Helping Hands asks city for funding boost

Helping Hands soup kitchen is asking Brandon City Council for more money to help it stay afloat as prices rise and donations decrease.

The organization is requesting a $15,000 lump sum, an increase in its annual grant from $30,000 to $50,000 and an exemption on property taxes, which currently sit at $7,500 per year.

“We’ve never had to consider what will happen if we run out of money,” board chair Andrea Epp said at Monday’s council meeting. “We’ve always been able to just kind of coast with the amount of donations that we’ve had and the level of usage that we’ve had at the centre.

“It’s just no longer at a point where we can continue to coast and we have to make some serious plans for the future.”

The $15,000 lump sum would go toward creating a strategic plan, she said.

Aside from the annual $30,000 grant from the city and $2,500 a month from United Way, Helping Hands relies solely on donations, Epp said.

“We have a lot of very generous community members and a lot of the Hutterite colonies support us quite a bit with donations,” she said.

But the cost to run the centre, she said, is about $20,000 to $30,000 a month, which excludes significant maintenance on the building and equipment.

“It also doesn’t reflect any increase that we expect to continue to see in the usage of our facility,” along with expected cost hikes for utilities, she said.

Helping Hands was forced to upgrade its roof earlier this year, which was another $225,000 cost that depleted a lot of the reserves the organization had.

Epp said the group is also considering adding more full-time staff, likely from a current part-time position, to help meet increased demand.

Earlier this year, Helping Hands was about to run out of meat for the first time before putting out a call for help and receiving extra donations.

“It is a reality now that it’s going to come up again, and we know that,” Epp said.

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said the city will take the request to budget deliberations in the new year, and will “continue to assist with the province on showing up.”

During the meeting, he said if Helping Hands has to appear before council to ask for funding assistance, “you really have a need.”

“We need to work with the rest of our partners to make sure we keep things functioning,” Fawcett said.

After the meeting, Fawcett described Helping Hands as an “exceptional community group” that does a “wonderful service.”

“They are in a dire strait, because they are not ones to complain. They’re not ones to sort of beg for things ever,” he said. “They do their jobs, they work really hard and they’re just a great community asset. So obviously, things are not in a great spot here.”

He said the city will continue to talk with the province about funding.

“Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of thing that the City of Brandon taxes for,” Fawcett said.

“With everything that we’re doing, it gets into a pretty slippery slope when we start doing things that are not sort of considered city (responsibility). But we also want to make sure that essential services is being sustained,” he said.

“We’ll have to take a look.”

Angela Braun, Helping Hands’ executive director, said if the soup kitchen doesn’t get what it is asking for, it will have to change how it delivers its service.

For example, if Helping Hands has to start paying for protein, like meat, “we might have to get a little bit more creative.”

She said the meals being handed out would continue, but there could be fewer meat dishes.

Additional funding, she said, would “loosen the belt a little bit” and allow for needed repairs to the building, such as the floor in the cooler area and the elevator.

Helping Hands is one of six Manitoba charities that will receive proceeds from the provincial government’s sale of U.S. liquor products. Braun said she doesn’t know how much Helping Hands will receive.

“It provides a little bit of comfort knowing that it’s there, and we can use it to do some of the things that we need to, but we also need to look long-term,” Braun said.

The organization is looking to get additional funding from the province as well, she said, which would be that long-term help.

“Even though it’s kind of like a Christmas bonus, you still need to plan how to live the rest of your life kind of thing.”

Additional funding could also potentially enable Helping Hands to open for weekends.

“We’re grateful for any help that we do get. We’re also at the point (where) we do need the help, so we have to ask,” Braun said. “You also can’t receive it if you don’t ask for it.”

Braun said the organization has given out more than 52,000 meals so far this year, which is slightly more than Brandon’s population in the last census.

“That is over 50,000 times that people have gone hungry,” she said.

“We have these people that are already under stress and desperate and out there, and I know that when you have a full belly, you’re happy, you’re content.”

The city’s budget deliberations are set for Jan. 30 and 31.

» alambert@brandonsun.com