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Valley nonprofits calling back volunteer workers this summer, fall

Before March 2020, Clarence Tabor could be found regularly at Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, stocking food pantry shelves, filling boxes with produce or packing meals together for homebound seniors.

It’s what he did on Tuesdays and Thursdays, sandwiched between his retirement hobbies of golfing and bowling.

“I enjoy doing it,” Tabor said. “The people down here really need help. It’s just knowing that you can give back. I’m OK, I’m retired. I need something to stay busy.”

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Catholic Charities had to sideline Tabor and its other volunteers.

Nonprofits, many faced with reduced abilities because of social distancing measures, are calling back their volunteer workforce this summer and fall. After more than a year of limited or no in-person opportunities, it’s a welcome change of pace. The challenge is to re-engage with the people who previously helped keep services going.

Meeting volunteers online

It’s difficult to generalize the changes in volunteer opportunities since the pandemic’s onset, Nevada Volunteers Executive Director Zanny Marsh said. Some organizations could easily pivot their opportunities to online formats, with projects such as writing cards for seniors, or distanced work, such as delivering meals to people’s doors. Others struggled to translate the work to a digital space.

“So many volunteers choose an organization that is either close to home or close to work, and that’s because it really allows them to be able to be personally present during service delivery,” Marsh said. “When that became more of a health and safety type of issue, then they had to find different ways of engaging with their volunteers.”

One solution to engagement, groups found, was a way to keep interested parties updated on the nonprofit work.

In March 2020, United Way of Southern Nevada launched the online platform Volunteer Connect to list nonprofits and volunteer work in an online space that volunteers could access. Nevada Volunteers has a similar platform, called NV Volunteer Connect.

In June 2020, the United Way’s site had about 840 volunteers on it. It rose to roughly 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,” Sibley said. “I truly believe it’s still an immediate need that we need from our community. Not just we as in United Way, but our community, our other nonprofit partners, they need volunteers in order to be successful with their clients.”

Keeping work flexible

For some groups, adjustments only required a decline in volunteer use. At Salvation Army of Southern Nevada, for instance, volunteerism pivoted to multiple virtual volunteer chances while still offering some in-person work at the Owens Avenue campus.

Corporate engagement and volunteer coordinator Kisha Alderman said the main volunteer opportunity for Salvation Army is its community meal, served at its Owens Avenue campus to thousands of unhoused people. Salvation Army still used volunteers, but once operations changed, it needed dramatically fewer of them.

“For us, our volunteer opportunities never stopped. They remained,” Alderman said. “What we were doing before COVID, we were still doing during COVID. It’s just the capacity and the way we did it changed.”

The nonprofit used 30 volunteers at a time to serve meals pre-COVID. It dropped down to four when all they needed was help packing the to-go containers instead of serving meals face-to-face. The community meal reopened June 1, and volunteer staffing levels are back to similar levels pre-pandemic.

“I think it worked out because the way that we needed to readjust, we needed less volunteers and we got a dramatic reduction in people wanting to volunteer, able to volunteer, feeling like it was safe to volunteer,” said Lisa Barnes, the Clark County coordinator for Salvation Army. “So, it really balanced that we weren’t left in the lurch or not able to do what we say we’re going to do for the community, but it definitely looked different in the beginning.”

The organization had 169,294 volunteer hours in 2020, according to its annual statistics.

All of this comes as the delta variant pushes a third wave of new infections in the Silver State. Volunteer coordinators, eager to keep their nonpaid staff involved but tasked with balancing the group’s health, must weigh local positivity rates against their own policies.

At Catholic Charities, volunteers have been back in the food pantry since mid-June, said Natasha Nelson, who serves as volunteer coordinator. They must show proof of vaccination and wear a mask on campus.

“Like everyone else we’re keeping an eye on the case numbers to test positivity, looking at the vaccination rates, and just really being mindful,” Nelson said. “We want volunteers to add to that experience, both for the person coming to volunteer here and for clients and for staff — it’s really all three of those pieces. So, if at some point we find that it isn’t adding to that, we always want to re-evaluate. Right now it’s working really well.”

Already, coronavirus is creating more hurdles for nonprofits. The pantry opened to clients to shop around like a typical grocery store for several weeks beginning in June. But the new wave forced leaders at the charity to return to pre-sorted boxes of food for clients.

Call for volunteers

What’s left is a big push to get volunteers involved as much as possible. Expect to see nonprofit booths at community events and promoted social media posts advertising a group’s volunteer opportunities, Marsh, of Nevada Volunteers, said.

“We probably lost connection with some percentage of our former volunteers, and so we’re really going to want to be able to present ourselves in the best way possible and then to do that very visibly so that prospective volunteers and former volunteers will have an easier way of finding those opportunities,” Marsh said. “They’re there, they exist.”

At United Way, the call is already in the works. The nonprofit’s annual Day of Caring is set for Oct. 8. It’s the group’s largest volunteer event with a goal of 50 projects available throughout the region.

Last year’s event didn’t hit that goal, Sibley said, because of the pandemic’s challenge. But this year is promising, as more people are vaccinated and groups like corporate volunteer days and faith-based group volunteer days seek out nonprofits, Sibley said.

“We’re really hoping to push for it this year to be what it was again two years ago, but we’ll still continue with the hybrid,” she said. “We will have in-person and virtual opportunities for people to choose from.”

For now, Tabor, the Catholic Charities volunteer, said he’s glad to be back to his regular routine at the pantry. He finds volunteerism rewarding because it gives him perspective on why he continues to serve.

“A little lady came through (the food pantry) one day and she had a toddler walking, she had one in the stroller and she was pregnant,” Tabor said. “I’ll never forget that.”

McKenna Ross is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Contact her at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on Twitter.

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