Prior to March 2020, Clarence Tabor was a regular at Southern Nevada Catholic Charities filling grocery shelves, filling boxes of produce, or packing senior meals at home.
He did that on Tuesdays and Thursdays, sandwiched between his hobbies of golf and bowling.
“I enjoy that,” says Tabor. “The people down here really need help. It’s easy to know that you can give something back. I’m fine, I’m retired. I need something to stay busy. “
When the coronavirus pandemic broke out, Catholic charities had to put Tabor and their other volunteers on the side.
Nonprofits, many of which have faced impaired skills due to social distancing measures, are calling their volunteers back this summer and fall. After more than a year of limited or no personal options, this is a welcome change. The challenge now is to get back in touch with the people who previously helped keep the services running.
Meet volunteers online
It’s difficult to generalize about the changes in volunteer opportunities since the pandemic began, said Zanny Marsh, executive director of Nevada Volunteers. Some companies could easily tailor their options to online formats, with projects like writing cards for seniors or more detached work like delivering meals to people’s doors. Others struggled to translate the work into a digital space.
“So many volunteers choose an organization that is either close to where they live or close to work, and that’s because they can really be there in person while the service is being delivered,” said Marsh. “When this became more of a health and safety issue, they had to find other ways to connect with their volunteers.”
One solution to engagement, the groups found, was a way to keep interested parties informed about the charitable work.
In March 2020, United Way of Southern Nevada launched the Volunteer Connect online platform to list nonprofits and volunteering in an online area that volunteers can access. Nevada Volunteers has a similar platform called NV Volunteer Connect.
As of June 2020, the United Way website had around 840 volunteers. It rose to about 2,400 volunteers and 130 agencies in a year, said Savanna Sibley, the agency’s volunteer engagement and events manager.
“Last year we needed volunteers more than ever,” said Sibley. “I really believe that there is still an urgent need that we need from our community. Not only we at United Way, but also our community and our other nonprofit partners need volunteers to be successful with their customers. “
Keep work flexible
For some groups, the adjustments only required a decrease in voluntary use. For example, with the Southern Nevada Salvation Army, volunteering revolved around multiple virtual volunteer opportunities while still providing face-to-face work on the Owens Avenue campus.
Kisha Alderman, corporate engagement and volunteering coordinator, said the number one opportunity for volunteers for the Salvation Army is the community meal that is served to thousands of people without accommodation on the Owens Avenue campus. The Salvation Army was still using volunteers, but as the operations changed they needed dramatically fewer of them.
“For us, our volunteer opportunities have never stopped. You stayed, ”said Alderman. “What we did before COVID, we did during COVID. It’s just the capacity and the way we did it has changed. “
The nonprofit deployed 30 volunteers at a time to serve meals before COVID. It dropped to four when all they needed was help packing the to-go bins instead of serving the meals face to face. The communal dinner reopened on June 1 and the volunteer workforce is back at a similar pre-pandemic level.
“I think it worked because we had to adjust so that we needed fewer volunteers and we had a dramatic decrease in the number of people who wanted to volunteer, could volunteer and felt it was safe to volunteer said Lisa Barnes, the Clark District Coordinator for the Salvation Army. “So it was really balanced that we weren’t let down or weren’t able to do what we say for the community, but it definitely looked different in the beginning.”
According to annual statistics, the organization had 169,294 volunteer hours in 2020.
All of this is happening as the Delta variant drives a third wave of new infections in the Silver State. Volunteer coordinators eager to include their unpaid staff but whose job is to rebalance the group’s health must weigh local positivity rates against their own guidelines.
At Catholic charities, for example, volunteers have been back in the pantry since mid-June, said Natasha Nelson, who acts as volunteer coordinator. You will need to provide proof of vaccination and wear a mask on campus.
“Like everyone else, we keep an eye on the number of cases to test positive, check vaccination rates, and just be really paying attention,” said Nelson. “We want volunteers to contribute to this experience, both for the person coming here and for customers and staff – it really is all three of them. So if at some point we find that it’s not helping, we always want to reevaluate. At the moment it works really well. “
The coronavirus is already creating even more hurdles for non-profit organizations. The pantry opened for customers to shop like a typical grocery store for several weeks from June. But the new wave forced the charity leaders to return to pre-sorted boxes of groceries for customers.
Call for volunteers
What remains is a big push to involve the volunteers as much as possible. Expect charitable booths at community events and promoted social media posts promoting a group’s volunteer opportunities, said Marsh of Nevada Volunteers.
“We’ve probably lost touch with a percentage of our ex-volunteers, so we really want to present ourselves in the best way we can and then do it in a very visible way so that potential volunteers and ex-volunteers have an easier way to find these opportunities,” said Marsh. “They are there, they exist.”
United Way is already working on the call. The nonprofit’s annual Welfare Day is on October 8th. It is the group’s largest volunteer event, with the aim of offering 50 projects across the region.
Last year’s event didn’t achieve that goal due to the challenge of the pandemic, Sibley said. But this year is promising as more people get vaccinated and groups like Corporate Volunteer Days and Religious Group Volunteer Days seek nonprofits, Sibley said.
“We really hope this year will be back to what it was two years ago, but we will continue with the hybrid anyway,” she said. “We’ll have personal and virtual opportunities for people to choose from.”
Tabor, the Catholic Charity Volunteer, said he was glad to get back to his normal pantry routine. He finds volunteering rewarding because it gives him perspective on why he continues to serve.
“One day a little lady came through (the pantry) and she ran a toddler, she had one in the stroller and she was pregnant,” said Tabor. “I will never forget that.”
McKenna Ross is a corps member of Report for America, a national utility that places journalists in local newsrooms. Contact them at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on Twitter.
