But when the words hang on the face of a hungry child in a soup kitchen, they mean something different from a company's dividends.

"As far as clients go, we have people who have never come to us before in need of food," said Beverly Lane, a caseworker with the Salvation Army in Martinsburg. "We do have good donations from the community. ... People are caring, they really are."

Throughout the Mountain State, food pantries and soup kitchens are feeding more faces, including many new faces, and some are doing it with fewer donations.

"The donations from 2006 to 2007 ... had a 1.8 million pound decrease, so in 2008, we kind of had to re-group," said Carla Nardella, executive director of Mountaineer Food Bank in Gassaway, which is run by volunteers and includes 491 feeding programs in 48 counties.

"In June of '08, we started with five retail outlets we were picking up from, and by the end of the year, we were doing 45 retail outlet pickups a week," she said. "Right now we are doing 99 retail outlets a week, and by the end of June, we will be hitting 132. By the end of July, we will hit 150."

Nardella said Mountaineer makes plans to visit stores and pick up things such as manager's specials for meat, day-old bakery goods, along with produce and dairy goods with a few days left in their prime.

"Before we started just last week, when we had the 45 retail outlets, we were averaging about the same pounds as just one tractor-trailer," she said. "It takes a lot more time, a lot more employees, a lot more vehicles and it takes a lot more money and fuel and maintenance and all those kinds of things to get these donations.

"However, the donations are a little bit higher quality than what we used to get."

Nardella said she's been with Mountaineer 25 years, and she's never seen supply meet demand.

"We have other little projects going on," she said. "Kroger has the 'Feed the Hungry' boxes they sell, Food Lion has 'Hunger Has a Cure' boxes ... all these things help, and it takes every last one of them."

Nardella said she has seen a lot of generosity, even in small doses.

"People say 'I can only manage one can,' and I think if you can only give one can, that's wonderful," she said. "Because if I was hungry and all I had was one can, that would make my world."

At Manna Meal in Charleston, Assistant Director Sandy Perrine said she has seen demand soar.

"We have sort of become a food pantry, because we're not only serving meals, but we're giving out what's left from the meal for people to take home," Perrine said. "I would say, actually, within the past couple of years, but it's increased even more over the past year."

Perrine said Manna Meal serves breakfast and lunch to about 350 or 400 people each day, and she sees crowds of all kinds -- the mentally ill, the elderly, whole families and "a lot of working poor."

"We have been very fortunate with donations," she said. "I think our monetary donations are down some."

Becky Shilling-Rodocker, executive director of the Soup Kitchen of Greater Wheeling, said too many restaurants and stores are throwing out food because they are not aware of West Virginia's Good Samaritan Act.

She said the act states that once food leaves a restaurant or store, it is solely the soup kitchen's responsibility, and they carry insurance on the food for that reason.

"We are 100 percent community donated, and we are also volunteer driven," Shilling-Rodocker said. "That's two things we need: the funding from the community writing those checks no matter what amount, and we also need those people coming in to volunteer."

Shilling-Rodocker said she has seen more lower-middle-class residents visit the soup kitchen along with many first-timers. She also said she has seen fewer donations.

"We used to get thousands and thousands of pounds of deer meat, and we'd mix it with sausage and all kinds of stuff to make meatballs or meat loaf," she said. "Last year, I don't think we got 200 pounds of deer meat."

Shilling-Rodocker said her soup kitchen purchases about 60 percent of the food it serves from distributors such as Sysco and U.S. Foodservice without any special discounts. She said the soup kitchen serves about 175 people a day -- a number that has climbed every year throughout the past five years.

"I just think it's odd that this economic crisis has been coming for a while, but it seems to be really hitting within the last month," she said. "I've pinpointed it to literally in the last month, because of new faces, new moms and new children coming in here; children that will probably be raised in the soup kitchen."

Shilling-Rodocker said she thinks the economy will put a crunch on every kind of charity, because donors who usually fund four or five causes may only have enough money to donate to one favorite.

"But the good news is West Virginia is the only state that's 100 percent in Appalachia, and Appalachia isn't just a region, it's a way of life, and people tend to take care of each other," she said. "This economy is getting worse and worse, not only because people don't have the money to help us or help themselves, people don't have money to hire people, and that's the pinnacle of the whole problem.

"We used to just feed the poor, and now we're feeding the working poor."