Ring-a-ding zip — Red Kettles go cashless

Local Salvation Army donation program takes credit cards for the first time

By Kevin Harden

Pamplin Media Group, Nov 20, 2009, Updated Nov 24, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

Jim Clark / Gresham Outlook

Salvation Army employee Shirley Collison greets customers at the Gresham Fred Meyer store. The Salvation Army is now wired in to take credit and debit cards. Collison has worked for the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle program at the Gresham Fred Meyer location for seven years.

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Cashless society, meet the cashless Red Kettle donation.

No need for a rattle of coins this holiday season. Just swipe your debit/credit card and stuff the receipt into the familiar kettle. Your donation is electronically sent to the Salvation Army’s annual fundraising program.

It’s all part of the charitable group’s effort to jump into the electronic donation world with both feet.

Salvation Army Red Kettle volunteers began using the card-swipe donation machines Thursday morning at the Gresham Fred Meyer store, 2497 N.E. Burnside Road. Two other cashless donation machines will be available beginning Friday morning at the Macy’s store in Tigard’s Washington Square, in the upper level, and at the upper level doors at Macy’s Lloyd Center store in Portland.

Another machine begins taking donations Friday, Nov. 27, outside the main doors of the downtown Portland Nordstrom store.

“This is cool,” said Maj. James Sullivan, who has been ringing the bell and working on the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle program for about 31 years. “This is tax deductible, so if people want to give $500 they can do it. It’s pretty slick.”

A familiar holiday soundtrack

The Salvation Army’s Portland Metro Department will have about 140 Red Kettle donation sites across the region this holiday season. The division makes about 5 percent of its donation budget during the six weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas, when busy shoppers are shuffling in and out of stores to the familiar ring-a-ding-a-ling soundtrack of volunteer bell ringers.

The Red Kettle program has been a staple of the holiday season since it was introduced on the West Coast in 1891 to provide Christmas dinner for San Francisco’s poor. Salvation Army Capt. Joseph McFee placed a large “Simpson’s pot” on a stage coach landing in the city and people tossed donations into the pot.

An Elavon Verifone credit card swipe machine will be used by the Salvation Army for cashless donations at four sites around the Portland area. The machines went into action Thursday morning in Gresham. JONATHAN HOUSE/PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP

It grew in popularity and was exported to Boston in 1895 by traveling Salvation Army officers.

Since then, the program has grown to thousands of Red Kettles and tens of thousands of volunteers every year across the nation. Money raised by the kettle donations funds Salvation Army social programs.

Cashless donation sites are new this year in Portland. A pilot program last year in Dallas, Texas, Los Angeles and Colorado Springs, Colo., showed some success with the machines, and the Salvation Army’s local divisions have been given the green light to try them in other places.

Jaime Joswick, Salvation Army national spokeswoman in Alexandria, Va., said the program showed promise in those cities last year when it helped bump up the amount of individual donations.

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