A nonprofit group that provides hundreds of low-income families with financial help and counseling may be forced to close its doors without additional funding from Fairfax County, the group’s executive director said in a last-ditch bidfor aid on Monday.
Western Fairfax Christian Ministries, whose principal mission is to prevent residents from slipping into homelessness, says a costly headquarters relocation and dwindling revenue have put the group’s continued existence in question.
County staff and representatives of the group met Monday afternoon in an eleventh-hour attempt to forge an agreement that would keep the group in operation. On top of the county’s yearly appropriation, they are seeking $120,000 to cover the shortfall.
Members of Western Fairfax Christian Ministries also came before the Board of Supervisors that morning.
“We have been doing this for 20 years, [and] this is the first time we have ever come to [the board] to ask for assistance with our operating costs,” Executive Director Dorothy Fonow told reporters.
Supervisors, however, had just wrapped up a lengthy budget approval process and reacted angrily to the request, some saying they first heard of it only days ago.
Chairman Gerald Connolly lambasted the group’s timing and urged that the county have full access to its bookkeeping.
He threatened to expel Fonow from the meeting after she spoke up to rebut a criticism. After a second exchange early that evening, she said she was “speechless” with how Connolly had handled their appeal for funds.
Fonow said the group’s closing could be imminent, with their landlord threatening to take them to court for nonpayment of rent. In a written request to the Board of Supervisors in March, she wrote that their $1,000 per month rent jumped tenfold after they moved their office from Centreville to Chantilly in 2003. Fundraising efforts and the group’s thrift store had netted less revenue than expected, she wrote.
