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PHILANTHROPY: ANDREA BALL The Do Good Deli is done doing good. The nonprofit-owned sandwich shop closed last month. The Do Good Deli opened in November 2007 as a money-making venture for Caritas, a charity that helps homeless and low-income people. Leaders had hoped the business would net about $30,000 a year for the organization, which would then use the proceeds to support its other programs. But the deli &mdash located at 211 E. Seventh St., Lower Level No. 101 &mdash never made money, said Beth Atherton, Caritas’ executive director. So the charity abandoned the venture to shift its energy to existing projects. “It was a distraction for us to focus on an earned- income project when we needed to focus on our clients,” she said.
A big factor in the decision, Atherton said, was the escalating demand that has hit basic-needs service providers in the last year. In the first six months of 2008, Caritas turned away 579 applicants because of a lack of resources. In 2009, that number was 2,372.