American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, the fundraising arm of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, laid off 70 employees on Friday in the organization’s biggest labor force reduction since the start of the recession.

The layoffs occurred because of a decrease in contributions, said George Shadroui, vice president of ALSAC.

“We have not been immune to the effects of the economy and the state of charitable giving worldwide, which has impacted our fundraising efforts overall,” Shadroui said. “We’ve seen it at the grassroots level where the economy has struck home. We also have seen a decline in the amount of the average bequest gift. We are confident, however, that this will turn around once the economy rebounds.”

ALSAC was anticipating “significant growth” in contributions to St. Jude and had personnel in place to handle that volume before the recession took a deeper plunge over the past year.

“In the past several months, we have made some changes to streamline our operations,” Shadroui said. “These changes have affected a small number of employees, some of whom have transitioned to other roles within our organization. This particular development is more significant because of the continuing economic issues we and others are facing.”

All the employees who lost jobs during the labor force reduction were notified on Friday.

“We will be reorganizing our work force to strategically focus on key areas of opportunity both programmatically and geographically,” Shadroui said. “We must continue to be good stewards of our donors’ dollars and remain focused on supporting the life-saving research and care provided at St. Jude.”