How did we pay for that? And how do we pay to meet today’s increased need? That's the question, and one that our Board of Directors -- and the Boards of many nonprofits -- are grappling with right now. Some programs have to fall victim to the budget axe. Preventive-services programs are usually the first to go. But once we’ve gone bare bones, the question becomes: When do we start dipping into our reserves? And when we do dip, how deep do we go?

Some business experts say you can take no more than 5% out of your reserves to help get you through tough times. But I say no, we need to do more, and today is the rainy day we’ve saved for. We must spend when the need is greatest. I believe the goodwill generated from the good works of nonprofits today will come back to all of us in donations when the market improves.

During the Great Depression, we had huge deficits for many, many years. But real estate saved us. We recovered our losses in the 1940s by selling property that we owned in formerly poor communities that had gentrified. Then in the 1950s, we went on a building boom, investing in poor neighborhoods such as Harlem. If you’re familiar with New York real estate, you know that prices in Harlem have gone quite high in the last 60 years.

Fortunately for us, we have this option (although no one wants to have to utilize it, but we will if it’s what we have to do to keep children housed and fed). The scary part is that we expect this to be a prolonged period of scarcity. What if we have to dip, dip, dip for 5 years in a row? This is where fundraising and donor support can make a huge difference in the life of a social-service agency. We still need to solicit donor dollars, we still need to hold the fundraisers, and we need the people who have supported us in the past, as well as new contributors, to do their part to keep our programs running.

And that's the scary truth for anyone who runs a nonprofit: In the end, we're beholden to people willing to give their money away. To those who do it, I say thank you. To those on the fence, I say this: Don’t be afraid to give away your money. Your generosity will help keep our whole society afloat during these difficult times.