Greater New Haven 'Great Give 2020' is making a difference amid coronavirus - CT Insider

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NEW HAVEN — Facing a loss of about 85 percent of sales because of the coronavirus pandemic, Caterina Passoni feared that Havenly Treats — the nonprofit she co-founded — could be a casualty of an era where economic activity has been badly battered.

Havenly Treats, a bakery and job-training program for refugee women, sustains itself through making food in its kitchen on Yale University’s campus. When the university closed, the nonprofit lost its kitchen and the majority of its revenue through catering events and cafes at the university.

“Our sales collapsed and we lost our kitchen,” Passoni said. Additionally, several of the four women in the organization’s fellowship program are the only ones in their household earning a wage.

But now, Havenly Treats is secure throughout the spring at least because of fundraising through The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven’s Great Give. The nonprofit received $54,374 from 791 donors, including some matching funds.

The fundraising efforts contributed to the $3.57 million raised through the Great Give, CFGNH’s largest total ever — doubling the amount raised in 2018 and 2019.

“On the one hand, everybody knows the community’s needs are probably greater than they’ve ever been, and the nonprofit sector is doing everything it can to meet those needs,” said CFGNH President and CEO Will Ginsberg.

“On the other hand, people have less money, too,” he said. “A lot of people are out of work, of course, and a lot of people who have wealth have seen their wealth reduced with the markets.”

To raise $3.57 million for nonprofits, Ginsberg said it is a testament to the generosity of the community as well as the efforts of nonprofits to mobilize their networks. The number of total donors also was up by 43 percent, to 17, 675, according to the foundation.

The fundraising event operates as a “friendly competition,” Ginsberg said, during which nonprofits are eligible for gifts for having the most individual donors, or for receiving a donation between 2 and 4 a.m. This year, because of the pandemic, Ginsberg said many of those prize amounts were turned into matching funds so the contest could better share the wealth among all its participating organizations.

New Haven’s Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services easily led the pack on the scoreboard, securing $148,000 in funding through the fundraiser.

“It’s going to be a huge help, because there has been a cut in government funding because the refugee program has been cut,” said IRIS Executive Director Chris George.

Originally, IRIS hoped to resettle about 200 refugees this year, but it now appears that number will be below 100. The funding that follows refugees to resettlement agencies such as IRIS helps them to sustain other programs, such as legal services and education programs.

“It just confirms what I’ve always said about the Greater New Haven area and Connecticut in general: it’s a very immigrant-friendly community,” he said.

Hamden’s Best Video Film and Cultural Center exceeded its $40,000 fundraising goal by nearly $8,000.

“The money we raised through the Great Give will come in exceedingly handy because of our income losses due to having to close in mid-March,” said BVFCC Executive Director Hank Hoffman. “As a nonprofit organization our business model is built on encouraging public gatherings, so it’s built around our events.”

Although its emphasis on communal gatherings is to the detriment of BVFCC’s revenue during a pandemic, Hoffman said the network of people affiliated with space helped to rally and mobilize the community to recoup the losses.

“We did a lot of reaching out early on, building up to it and creating in the public a sense that it was coming and it was important to us and we’re looking for their support,” he said.

BVFCC has remained active on its social media profiles, sharing videos of past performances in the space and engaging its community.

As the Great Give doubled its fundraising total from last year, so, too, did BVFCC.

“Given the financial difficulties people are in these days, it was hard to know what would happen this year,” Hoffman said.

“One of the things that’s great is the synergistic energy of having a lot of organizations participating,” he said. “There’s a lot of groups raising the profile of the group itself, which helps individual groups and the community-wide fundraising effort.”

Havenly Treats ranked 10th of more than 375 participating nonprofits for the total amount raised, but placed first for peer-to-peer fundraising, earning an additional $5,000. Ginsberg said one advantage of the fundraiser is its ability to help nonprofits that aren’t large enough to have a full-time employee working in development; enlisting the help of a network of about 100 to raise at least $200 each helped Havenly Treats to win the prize and increase its fundraising total.

“This really allowed us to get back on our feet and to survive and give back, which I think is really incredible,” Passoni said. “It’s a testament to how important the Community Foundation is in New Haven and how many nonprofits were basically facing shutting down operations.”

With the money it received through the program, Havenly Treats will pay the rent on its temporary lease in downtown New Haven and will continue to pay its fellows. Passoni said the bakery is not currently selling food, and is instead donating it to people experiencing homelessness and undocumented residents.

“We saw an opportunity to give back, to not just the women in our program, but to the wider community,” she said.

Havenly Treats is starting by preparing 600 meals a week, and Passoni said she hopes to increase that number as they go along. The output of production is not the only way the bakery is hoping to expand, though. In spite of the threat the pandemic posed to its operations, Passoni said Havenly Treats hopes to double the entire size of the program by fall.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com

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