Gifts that keep giving

Healey is the president of the Yawkey Foundations. He was calling with a holiday present: The foundations had decided to award surprise grants to organizations across the state that provide food and shelter.

None of them had applied for it. They hadn’t even asked for it. Out of nowhere, the Pine Street Inn was receiving a check for $100,000.

At the Greater Boston Food Bank, president Catherine D’Amato was getting the same call. By her calculation, the $100,000 it received will translate to about 207,000 meals at the pantries served by the bank.

The foundations had not decided to play Santa Claus. Rather, their largesse is a sign of the times, or, rather, the needs of the times.

Altogether, the groups it awarded money to last week split $650,000 to provide basic services for the needy.

“We just knew that our grantees in this category, food and shelter, have been especially hard hit,’’ Healey said yesterday. “So our trustees decided last week that they wanted to make a special grant to [organizations] we had supported in the past.

“Some of them are groups that Jean Yawkey supported when she was alive,’’ he said, referring to the Red Sox matriarch who died in 1992. “It was a surprise when we talked to them, a big surprise.’’

Downie said the money will get some homeless people off the floor of their shelter during the winter months.

“We put up 100 extra beds all winter long,’’ she said. “We’ll probably have another 30 to 50 on the floor. So we’ll use it to ease overflow.’’

She said she takes the money as recognition that any recovery from the recession may not be felt by poor people for some time.

“Things are getting better at the top - the stock market is improving and so on - but at the bottom, this is going to last a lot longer,’’ Downie said. “This is going to be a pretty prolonged recession at the bottom.’’

The decision to give more money to some recipients was inspired, in part, by a visit to the new Food Bank. It moved into an enormous, architecturally acclaimed new facility this year, but when Healey and other officials went for a visit, something they saw surprised them.

“We were amazed at how little food there was in the warehouse,’’ Healey said. “They were telling us the food was going out the door as fast as they could get it in the door. Demand is just so great.’’

D’Amato explained further: “The building allows us to take in more food, but it also costs money to bring the food in, store the food, distribute the food. This will have a great impact on this community.’’

No one is pretending that these grants are going to permanently solve any social ills.

But they will help in the short term in two areas where need is clearly outstripping the available resources.

Downie said she hoped it would accomplish something else.

“I hope this will make other people think about supporting things across the city,’’ Downie said.

Healey said the Greater Boston Food Bank and Pine Street Inn got large grants partly because they are big organizations.

But he said the effect might be bigger on the smaller organizations that received grants. For them, $50,000 or $75,000 constitutes a real windfall.

He was unapologetic about the decision to focus on two areas at the expense of others.

“Scholarships are important, and so are health care and youth services, but people can’t live without food and shelter,’’ Healey said.

“Our trustees thought this was the most important thing we could do right now.’’

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.