After a decision by Target Corp. to ban holiday bell ringers, the Salvation Army is asking people to volunteer, donate and suggest new locations with lots of foot traffic.
Bell ringers raised more than $8 million nationally outside Targets last year.
That amount is a lot to make up, a Salvation Army spokeswoman said Tuesday. That includes more than $750,000 in the Twin Cities area and more than $1 million in the charity's Minnesota and North Dakota district.
Target said earlier this week that the Salvation Army had been an exception to a longstanding ban on solicitations at stores. The company said that it decided earlier this year to apply that policy consistently and nationally, and that it had told the charity about its position last January.
'We don't have a policy concerning the Salvation Army,' Target's spokeswoman, Carolyn Brookter, said Tuesday.
'We have a policy concerning no solicitations,' Brookter said. 'We've always had a no-solicitation policy.'
The Salvation Army's local headquarters in Roseville had received about two dozen supportive phone calls and e-mails by Tuesday afternoon after an article appeared in the Star Tribune. Target did not return calls about reactions it received.
The newspaper received more than a dozen e-mails, almost all of them supporting the charity. People asked how to complain to Target, or they suggested alternatives, such as bell-ringing outside of pricey coffee shops.
Salvation Army solicitations should be grandfathered in at Target stores, said reader Angela Burkhardt. 'The holidays will not be the same without the reminder of charity and those less fortunate than us. I will be shopping at stores this season that encourage the loving spirit of the bell ringers.'
Dorie Hernandez said she'll go elsewhere, too, and 'a huge Bah Humbug on Target.'
In Minnesota and North Dakota, the Salvation Army already is wrestling with a $1 million deficit on a budget of $38 million this year, spokeswoman Annette Bauer said. Nearly 60 percent of that comes from contributions, four-fifths of it from individuals, Bauer said.
'Many, many people are giving under $100 a year,' she said, adding that the organization has sought to diversify its funding base.
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