Oahu’s largest Meals on Wheels program this month cut back on the number of meals it delivers each week to senior citizens in a sign of the continuing stress on Hawaii’s social service and nonprofit agencies.

With more people needing help while government contributions and private donations are flat or down, "The rest of 2012 will be bumpy and 2013 could be worse," said Kelvin Taketa, president and CEO of the Hawai‘i Community Foundation, which works to help Hawaii’s nonprofit groups.

On July 1, Lanakila Meals on Wheels began cutting the number of meals it delivers to more than 800 senior citizens across Oahu from five meals a week to four.

Clients such as Elsie Robello, 81, often stretch a single meal to cover lunch and dinner. So losing one meal a week means Robello has been cooking scrambled eggs to replace the balanced, low-fat food she normally gets from Lanakila Meals on Wheels.

"I like eggs, but we need help," Robello said last week after volunteer driver Les Miller delivered bean soup, carrots, a banana, 1 percent milk and a ham-and-cheese sandwich on whole-wheat bread. "All of us kupuna need help."

The typical Lanakila Meals on Wheels client is an Asian or Polynesian woman in her mid-80s, living alone on a fixed monthly income of $1,000, said Lyn Moku, the organization’s director.

For many clients, the visits from an unpaid volunteer driver represent their only human contact, Moku said.

"I’m grateful," Robello said as Miller left her one-bedroom, one-bath apartment in Kaneohe. "I’m very, very grateful."

Robello is one of the luckier Lanakila Meals on Wheels clients because the agency now has a waiting list of 400 people hoping to receive meals.

"Because we have this shortage right now of funds, we have not been able to bring anyone into the program," Moku said.

Across the country, the growing pressure on nonprofit groups had been masked by the now-defunct federal stimulus, Taketa said.

With the stimulus money gone, Taketa said, the funding problem for nonprofits is worse in Hawaii "where we have a small nonprofit population that’s servicing a very fragmented group of people where the cost of services is higher."

A 2009 survey by the Hawai‘i Community Foundation found that two-thirds of all money for Hawaii nonprofit groups comes from state and federal funds.

A new survey is planned this year, but so far Taketa is hearing anecdotally that "state and federal contributions are down significantly and it’s getting worse and it’s not being made up by private, charitable contributions. There’s just not enough charitable dollars for that."

State legislators made the donation picture worse in 2011 by placing a $50,000 cap on itemized tax deductions that include charitable giving through 2015, said Lisa Maruyama, president and CEO of the Hawai‘i Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations.

While the passage of Act 97 will generate an estimated $24 million annually to the state, Maruyama said it’s already hurting "organizations that rely heavily on individual donors. They’re now hearing from donors that they may not give as much or they may not give at all."

The Hawai‘i Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations will work to repeal Act 97 next session because "nonprofits have been hanging on for dear life during this down economy," Maruyama said. "They’re going to hit a rock wall at some point."

At the Hawaiian and Pacific Islands division of The Salvation Army, contributions from the city, state and federal government fell by more than $1.1 million — from $13,474,000 in fiscal year 2010 to $12,317,000 in fiscal year 2011, said spokesman Daniel de Castro.

At the same time, private donations were up — from $4.2 million in fiscal year 2010 to $4.6 million in fiscal year 2011, de Castro said.

Despite the drop in government contributions, de Castro said, "People are still very generous in their donations because so many people are hurting."

At the same time that government funding was falling, the number of people across the islands coming to The Salvation Army for help jumped from 88,407 in fiscal year 2010 to 106,352 the following year, de Castro said.

"That’s very telling to us that more people are actually struggling in this economy," de Castro said.

The number of people seeking meals at Salvation Army kitchens rose from 454,000 in 2010 to 601,000 in 2011, de Castro said. And the number of families getting one-time, financial housing assistance increased from 420 in 2010 to 767 in fiscal year 2011.

"In terms of food and housing, more people are really struggling," de Castro said.

At the Hawaii Foodbank, the amount of food donations dropped dramatically last year by more than 1 million pounds.

To continue distributing 48,000 pounds of food every day, five days a week, the Hawaii Foodbank last year had to make its biggest food purchase ever — 3.4 million pounds, or 1.3 million pounds more than it had to buy the year before.

"Without a doubt, it was our biggest purchase," said Hawaii Foodbank President Dick Grimm.

Hawai‘i Meals on Wheels, which is separate from Lanakila Meals on Wheels, is currently 20 percent short of its $1.3 million budget for its food program, said the group’s executive director, Claire Shimabukuro.

"It is a slow year for us," Shimabukuro said as she delivered food last week. "But we can’t afford to cut people off."

Donations from individuals, foundations, corporations and workplaces are all off about 10 percent to 15 percent from last year. But Hawai‘i Meals on Wheels still plans to increase its deliveries this year to its 670 clients — from 77,000 meals in fiscal year 2011 to 79,000 meals this year.

Despite a drop in donations, Hawai‘i Meals on Wheels will tap into its rainy-day fund to serve even more meals this year because of the increased need for food on Oahu, Shimabukuro said.

"The future is uncertain for everyone," she said. "But we’ve been saving for a rainy day. We’re not going to cut anyone. In the moral compass sense, we can’t."

At Lanakila Meals on Wheels, federal and state funding remains flat at $622,000. Private donations of $179,000 were up from the year before, "but down from the years prior," said Marian Tsuji, president and CEO of Lanakila Pacific.

The bigger financial problem was a $60,000 deficit in fiscal year 2012 — after a $260,000 deficit the year before, Tsuji said.

"With an average of 860 seniors getting meals, we realized what we could really afford was more like 588," Tsuji said. "But we didn’t want to just cut 200 seniors. So it was a strategic decision to cut everybody back one meal."

In her home in Kaneohe, Jewel Purdy, 66, appreciated the sandwich, soup, carrots, banana and milk that Miller brought her last week.

And even if she’ll be getting one fewer meal each week from now on, Purdy said she’s grateful for what she has already received.

"Cutbacks are understandable," Purdy said. "You have to go with the flow. But it is wonderful to have it, those Meals on Wheels."