More than a few Minnesotans might have huffed a proud "Not here!" at a national pollster's recent report that 39 percent of Americans would donate less to charity last year than in 2008.

In November, Minnesotans set a national one-day online giving record. The "Give to the Max Day" at the new website GiveMN.org generated $14 million, far surpassing the expected total.

But that number needs some perspective. For most participating nonprofit organizations, those gifts, generous as they were, amounted to less than 10 percent of the total individual contributions expected in 2009, said Christine Durand of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.

In fact, despite an impressive one-day giving surge, the recession is causing predictable financial strain at Minnesota charities. The need for the services charities provide is up, while individual giving and revenue from endowments, foundations and government is down.

The council's "Current Conditions" survey of 639 nonprofit organizations, conducted in early December, found 60 percent of them reporting an increase in demand for services in 2009. Similarly, 61 percent reported a decline in total revenue. About half of the organizations surveyed said they're seeing a drop in donations by individual givers.

That suggests more widespread financial trouble among nonprofit organizations than is revealed by the Star Tribune's Nonprofit 100, its annual report on financial health of the 100 largest nonprofit organizations in the state. The latest report, comparing 2008 with 2007, found expenses exceeding revenues in 34 cases, with some of the state's premier health care organizations -- Mayo, Allina, Park Nicollet, Fairview -- leading the way. For the health care group, revenues rose 2.3 percent while expenses soared 8.3 percent.

That's bad enough. What's worse is the weakening condition the survey reported of small nonprofits with narrow but important missions -- mental health services, domestic crisis intervention, legal aid and youth development, to name a few. A quarter of the organizations surveyed with budgets of less than $400,000 per year anticipate cash shortfalls in 2010.

Those are circumstances that Minnesotans ought to consider as they contemplate giving resolutions for the new year. They should also know that while macroeconomic data suggests that the recession is easing, the microeconomic reality that most nonprofits face projects worsening circumstances for many of them in 2010.

One bright spot in the Current Conditions report: Only a small share of surveyed organizations reported a loss of volunteer support in 2009. Durand said that increasing unemployment actually benefitted some organizations, as people who are looking for work also find they have more time to volunteer. They report that it adds meaning and a sense of purpose to a jobless spell, Durand said.

Minnesotans are famously generous givers. The Great Recession is calling on them to be thoughtful givers as well -- recognizing that much more work consigned to nonprofits is at risk of going undone than ever before, and that there is more than one way to help get the work done.