The financial state of nonprofit organizations in the St. Louis region, which try to meet social service needs, is "very worrisome," the director of an annual survey on philanthropy said Thursday.

"The local agencies are holding their own, but it's not a pretty picture," said Amy Rome of the Rome Group, a consulting firm that oversaw a survey of more than 300 nonprofits, foundations and corporate and individual donors.

The survey, released Thursday, found stimulus money is going away fast, many staff and program cuts have been made and charitable foundations, belatedly impacted by the recession, are giving less to nonprofits.

"We're hearing a lot of concern that organizations aren't just trimming the fat but are already cutting into critical staff and programs, a strategy that will be hard to sustain in the long run," Rome told a full auditorium at Washington University on Thursday.

Half of respondents surveyed said they were at more risk in 2009 than 2008; half didn't meet fundraising goals in 2009 and 2008, compared with 29 percent in 2007; half saw decreases in corporate giving, and 42 percent saw decreases in giving from private foundations. Meanwhile, 34 percent saw increases in government funding, partly from the economic stimulus package.

Another recent survey, this one by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, found that 50 percent of nonprofits in the St. Louis area have less than three months' worth of cash reserves in the bank, and 9 percent have none at all. Nationally, those numbers are 61 percent and 12 percent.

Rome said three to six months in cash reserves is a healthy minimum.

Mary McMurtrey, president of Gateway Center for Giving, said foundations were slow to feel the pain of the recession and will likely react in the same way to any economic uptick. "They've seen this decline and in some cases they are not seeing increases for three to five years," she said.

Nongloomy news about giving continues to come from individuals, who, including bequests, accounted for 83 percent of the estimated $303.75 billion in charitable donations in the United States in 2009, according to Giving USA. But total donations dropped 3.6 percent in 2009, the largest fall since the organization started keeping track in 1956.

In the St. Louis area, 80 percent of individuals surveyed by the Rome Group reported that they either gave the same or more in 2009, compared with 2008.

"While giving is down, people are still giving," Rome said.