Salvation Army’s Red Kettle season in Modesto gets a nearly $225,000 kickoff

The Salvation Army Modesto Citadel Corps raised $224,708 Thursday during its 26th annual Kettle Kickoff in downtown.

In a community report at the event, which drew an estimated 1,200 people, Citadel advisory board Treasurer Pete Michelini spoke to the importance of the kickoff to the army’s annual $5 million budget. He ran through a summary of army programs — social services, food distribution, the Red Shield Community Center, transitional housing, the Berberian emergency shelter, holiday assistance, disaster relief — and said, “There are more programs here in Modesto than most of the big cities have. We do a lot here.”

Every year, Michelini said, it’s a struggle for the Modesto Citadel Corps to meet its budget, and needs grow faster than resources.

Dick Hagerty, a member of The Salvation Army National Advisory Board, made an appeal for donations of clothing and household goods to the army’s thrift stores. They are the lifeblood of the nonprofit organization, which gets no government funding he said.

Sale of those donations keeps people in rehab, keeps people alive, he said. But the proliferation of other thrift stores across the nation “has cut deeply into our programs,” Hagerty said. He pointed out that 10 years ago, 75 percent of all women’s clothing donated to charities in the United States went to The Salvation Army. By last year, that number was down to 7 percent.

Thursday’s haul at Modesto Centre Plaza was jump-started with two generous donations of $50,000 and $20,000. But the rest came as fundraising teams carried kettles from table to table in a seven-minute competitive dash for cash, checks and credit card slips.

Citadel Corps Capt. Dwaine Breazeale gave a brief history of the Kettle Kickoff, which its first year was held at Vintage Faire Mall and raised $2,000. The next year, it moved to the Sportsmen of Stanislaus Club and raised twice that. In its first 25 years, the event has raised a total of more than $3.3 million.

But as its name says, the event is but a kickoff for the army’s holiday red kettle drive, and Modesto Citadel Lt. Quinton Markham urged those in attendance to keep the momentum going by signing up as bell ringers at registertoring.com.

“Bring your family, sign up for a day,” he said. “Bring your friends, your enemies, people you used to share a jail cell with. ... We don’t care who it is, just grab somebody and volunteer.”

This story was originally published November 15, 2018 at 4:45 PM.