Its coffers depleted by shortfalls in state funding, Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center will begin seeking private donations to keep programs running.

“We will increasingly look to alternate sources of funding, especially for our targeted programs,” said Pat Roach Smith, Bert Nash’s community development director.

Several efforts are already planned:

l A “Nash Dash” run and walk on May 11, to raise funds for the center’s popular Working to Recognize Alternative Possibilities (WRAP) program in Douglas County schools.

l A benefit dinner in the fall.

l Increased use of “one-on-one” solicitations. Roach Smith said some fund-raisers a garden tour and birdhouse auction had been tried by the center in the past.

“Those weren’t major money-raisers, and they were labor-intensive,” she said. “So we went back to the drawing board.”

In December, Bert Nash CEO David Johnson announced that cuts in expected state funding were forcing the center to eliminate three administrative positions and to cut in half a counseling program that helps juvenile offenders stay out of trouble.

“Basically, we were told we’d be getting some additional funding this year, and now it looks like we’ll be getting about half of what we were told to expect,” Johnson said at the time.

Bert Nash’s annual budget is about $6.5 million.