A quarter here, some spare change there -- between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve last year, The Salvation Army raised nearly $40,000 from its signature Christmas kettles at five local Target stores.

This holiday season, though, Target joined a growing list of corporate giants deciding that nonprofit solicitations aren't welcome at their retail sites, whether they feature ringing bells and red kettles or not.

Since some nonprofits garner from a third to 40 percent of their donations during this time of year, losing access to any high-traffic retail area is devastating.

"It's definitely going to have an impact," said Lt. Col. Joseph DeMichael, divisional commander for The Salvation Army's 28-county Western Pennsylvania area. "When you don't have that kind of opportunity to raise money, it hurts."

For several years, The Salvation Army was the only nonprofit allowed to solicit at Target's 1,313 stores. That rankled other nonprofits that wanted a piece of the same pie. The Minneapolis-based discount retailer finally decided earlier this year it could not single out one nonprofit over another.

"Each year we've been receiving an increasing number of requests to solicit at our stores," said Paula Thornton-Greear, a Target spokeswoman. "If we continue to allow The Salvation Army to solicit, then it opens the doors to other groups to solicit our [customers].

"Our key message is we wanted to be fair and consistent."

For the nonprofits, a no-solicitation policy reduces their contacts with small givers. Research shows that as much as 85 percent of nonprofits' funding is from individual givers, either in direct contributions or bequests. With declining funding streams from foundations, government agencies and corporations, that income becomes even more critical.

Additionally, such income is unrestricted, meaning it can be used in any fashion by the nonprofit. A foundation grant usually is restricted to a specific project.

A 2001 study on giving and volunteering by Washington, D.C.-based Independent Sector found that households that were asked to give made significantly higher contributions ($1,945) than those not asked ($1,114).

"Most people don't give proactively," said Michael Nilsen, public affairs director for the Association of Fundraising Professionals, which represents about 26,000 people who raise funds for charities. "They give when they're asked to give."

Peggy Morrison Outen, founder and executive director of the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management at Robert Morris University, said individual giving is less developed in this region because extraordinarily strong foundation support for nonprofits obviated the need to focus on individual donors.

In areas of the country with less foundation support, individual solicitors may be the biggest fund-raising operation of the year.

The impact of The Salvation Army's kettle campaign goes beyond the change dropped into the kettles, Outen said, in that the next time there's a mailed solicitation, individuals may be more likely to give.

"It makes them visible," she said of the kettles. "People think about them. It's their mission to make people confront their values and remind them to feel responsibility for others."

Besides Target, other large retailers with no-solicitation policies include Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Borders, Circuit City, Home Depot, Kohl's, Lowe's and Toys R Us.

"We've had a no-solicitation policy for a number of years," said Chris Ahearn, a spokeswoman for Lowe's, which has 1,031 stores in 45 states. "One of the reasons people like our stores is because they're clean and uncluttered, and they can get in and out very easily."

Retailers stress that despite their no-solicitation policies, their community involvement remains strong. Target, for example, invests the equivalent of more than $2 million a week in communities around the country, Thornton-Greear said.

Wal-Mart, the country's largest retailer, contributes $158 million annually to local organizations, a spokesman said, and it still allows solicitations. But nonprofits must restrict their fund raising to 14 days per calendar year, and for no more than three consecutive days at a time.

Nevertheless, it remains The Salvation Army's top kettle fund-raising location, with nearly $13 million collected last year at its 3,700 locations.

Nationally, The Salvation Army raised more than $94 million from 20,000 kettle locations. Other retailers already have stepped into the breach created by Target's decision, said Theresa Whitfield, a spokeswoman at The Salvation Army's national headquarters in Alexandria, Va.

Nonprofits continue to employ other fund-raising efforts such as direct mail, telemarketing, special events and donor breakfasts. But Judith Alnes, executive director of the St. Paul, Minn.-based Management Assistance Program for Nonprofits, said the loss of personal contact with the public is difficult to replace.

"Those kinds of gifts aren't likely to come forward in any other donation," she said. "I don't think we know of a strategy to make up the income lost from the inability to solicit [donations] at the stores."