Canmore rings his bell to encourage contributions to the Salvation Army

November 24, 1999
Web posted at: 11:47 p.m. EST (0447 GMT)

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NEW YORK (CNN) -- The man ringing the bell outside New York's Penn Station is a soldier -- for the Salvation Army -- whose mission this holiday season is to collect donations in the familiar kettle.

"I'm delighted to be out here," said Oliver Canmore of the Salvation Army. "I have a wonderful time, and the people are very generous, too!

His bell is an important part of his job because it inspires giving -- even among harried New Yorkers.

	VIDEO
Correspondent Frank Buckley looks at how the Salvation Army rose to the top of the Philanthropy 400 Windows Media 28K 80K

"Sometimes they are going like in a daze," Canmore said of Manhattan's pedestrians. "But they hear the bell or they hear your voice and they say, 'Oh the Salvation Army, I have to contribute.'"

People do contribute -- to the tune of $79 million a year in Christmas kettle donations. Add in revenue from thrift shops, direct mail donations, government funding and other sources, and the figure balloons to $1.2 billion.

That figure puts the Salvation Army at the top of the Philanthropy 400 -- which ranks the nation's charities.

The next closest charity in terms of private support is the YMCA, which brought in $629.3 million, about half what the Salvation Army collected.

People have a lot of confidence in the Salvation Army," the editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Stacy Palmer, said. "They know what it is they're doing."

Thanks to personal contributions, revenue from thrift shops and government funding, the Salvation Army stands at the top of the Philanthropy 400

"And when they give us a dollar, they know we get two dollars worth out of it," said Salvation Army Capt. Robert Dixon.

Donations are used to feed the poor, provide shelter for disaster victims and help the homeless.

The organization is a church that was set-up with a military structure more than a century ago in England. Ministers hold officer rank, and there are 120,000 soldiers who work in 103 countries.

"We are stewards of a tremendous amount of public money, and we take that very seriously and build into that checks and balances so that we're very accountable for that," said Col. William LaMarr.

The organization is accountable for more than $1 billion, some of it still donated one dollar at a time.

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