As furnaces work overtime and utility bills climb, employees and volunteers at the Salvation Army scramble to catch up with their busiest time of the year. The degree of need varies from each family and individual, but is always present.

Just before 1 p.m. Friday, a few people wait in a brisk wind outside the Salvation Army’s main doors on First Avenue Northeast. One needs assistance. Another is waiting to restock the food shelf. The building is mostly vacant, but that’s about to change. This time of year is hectic.

Lt. David Amick had recently finished a morning meeting. He had little room in his schedule, especially in the days just before Thanksgiving, but sat down for about 20 minutes and offered some insight.

“It gets worse as the season goes along,” Amick said about long, stressful workdays. “But you know, the thing is, it’s rewarding.”

As always, the Salvation Army could use more volunteers, more food, more funding. It’s the type of operation where there really can’t be too much of a good thing. But this holiday season, resources are stretched thinner than last year.

The sound of need

The food shelf, free community meals, utilities assistance: All of these are vital to Austin residents. Ask Amick though, and the most critical push for Salvation Army is happening now.

“This time of year, right now? Our Christmas goal,” Amick said with certainty. “If we don’t make our Christmas goal, we have a tough time taking care of these programs.”

The Salvation Army’s kettle drive — in which volunteers and some paid staffers ring bells in front of stores from Thanksgiving to Christmas — is the organization’s biggest fundraising effort of the year. It helps pay some of the organization’s overhead. This year, like last, Austin’s Salvation Army seeks $60,000 from the kettle drive. Last year bell ringers helped bring in $56,400, just shy of the goal. This year, however, organizers need volunteers for the drive, so they don’t have to pay part-time help to ring bells and watch kettles — a counterproductive move but often necessary.

Thus far, the 2013 kettle drive has been open during two weekends and raised $3,388.02. The full-time push starts this Friday. Kettles will be in front of both doors at Walmart, both doors at Hy-Vee, Walgreens, Sterling Main Street and Jim’s SuperValue, every day until Christmas Eve, except on Sundays.

The first year of online volunteer registration is available at registertoring.com.

Users click on the location they want, pick a date and see what is available. Users receive a confirmation and email updates about when they are supposed to ring. Volunteers can also call 507-437-4566 to sign up. As of Tuesday, 1,300 kettle hours had been reserved, but 656 remained.

Donors, on the other hand, can also give online at www.salvationarmynorth.org/ community/austin by clicking on the red kettle.

Amick hopes those little red kettles fill up quickly. Many residents are counting on it.

The rush is on

Two weeks ago, Salvation Army employees registered swarms of applicants for free Thanksgiving baskets for their families, all during another busy run on the food shelf.

“We didn’t have the time to restock because there were so many people,” Amick said.

On Tuesday this week, Lori Espe, Salvation Army caseworker, was busy checking off names and distributing some of those 255 baskets to families, up from 223 baskets in 2012. She returned to the office late afternoon, swamped with requests.

“I’m getting a lot more calls than I have ever gotten before,” Espe said about inquiries for various types of assistance.

In the late ‘90s, when Espe joined the Salvation Army, her job wasn’t as demanding. Sixty clients a month was the expectation, which still seemed like a significant need in the community. Today, people seek assistance through many Salvation Army programs, which include utilities, rent, prescriptions, gas vouchers to get to clinics, the food shelf, backpack program, free community meal, Thanksgiving dinners and a Christmas toy drive.

“The rent, utilities, we’ve had more requests than we’ve ever had,” Espe said.

Rising hunger

More than a decade ago, 800 individuals or families per year — inquiring about food, clothing and help with bills — seemed like a lot.

“At one time I counted and said, ‘Oh my God, 800 clients,’ and that was like a lot,” Espe said.

Fast forward 15 years and triple the gas prices, and things are different — way different.

Espe records the number of clients, how many people are in their families and how much assistance they need. Last year she met with 2,688. That was just for the food shelf.

Of course, not all of them qualify. This year, there are 2,956 food shelf inquiries, and counting.

More factors are causing the increase. The regional Channel One Food Bank in Rochester, which also has a food shelf, tightened its old restrictions on out-of county food shelf clients. Too many people were taking advantage of the system.

“It’s not even a change, so much as an enforcement of how our food shelf was always set up,” said Jennifer Woodward, regional food bank executive director.

In a few cases, Woodward discovered people were taking food from Channel One, along with food from area food shelves often supplied by Channel One.

Regardless, since reinforcing the rules, the Salvation Army in Austin has nearly doubled its shipments from Channel One, from about $2,500 of food per month to $5,000, Amick said.

The Austin food shelf gets USDA grants to purchase mass amounts of food from Channel One. When it needs to, Salvation Army uses its own budget to get food from Channel One, which it can purchase at a fraction of grocery store prices. For that reason, monetary donations toward the food shelf can go farther than direct donations of cans and boxes.

On Monday, a delivery truck backed up to the Salvation Army loading dock. Employees and volunteers scrambled to simply get food inside the building; the rest could be dealt with later. An hour later, 8,000 pounds of food from Channel One lay unstocked, waiting for shelves. That food, Espe said, will last about two weeks.

Another issue could put more strain on the food shelf: a decrease in benefits in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Oh, SNAP

While benefits for SNAP recipients went up in October to compensate for the cost of living, the expiration of increased benefits from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 means benefits will go down, about $36 per month for a family of four, and so on. As of Oct. 31, there were 2,209 SNAP cases in Mower County serving 4,581 people.

Mower County Health and Human Services Director Julie Stevermer hasn’t yet heard major effects, or of complaints from people unaware the increased benefits were expiring. And thus far, the changes haven’t resulted in another rush at the food shelf. But Espe suspects that several months down the road, some families will start to feel the compounded effects of missing those dollars each month.

At Channel One, Woodward fears the effect on a larger scale because the organization distributes so much food. Last year the Rochester center distributed just shy of 9 million pounds of food. And from just July through October 2013, distribution was up by 535,000 pounds.

“All of those hunger-relief entities are going to be stung by this,” Woodward said. “We do anticipate a greater need.”

Now concerned human services officials are closely eyeing the federal Farm Bill, hoping legislators don’t approve a potential $40-billion cut to the SNAP program.

“We’ve tried to make it clear that $40 billion in cuts will be catastrophic,” Woodward said.

In constant flux

For now, Salvation Army officials are keeping their eyes on the kettles, asking for Christmas toys and keeping their fingers crossed to make it through spring. The rush isn’t over after the holidays. Espe anticipates plenty of residents pleading for utilities assistance from January through March, especially if spring is cold and extended like it was this year.

As unfortunate residents catch up on their bills, turn off their heaters and ease into summer, the Salvation Army will restock shelves, catch its breath and downshift a gear. Then it’s full throttle into next fall for another pass, in a scramble that has no finish line.