Proskauer Appeals for Charity Funds

The following is the statement made by Judge Joseph M. Proskauer at the board meeting of the Federation for the Support of Jewish. Philanthropic Societies.

The Board of Trustees has voted a budget for the year 1934 of $3,500,000. In order that you may understand the significance of this figure, let me say that in 1929 the ninety-one institutions which represent, as you know, all the chief orphan asylums, old folks homes, hospitals, community centers and in general, most of the important Jewish philanthropic institutions, received from Federation a budget of $5,200,000.

In the interval between 1929 and 1933 the demands on these institutions, increased enormously and as the demands were increasing, the contributions to Federation were decreasing. The result of that has been that for every year from 1929 to 1933 inclusive, we have had to reduce the budget of these institutions from Federation until it got to the figure of $3,100,000 in 1933.

You will note, therefore, that for the first time since 1929 Federation has increased a budget instead of decreasing it. We are going up this year from $3,100,000 to $3,500,000.

REDUCED SALARIES

It is important that the public should understand the double significance of this action. The first meaning of it is that we have tried courageously to face the absolute requirements of the poor and the sick and the needy. We had in the year 1933, for example, reduced the salaries of our social workers. We felt we had to reduce them because it was a compromise between either reducing them or reducing the money we were handing out to starving and sick people. But this year we had to take into account that the social workers themselves have a problem with increased commodity costs and we therefore felt an absolute obligation to increase those salaries of employees who receive less than $2,000 a year, at least in part back to a point where we think they get a living wage.

BUDGET INADEQUATE

It is our earnest hope that when the public understands this situation, they will give us enough money this year to enable us to meet even more fully the obligation that we feel the community owes to the self-sacrificing men and women who devote their lives to this work of caring for the poor.

This budget, though it represents an increase, is still a notably inadequate budget. The ninety-one institutions, for example, last year spent in their work almost $1,000,000 more than they received; that is, we didn’t have the money to give them and they had to draw on their capital funds to the extent of nearly $1,000,000 to pay the expenses of the year. A very interesting phase of that is in the hospitals, for example. The hospitals have the experience of observing very marked decreases in their pay patients. We figure that reduction at approximately 25 per cent. That is a large item in the income of every hospital and as their private pay income decreases, there is a proportionate increase in the amount of free work they have to do. They have to care for many more poor patients. That throws on us a burden that leaves us very little choice. We have got to keep hospitals open for poor, sick people who cannot afford to pay and the only way to keep them from going is to give them money, to take up the slack in their pay income.

MINIMUM AMOUNT

Therefore, in figuring this budget at $3,500,000, the Board of Trustees took the figure which seemed to them to represent the very minimum of what would preserve the existence of these ninety-one institutions. We could not vote a smaller budget consistently in the face of the obligation to keep these institutions alive and going and ministering to the poor and needy in this still depressed period.

In doing this, the Board of Trustees has done a very courageous thing. We have staked almost the very existence of Federation upon our ability to make the philanthropic public of New York realize the necessity of giving this year.

GREATER APPEAL TO PUBLIC

While we have increased our budget, our fixed income from annual recurrent subscriptions has fallen off from $2,200,000 last year to $1,800,000 this year. Put another way, that means that people who give normally so much a year to Federation have reduced by $400,000 for the year 1933. In 1929 our fixed income from regular annual recurrent subscriptions was $3,700,000, so that you see our fixed income has fallen off from $3,700,000 in 1929 to $1,800,000 this year.

In 1929 these regular membership contributions represented 80 per cent of our total budget of $5,200,000. In 1933 these regular recurrent subscriptions represent about 50 per cent. This year we have to raise by appeal to the public approximately 60 per cent of our budget; in other words, our fixed income has fallen to the lowest ratio in our history with respect to our budget, being only 40 per cent of the budget and that means that the public, in order to keep these Jewish charities going on the lowest basis which it is possible to keep them going and by no means paying their total expenses but still asking them to pay part of their annual expenses out of their capital funds–the public, if we are to save this situation, must give us in addition to its annual recurrent regular subscriptions approximately $2,000,000. That is the largest sum that we have raised in a deficit campaign.

REPRESENTATIVES OF JEWRY

Now you may ask me why the board voted Federation into such a difficult situation. The answer is that we feel that we are the representatives of the Jewish community in philanthropic work; that we do not believe that the members of the largest Jewish community of the world wish us, as their representatives, to see the doors of hospitals and orphan asylums closed to the poor. We believe we carry a mandate from the public to give also the JSSA, which does the family relief work, the money that is necessary to keep families from actual starvation and to keep roofs over the heads of people who, except for that service, would be homeless.

We have taken the great responsibility of raising this money on ourselves because we have a firm and optimistic conviction that the Jewish public, when it understands this situation, will meet the needs of those who cannot take care of themselves and will give us this sum which is the smallest possible sum that we can recommend as that which is necessary to maintain the long tradition of the Jewish people in this city that they have never failed to take care of their own poor.