PORTLAND – Donations to the Bruce Roberts Toy Fund are down this season, but the fund’s director is hopeful that its supporters will continue to demonstrate their generosity.

Readers of The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram provide toys through the fund to needy children in Cumberland, York, Lincoln, Sagadahoc and Knox counties. Contributions this season now stand at just over $196,090. That compares to the record-breaking $260,000 collected last season.

“We understand that in this economy everybody — including our donors — is suffering,” said Kathleen Meade, the fund’s director.

The toy fund accepts donations year-round for the next Christmas season. The period from Thanksgiving through the first weeks of the New Year is typically the most active period for donations. This year, however, contributions dropped precipitously by early January.

“That’s a big deal for us to have it completely stop. That’s never happened before,” said Susan Dobieski, the assistant to the director and chief donations processor.

This season is not far off from 2008, when donors provided $193,000 to the fund. But with the cost of toys rising, Meade is hoping that this year’s total will reach at least $220,000.

Meade believes confusion about the toy fund’s location may have contributed to this season’s lower figures. After many years at 385 Congress St., the fund moved to the Masonic Temple on Chestnut Street before settling into its current space at One City Center, where the newspapers’ offices are now located.

Donations are accepted in person at the newspapers’ offices on the fifth floor of One City Center and online at www.pressherald.com/special/bruce_roberts_toy_fund.html. They can also be mailed to Bruce Roberts Toy Fund, P.O. Box 7310, Portland, ME 04112.

The fund is looking into using Facebook, Twitter and other social media to reach out to the next generation of donors, Meade said.

The newspapers’ readers have been making the holidays brighter for children since 1949. In that year, Portland Evening Express editor Robert Bruce Beith, writing under the pen name Bruce Roberts, asked readers to help provide a $1 toy to each of the city’s 1,000 neediest children. Readers surpassed that goal by providing $3,716.

These days, the toy fund provides gift packs with new, safe, age-appropriate toys for some 7,000 children. With each gift pack typically containing four items, the fund provides about 28,000 toys each year. Donors dollars go farther when spent through the fund, which is able to get a discount through bulk purchasing.

“There aren’t enough words that could describe how happy you made me. You took so much worry from me and brought so much happiness to my boys,” one mother wrote in a thank you note.

Donations range from a few dollars to contributions upwards of $10,000. They come from individuals and groups including schoolchildren, churchgoers, members of sports teams, office workers and pub patrons.

This year, a father whose family received toys from the fund donated $10 himself. He wrote that he wanted to provide thanks for the help.

“We are blessed,” he wrote.

Staff Writer Ann S. Kim can be contacted at 791-6383 or at:

akim@pressherald.com