Most of the time lately there is a line outside Kristy Krumbach's door when she comes back from her lunch break. Only in the days after food stamps come out can she handle the flow without making people sign up for a time slot.

A case worker at the Rapid City Salvation Army, Krumbach is the person people go to when they are moving into a new place and need help with a deposit, or when they are behind on the gas bill and the electricity is about to be shut off, or when they have no warm clothing and winter is coming.

But her ability to help has been limited lately by a combination of a growing need and dwindling resources. The Salvation Army, United Way of the Black Hills and some other local charitable organizations that rely on holiday-time giving are concerned the depressed economy will produce a drop in donations just when they're needed the most.

"We see more need now than we have in a long time," Salvation Army Captain Rob Gauthier said. He's even had to turn people away more often.

"We use up the money we have, and we don't have any more to give. It's heartbreaking."

He hopes the annual bell-ringing campaign will fill the coffers. The kettles come out Friday, Nov. 21 across the city.

"We're really counting on that campaign," Gauthier said. "That's where we raise the vast majority of our money."

United Way executive director Renee Parker is optimistic that a generous community will meet the growing need, though donations have been coming in more slowly than last year.

"We are praying donations increase in the next few weeks as we are $156,449 below what we had raised at this time last year," she said Friday in an e-mail.

United Way so far this year has collected $1,488,920 of its $2.1 million goal, as of Friday. The campaign aims to wrap up by Thanksgiving, so as not to compete with holiday donation drives, but can last through the year if need be, Parker said. United Way, which contributes to 43 non-profit groups in the Hills, has never missed its goal in her 16 years here, and Parker expects another successful year, though she worries.

"If we don't meet our goal we wonder what programs we will have to scale back, and we hope we don't have to scale back any programs because the need is so great," Parker said. "I think one of the biggest fallacies we have - and I heard it a lot in this election - people think that people who need help are not helping themselves, they're just the deadbeats, and that's not it. I could tell you story after story of families who are working two or three jobs and struggling to put food on the table and make ends meet."

Krumbach agreed, saying said it's not that the people who come to the Salvation Army for help aren't willing to work. But often they're facing medical bills that absorb most of their resources, or the jobs they do have aren't steady or don't pay enough to meet their families' basic needs.

Cherita Valois came in Wednesday asking for help getting some new clothes.

"The only two pairs of pants I own are this one and one other one at the house," she said. She would like to buy some herself, but she said her rent had recently been raised, "just a couple bucks," but enough to put a dent in her budget.

Krumbach gave her a clothing voucher she could use at the Salvation Army thrift store, to pick out three outfits, a coat and a pair of shoes or boots.

She also helped a thankful Jessica Rosenberger, who moved here this week from Arizona to attend a nursing program in Rapid City offered by the University of South Dakota.

Rosenberger needed warm clothing for her daughters, 10 and 6, and Krumbach gave them vouchers for the thrift store, where they went to look for coats to wear to school, with their mother promising to buy them something nicer as soon as she got a job.

Rosenberger was a waitress in Phoenix, where the housing market "has completely crashed," she said. "Everybody's pinching pennies. The main reason I'm up here is because of the economy."

Things are up and down at the Rapid City Community Food Bank, where demand has grown 25 to 30 percent this year.

Since October, when manager Monica Leitheiser told the Journal the food bank was seeing decreased donations, "We've just been swamped with semis," she said. The truckloads come through the Feeding America program, which collects from food manufacturers like Kraft. Donations including those from United Way allow the food bank to pay to transport the donated food.

"So it's looking better, but the demand is up, so it's not going to last as long," Leitheiser said.

And while the trucks contained plenty of frozen goods, the shelves at the food bank that hold dry goods like cereal, pasta and peanut butter were bare last week.

This is the best time of year for the food pantry, as holiday drives kick into gear, including the Christmas barrels at schools, stores and churches, and the Boy Scout drive the second Saturday of December. Whether givers will be as generous in this economy amid layoffs remains to be seen.

"I wish I had a crystal ball," Leitheiser said.

Pantry manager Tim Lipp, who works directly with people who come in to help feed their families, knows it will take more this year.

"There's a lot of people that are coming that have never used it before," he said. While he sees some people who try to rely too much on the pantry and abuse his generosity, Lipp said for most, "It's getting tougher and tougher."

Richard Counts, a pastor who was at the food bank shopping for the Lord's Kitchen pantry in Whitewood, filled his cart the best he could, with a random assortment: shirts, shampoo, potato chips, Immodium.

"The shelves are pretty empty," he said. But he said he had faith in God to provide, believing that "those that do have resources" will help those who don't.

In another aisle Bonnie Hairy Shirt of St. Francis shopped for the St. Francis Indian School, which she said serves community soup suppers and also sends food home with children from needy families. She said the food helps the children learn and concentrate in school.

"If the belly's not full, you just don't want to do nothing else," Hairy Shirt said.

These and the dozens of other agencies served by United Way work together "like a family" to serve the region's needy, whether it's because of joblessness, domestic abuse, poverty or an emergency like a house fire, Parker said.

"What's unfortunate is when economic times are tough, that's when the need is greatest," Parker said. "We're really facing one of those double-edged swords right now. … I've never seen anything like this in our country that we're facing economically."

She is working hard to reverse that trend, with more than 300 trained volunteers handing out more donation packets to local businesses, and Parker herself visiting new businesses that haven't participated in the past.

Among the bright spots are efforts like a National Guard chili feed fundraiser, and the day Scheels employees duct-taped their manager to a pole to raise money.

Parker said she is holding her breath and remaining optimistic.

"I'm still very confident that this community will come through, just like it has in the past," she said. "We have a habit of helping our neighbors before we help ourselves."

This year's goal is a conservative one, less than the United Way brought in the year before.

If donations are still light in December, the United Way could call on schoolchildren, which it hasn't had to do in the last two years, to contribute through fun events like hat days.

"If we were to not meet goal, how could you possibly cut these agencies, when they're telling you every day they're seeing such a significant increase in the need?" Parker said.

Richard Smith, executive director of the local Red Cross, said he is counting on the United Way's contribution to the agency to help them respond to floods and home fires, like the one that left a Rapid City grandmother and her grandchildren homeless recently.

"What the United Way helps us to do, is we were able to get them lodging, give them some money so they could get some food, get their immediate needs met," Smith said.

The Red Cross is stretched this year with a 40 percent increase in the number of responses to fires and disasters, Smith said, for a total of 74 as of Nov. 6.

"We've seen a big number of small house fires just this year," Smith said. "There's no rhyme or reason. They're just happening. Whether people are trying to heat with items that are not necessarily made to heat … it could be the economic impact of not having enough."

Darla Crown, who works in development for the Children's Home Society, called on those who can contribute to do so.

"People in this community are so very generous," she said. When the needs are made known, "People seem to really open their hearts and their wallets."

Crown recently spoke to the Leadership Rapid City group about getting involved in nonprofit and philanthropic board work.

"When the times are tougher than usual, this is the time we really need to pay attention to those organizations that we're involved with," she said. "We can step up and be examples and role models."

People who can't afford to give a lot of money can look at what they do have to offer, Crown pointed out, be it an extra blanket or time spent mentoring a child.

"It's just whatever you have an interest in."