Lack of donations for Elizabeth Fry Society leads to reduced services

Katelyn Lucas, the executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society, said a lack of donations is forcing her organization, which helps incarcerated women, to consider reducing services

Calgary — A drop in donations may mean fewer ways to help incarcerated woman, says the executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society.

That was the word Tuesday from Katelyn Lucas, who revealed that the organization, which has provided a helping hand for incarcerated women for over half a century, has seen donations plummet in the pandemic.

The reduced funding will affect some of the legal advocacy and court services in southern Alberta, Lucas said.

“We have to start thinking differently about how we are operating,” said Lucas.

One of the ways in which the organization is trying to mitigate the drop in funding is through launching alternative fundraising events.

An online auction is one of the ways to raise money for programs during these challenging times.

“The auction was really meant to leverage opportunity to move into 2021 where we will start to diversify our funding,” said Lucas.

For anyone who missed the chance to bid online, the society will accept donations year-round.

As far as the percentage of donations that go to client services or supports, that would be 100 cents on the dollar.

“They (donations) go directly to the client supports or services," Lucas said. "We don’t use it for overhead or administrative dollars, we use it specifically to support the populations that we serve.”

They are currently at about 75 per cent of the auction goal.

There was about $50,000 worth of items provided for the online auction.

The Elizabeth Fry Society has served the community for 55 years.