs. Arts and culture nonprofits made up most of the 5% of organizations that reported suspending all services.
Smaller nonprofits, especially in the arts, culture and humanities, have been forced to shut down and may face extinction. Nearly one-third of all organizations with budgets of less than $1 million reported that they were “somewhat or very unlikely” to be able to fund their payrolls for the next three months.
At The Open Hearth, cuts in services have come in the form of “de-densifying” in response to health regulations, dropping the number of residents at the main facility from 135 to 100 men. Increased expenses at the shelter include masks and hand sanitizer — purchased at the onset of the crisis often at marked-up prices — along with hazard pay and overtime for staff members trying to keep the shelter open.
Then came the light bill: $7,100 compared to $4,800 for the same time period last year. “Could there be anything else?” Rossetti said. “It was some really dark days.”
State support of nonprofits, long stagnant even as the economy improved in recent years, is more crucial than ever to ensure the care of Connecticut’s neediest, said Gian-Carl Casa, president and CEO of the CT Community Nonprofit Alliance.
“For the last dozen years, nonprofits have really been underfunded. Before COVID even hit, they were behind the eight ball,” Casa said. “They’ve become expert at surviving and doing a lot with a little but this added a whole new layer of complexity and difficulties for them.”
Many human-services agencies have switched their services to phone and video platforms but have lost a significant proportion of their clients and revenue in the process, Casa said.
“Smaller nonprofits have been having a particularly hard time because they have very little room to maneuver,” he added. Major donors like the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving have stepped in to cover some of the shortfall for nonprofits, but philanthropy is not enough.
The Alliance and other advocates are asking the state to reimburse nonprofits for pandemic-related costs incurred after June 30, and cover losses due to drops in fee-for-service revenue.
“We’re pushing the state to try to maintain its funding commitments, to keep these doors open into the future,” Casa said. “This is the state social safety net.”
Communicating needs
Despite the challenges of the pandemic’s first months, Rossetti and her staff at The Open Hearth have been buoyed by donations and help from a range of sources. The Hartford Foundation awarded a $30,000 grant to The Open Hearth Association in August and other donors are taking part in scaled-back fundraisers planned for the coming months. The nonprofit’s annual budget is about $2.5 million and it employs 30 full- and part-time staff members, some former clients.
Hartford HealthCare has partnered with The Open Hearth to provide every-other-week virus testing, which has reduced reported cases of COVID-19 at the shelter to zero. Ongoing testing and pay increases have helped retain staff and boost morale.
Rossetti also started an online communications effort, “Good News Monday,” as a way to reach out to board members and supporters. Nonprofits ranked marketing as the No. 1 professional service needed post-pandemic in the Alliance survey.
“You need to get a message out that you are still operating but you may not have the revenue,” Rossetti said. “How do you let your donors know that we need your support more than ever?”
This story was done with support from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.
