By David Schepp BBC News Online's North America business reporter

For 122 years, the Bowery Mission in Manhattan's Chinatown district has been helping homeless men leave lives of substance abuse and return to healthy, productive ones.

The mission serves an average 350,000 meals a year. This year, however, a faltering economy has meant a busier than normal year - and donations have been flooding in.

The mission helps men rebuild broken lives

Three times a day, the mission swings open its doors to offer meals, shelter, showers and clothing to desperate people living on New York streets.

But to a select group of men, up to 54 at a time, the mission offers a rigorous programme designed to help broken men repair their lives, find jobs and make their way back into society.

They are part of an intensive scheme provided at no cost that feeds and houses them for nine months in the hopes of getting them off drugs.

Successful programme

The programme has tripled in size during the last 18 months, as a flagging US economy has pushed those on the economic margins out of the workforce and onto New York streets.

The Bowery Mission is one of the oldest charities in New York. But despite its long and storied history, 2001 has been a memorable year.

The mission is as much a New York landmark as its skyscrapers

It is not business as usual for the mission.

"The climate is like no other year we've had," says Ed Morgan, president of the mission.

"It's not even been cold yet in New York this winter... and yet all the shelters are full."

The city of New York has enough beds to sleep 12,000 people a night. But the city shelters are nearly at capacity - 98% full.

Season of giving

60% of all donations to the mission come in the last three months of the year.

They flood in from all over the country, thanks to an intensive advertising campaign in publications that reach every corner of the States.

Macklin: "Everybody wants to know they're being helpful."

Donations finance meals as well as accommodation for participants in the mission's intensive programme.

But with the events of 11 September still fresh in many American minds, there have been more donations than usual.

That poses a problem for other charities outside of New York.

The Bowery Mission is acutely aware that aid organisations in other parts of the country are not faring as well.

"Some of them are down as much as 30-40%," says Mr Morgan, adding that while Americans tend to be generous to charities, they also give about the same amount.

"It's been redirected," he says.

Man on a mission

The man in charge of handling some of that redirected largess is James Macklin, a gregarious man with a broad smile who is himself a graduate of the mission's nine-month programme.

The mission has enough beds to house 54 men

Today, as director of outreach, he works to ensure the mission's donors are kept happy.

"Everybody wants to know that [they are] being helpful and appreciated," he says, "from the 50-cent donor to your $50,000 donor."

Mr Macklin has quite a job, coordinating the gifts of some 30,000 donors - most of whom never see where their money goes.

But to them all, Mr Macklin extends an invitation to see the work of the mission.

Through its open-door policy, donors are welcome to visit the mission as well as volunteer. The Bowery Mission even hosts overnight stays for youth groups from all over the country.

Role in attacks

Both men are proud of the role the mission played on 11 September, when thousands of New Yorkers fled north when the trade towers fell from the sky, after hijacked airliners were slammed into them.

On that fateful day, the mission offered aid, comfort and hot meals not only to rescuers, but also to hundreds of distraught souls who stumbled by after escaping the fire, the debris and the horror.

Mr Macklin is thrilled his organisation was able to fill a small but important role in helping people since the terror attacks.

In subsequent hours and days, donations flooded in from everywhere, including food, socks, blankets, shovels, gloves and T-shirts, which rescue workers used as they tried to recover bodies from "ground zero".

Mr Macklin says, "We really saw a generous country."