The 11 homeless shelters slated for closure Thursday due to a lack of city funds will remain open—at least for the next one month—thanks to $10,500 in donations. The non-profit Seattle Housing and Resource Effort (SHARE), which contracts with the City of Seattle to provide homeless services, announced Saturday that it was falling $50,000 short of the funds it needed from the city to buy bus tickets for its clients and keep 11 of its 15 indoor shelters running. SHARE annually receives $300,000 from the city, which is facing a $56 million budget shortfall next year. SHARE briefly met with Mayor Mike McGinn at City Hall yesterday but no clear resolution was found.

However, SHARE announced this afternoon that several generous donations had made it possible to keep the shelters open beyond Thursday. "There was one donation for $2000, but most of them are in the hundreds," said a SHARE volunteer who asked to remain anonymous. If SHARE had closed the shelters, 400 people would have been without a place to sleep at night.

SHARE member Jerry Thomas said that the donations were made though PayPal on the SHARE website. "It's fantastic," he said. "I don't know who these people are but I am grateful to them," said. "Of course we still need emergency funding from the city to last us the rest of the year."