Salvation Army needs help ringing in this years red kettle bins

TOPEKA (KSNT) - The holiday season is in full swing, and so is the season of bell ringers for the Salvation Army.

Bell ringing for the Salvation Army is a holiday tradition going back decades. But now, the non-profit needs your help in keeping the tradition alive.

"We're currently set up for 23 different locations downtown," Major Tom Mcdowell of the Topeka Salvation Army said. "Some of those locations will wait just a few more days until we begin to ring, and we need more bell ringers to cover all of them." 

While volunteering your time is preferred, bell ringers do have the chance to get paid.

"Normally those ringers are people who would be receiving help from us anyway," Mcdowell said. "So in this way we're kind of killing two birds with one stone. We're helping them but they're also helping us."

The decrease in workers has one main cause to blame- the corona virus. Mcdowell tells us that back in 2018 the kettles raised $200,000. In the year of 2020 when Covid was at it's peak, they raised $85,000. Mcdowell says the decrease in donations is not due to people deciding not to donate, but because there weren't enough people to cover enough kettles.

There is a solution to get the kettle's back to the way they were. It starts with a new generation of ringers.

"Currently we're about at 10% of the available hours that have been reserved by volunteers, and we'd like to get that number to 30%," Mcdowell said. "But the only way we can do that is if we get new ringers, because most of our long-time ringers are already signed up. Every hour that's covered brings in a substantial donation from the public."

If you want to become a bell ringer for this holiday season, click here.

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