BALTIMORE (Map, News) - To the Salvation Army’s Baltimore area commander, Maj. Gary Haupt, organizational success is reflected in less staff, not more.

“Our staff is not growing,” Haupt told The Examiner, touting a recent reorganization to make the Baltimore Command — Baltimore City and County as well as Howard, Carroll and northern Anne Arundel counties — “lean and muscular,” so as to apply more resources to services than to administration.

The nonprofit, “the oldest continuing expression of Salvation Army work in the United States,” according to Haupt, now devotes a full 83 percent of its $5 million annual budget to outreach — through the work of 45 employees and eight commissioned ordained clergy officers.

Known best perhaps for its Red Kettle cash-collection campaign around Christmas, the Salvation Army — an offshoot of Methodism dedicated to the neediest of the needy — conducts a variety of social and religious service programs to “bring the gospel of Jesus Christ into the physical, emotional and spiritual lives of the underclass,” Haupt said.

It does this through a military-type organization, designed to move “personnel and materiel very quickly,” and through its three corps of community worship and service centers, according to the organization’s Web site.

These oversee area religious and outreach activities that include a homeless shelter; five family service centers for food, clothing and rental assistance; three boys and girls clubs for recreational, educational and empowerment instruction; and its mobile “Feed More” program — a six-night-a-week, year-round food distribution effort.

“They’re really diverse in what they do,” said Kate Scherr, director of volunteer services for Baltimore-based Business Volunteers Unlimited, a Salvation Army partner. “They are a great partner to work with, being flexible, accommodating and generous. And they do an excellent job with volunteers.”

“Clients come back to tell us how much they appreciate us,” said Lauren Proctor, the nonprofit’s director of its homeless shelter.

The command’s 2007 Red Kettle campaign, Haupt said, raised a goal-topping $437,000 as compared with $350,000 in 2006 — proceeds of which go primarily to its seasonal Angel Tree program, a Christmas effort that provided 38,000 gifts to area needy in 2006.

“I have seen that before at other Salvation Army locations,” Haupt said of the unusual Red Kettle response in a time of slowing economic growth, “where, when times get tough, interestingly, people seem to step up to the plate.”

To donate

Salvation Army

Baltimore Area Command

814 Light St.

Baltimore MD 21230

410-783-2920; tsabaltimore.org