Also hurt by coronavirus: Triangle nonprofits that rely on volunteers who stay home
Each weekday, as many as 300 people line up at the Shepherd’s Table Soup Kitchen on Morgan Street for a hot meal prepared and served by more than two dozen volunteers.
But coronavirus has thinned the number of people able or willing to work at the soup kitchen and at many other organizations that rely on volunteers. Schools and businesses that normally send groups are canceling, and people who volunteer on their own are staying home rather than risk contact with strangers.
So Shepherd’s Table, which normally runs on 25 to 30 volunteers each day, is making do with about a third that many, said Tammy Gregory, the executive director.
“It’s taxing on those that are here, because it’s triple the work,” Gregory said Friday. “We have to be able to prepare food quicker, because there aren’t as many hands. So we’re cutting back on meal sizes, to make sure everyone gets something to eat.”
Amber Smith is hearing similar stories from other nonprofits in the Triangle. Smith leads Activate Good, the organization she founded 15 years ago to match would-be volunteers with groups that need them, and said hundreds of nonprofits are becoming short-handed because of concerns over COVID-19, the illness caused by coronavirus.
“There’s a severe loss of manpower,” Smith said. “If you ever wondered what a world without volunteers looks like, we’re seeing that now.”
Activate Good is urging healthy people to volunteer if they can, but is also creating a database of opportunities to volunteer remotely, from work or home, at activategood.org/remote. Some of those opportunities could include making calls to check on seniors or others who are isolated or organizing online fundraising drives to make up for events canceled because of the virus.
“Let’s figure out what we can be doing from home and do the best we can in this situation,” Smith said. “We’re looking at this as we might look at disaster relief, though we can’t mobilize volunteers to go to places.”
Some nonprofits say they’ve been able to adjust to the drop in volunteers so far. The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, for example, is asking those who do show up to pack more bags of food to send home with children through its BackPack Buddies program, to make up for groups of volunteers that have canceled, says Susan Meador, the volunteer services director.
“Currently, it’s not impacting our ability to fulfill our mission, but we are monitoring the situation carefully,” Meador said in an email.
The SPCA of Wake County hasn’t seen a decline in volunteers yet, perhaps because most of its more than 1,400 active helpers come in as individuals instead of groups, said spokeswoman Darci VanderSlik. But the agency, which runs a shelter and adoption center for homeless pets and a low-cost spay and neuter clinic, expects a slowdown, if only because a third of its volunteer base is over the age of 65, a group that is especially vulnerable to the coronavirus.
“What we’re telling them is we love how passionate and committed you are, but please stay home, we can do without you,” VanderSilk said.
A dwindling number of volunteers will also hurt some nonprofits financially. When companies send groups to lend a hand they often also send money, said Smith of Activate Good.
That’s true at Shepherd’s Table, where about 10 groups of volunteers didn’t show up this week, Gregory said. She hopes the companies that provide the volunteers will decide to send donations anyway.
“We’re losing a lot of grant money right now, and it’s just getting worse and worse,” she said. “This is a critical time for us.”
