PROVIDENCE — Some Rhode Islanders seeking shelter at Crossroads Rhode Island, the clearinghouse for shelter space statewide, walk in the door and burst into tears.

“I never thought I’d be here,” they say, according to Crossroads President Anne Nolan. Or, the new comment she’s hearing: “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The Salvation Army’s Good Neighbor Energy Fund has given more families money to pay energy bills this year than ever before.

Visitors to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank’s massive headquarters, on Niantic Avenue, can see straight through the high metal shelving units to the walls beyond because so many of the shelves are bare, a dramatic sign that the agency is having trouble meeting demand for food.

Homelessness. Home heating. Hunger.

Those are the core problems facing today’s Rhode Islanders, Neil Steinberg, president and chief executive officer of the Rhode Island Foundation, said yesterday.

And those are the needs the foundation hopes to address with a one-time emergency community grant of $500,000, which will be paid immediately out of the organization’s endowment. The foundation has never before given money in this fashion.

Driven by the current economic difficulties, the state’s largest charitable foundation –– and one of the nation’s oldest and largest –– announced yesterday that the grant will be shared equally by three statewide organizations that provide direct service to people in need.

“This is very unusual,” Steinberg said, noting that the foundation typically gives out money through a competitive grant process that requires applications and takes time. “We could not ignore the immediate need.”

The foundation recently called Crossroads Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Community Food Bank and the Salvation Army Good Neighbor Energy Fund to tell them of the gift. Steinberg said the foundation’s board of directors considered making a challenge grant but didn’t want to “burden” the organizations by making them raise additional money.

“It’s a wonderful gift,” Nolan said. “Oh my God, we don’t get calls like this very often.”

The Rhode Island Foundation is also hoping to “lead by example,” Steinberg said, and to inspire other philanthropic endeavors as the state is tied with Michigan with the country’s worst unemployment rate.

At Crossroads Rhode Island, demand is probably greater than ever, Nolan said, with “people we’ve never seen before” seeking shelter.

The agency’s family center emergency shelter, at 754 Broad St., has a capacity for 15 families but is housing 19 now. The women’s shelter, at 160 Broad St., has 40 beds but 60 women seeking refuge. The agency has had requests from almost 50 families in North Kingstown without resources to provide Christmas presents.

Crossroads will use its money from the Rhode Island Foundation for “direct services,” Nolan said, such as cots and blankets –– and gifts for those North Kingstown families so they can have Christmas after all.

“This grant could not come at a better time,” said Maj. Doug Burr, the state coordinator for the Salvation Army.

The Good Neighbor Energy Fund, administered by the Salvation Army since 1986, provides grants up to $500 per heating season to help pay heating bills for families who don’t qualify for state or federal energy assistance.

The Rhode Island Foundation money will help warm more than 500 households, Burr said. Last year, the fund gave out $1 million, helping more than 2,275 families pay an electric, gas or oil bill. “There’s no question” the need will be greater this year, he said.

At the Rhode Island Community Food Bank yesterday morning, Executive Director Andrew Schiff pointed to empty spaces on warehouse shelves.

“You can imagine my relief when Neil called me about this awesome grant,” said Schiff, who said the money will buy 350,000 pounds of food. “That doesn’t just fill these empty shelves. That fills this entire warehouse.”

Schiff said the money allows the food bank to buy healthful food in bulk –– “just the right food so people can make meals at home for their children.”

In October, 167 emergency food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters around the state — member agencies of the food bank –– served 49,000 people, 11,000 more than in the previous October.

Statewide, 115,000 people –– 40,000 of them children –– are “food insecure,” a term the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses to describe people at risk of regularly missing meals, according to food bank data.

kbramson@projo.com