Salvation Army struggling with this year's red kettles

Donations and volunteers are down this year as the Salvation Army tries to raise money for those in need this holiday season during the pandemic.

Army red kettles as opposed to last year...and there is now a call for help across the country.

Here in the empire state division, which covers 48 counties across the state....salvation army officials say donations are down 50 percent!

Division officials say they are now trying to 'rescue christmas'.....and asking for people in each community to help make that happen.

We spoke to captain micheal harrington with the salvation army of utica this morning...who says covid has also taken a big hit on the number of volunteers locally to ring those bells.

Tc : 02:06 - 2:40 "we're having a hard time to find people to volunteer for one, second, brick and mortar stores, most people are doing online shopping right now unless people are carrying cash so with all that combined credit kind of a perfect storm for us was really struggling to make our goal this year which puts our programs in jeopardy for the much needed assistance that is being requested this year and request this year i love 155%."

Here in utica, the red kettle campaign is only at about 20 percent of it's goal of $55,000 to help the local community.

So far only receiving about $11,000.

Still ahead-- a look at the