Volunteers needed: How the pandemic forced a change for North Bay groups that rely on them

As with so many things, the COVID pandemic upended the world of volunteering.

With a shortage of volunteers, nonprofit organizations can struggle to live up to their mission.

“I think the pandemic was hard. A lot of us were scared as to what would happen if we got sick,” said Tyler Dorman, development associate with Meals on Wheels Solano County.

“The volunteering average is about 3.5 hours per week nationally, but we're lower than that at an average of 1.5 hours per week as of last year,” Dorman said. “Meals on Wheels at its core is a community organization. We can’t do this without the community.”

Staff members at the Suisun City-based group are driving some of the longer routes to fill in the gaps left by the absence of volunteers. Often times this is the only hot meal these seniors get each week, and the driver could be the only person they interact with. After all, about one-third of the clients live alone.

Dorman said once the pandemic hit he saw people stop volunteering and many not return once the risks diminished.

Getting people to come back into the fold can be difficult.

“I think COVID was a pretty big reset of personal calendars and priorities,” said Bob Figlock with The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. His group is having a hard time filling roles that require a lengthy time commitment.

Pre-pandemic the animal rescue group had about 1,300 volunteers a year, with the low of 840 during the peak of the pandemic. Late in 2023 the number topped 1,400.

The problem, Figlock says, is people aren’t staying as long or want to put in fewer hours. This is why more volunteers are needed. It’s not that more work is getting done with the uptick in volunteers. It’s that it now takes a greater number of people to do the same amount of work that was performed in 2019 and earlier.

A lack of people wanting to give their time is impacting charitable groups nationally and locally.

A biennial report released in January 2023 by the Census Bureau and AmeriCorps found that between September 2020 and September 2021 the number of volunteers in the United States dropped about 7 percentage points.

In that one-year span 60.7 million in the U.S., or just more than 23% of the people, volunteered. That represents the lowest percentage since this type of data has been collected, which started in the early 2000s.

Time equals money

Volunteer hours come with a monetary equivalent. In California, each volunteer hour in 2022, the latest statistic available, was worth $37.32, according to Independent Sector. The national hourly figure was $31.80.

The Marine Mammal Center tallied about 150,000 hours of volunteer time in 2023.

“Those hours are worth money. We couldn’t afford to hire near the percentage staff of what our volunteers do,” Figlock said. “That’s almost $5 million in labor from our volunteers per year. That is gargantuan. The (return on investment) is substantial.”

The Census Bureau and AmeriCorps report found that U.S. volunteers put in more than 4.1 billion hours of service, which had an economic value estimated at $122.9 billion.

Those numbers reflect 23.2% of the population, or more than 60.7 million people who gave their time to a formal organization.

Bucking the trend

The Boys & Girls Club of Sonoma-Marin, which is based in Santa Rosa, is doing just fine when it comes to filling its volunteer roster, though it will always welcome people who want to join .

“I think because we serve kids across Sonoma and Marin counties there are lots of opportunities for caring adults to volunteer,” Michelle Heery, chief strategy officer, said.

Napa Humane, aka the Humane Society of Napa County & SPCA, says it has a dedicated group of volunteers for events, as well as for its spay and neuter clinics.

The Napa County Historical Society says it gets plenty of folks interested when volunteer opportunities arise.

At the Napa Valley Vine Trail Coalition, it’s almost like the volunteer pool is overflowing.

“We have some pretty strong ambassadors who do an amazing job getting us really good volunteers,” spokesperson Lili Ramos said. “I think with all the action going on with our project, a lot of people are wanting to get involved.”

A changed landscape

At Napa CASA — short for Court Appointed Special Advocates, which works with children in the foster care system — the volunteer roster has not returned to pre-pandemic numbers. CEO Julie DiVerde in part attributes this to people moving out of the area as well as the many volunteers who had been retirees who chose not to return.

The training is a time commitment (32 hours), as is the volunteer work. DiVerde asks for a two-year commitment so there is the continuity of a stable adult in the child’s life. The weekly or monthly hours needed depend on each case.

A shortage of CASA volunteers means “children are waiting for their special person for their match up.”

DiVerde said, “Instead of maybe getting matched up in a couple months it might take three to six months to get a volunteer trained and matched up.”

She acknowledges for a child in need that is a long wait.

Giant Steps Therapeutic Equestrian Center in Petaluma also needs more volunteers.

The equine therapy center helps people achieve physical, mental, and social goals.

In 2023, the Sonoma County nonprofit averaged 82 volunteers a month, which was a drop from 91 in 2022. Ideally it would like to have a roster of 150 people.

Last year the volunteers put in 432 hours a month. The nonprofit would like that number to be closer to 625 .

“Our staff is very flexible and I think the volunteer pool we have really stepped up when we needed them the most,” Jana Heimann, development and communications manager with the equestrian center, said. “Thankfully we had enough of a continuity where we could have classes, but it definitely was a struggle.”

She speculates the decrease in volunteers could be “people gaining new consistencies in other areas of their life that they perhaps lost to COVID.”

The slate of volunteers is so dire that Continuum Hospice & Palliative Care doesn't have anyone to visit clients in Napa County. The Petaluma-based nonprofit services Sonoma, Marin, Solano and Napa counties.

Shortly after the first of the year it had about a dozen patients waiting to be matched with a volunteer.

Pre-COVID the agency had about 35 volunteers, with the number dropping to zero during the pandemic, and now at 22.

“With hospice, another situation is we are bound by many Medicare regulations and rules,” Karla Montijano, volunteer coordinator, said. “Our volunteer pool has to make up 5% of paid staff hours per month. We had a waiver during COVID from Medicare that ended Dec. 31, 2023. Now there is a real serious need to build that pool and get more volunteers to contribute more time to our staff hours.”

Montijano is encouraged by the college students interested in health care who are also interested in volunteering, with three of the four volunteers in Solano County being UC Davis students. However, most volunteers are retired or semiretired.

Meals on Wheels Solano County has about 150 volunteers on the list, with some more consistent than others. The goal in the next couple of years is to have 150 people who are dedicated to a route at least one time a month, with a total pool of 250.

“A lot of our volunteers are older and have been with us 10-plus years,” Dormansaid.

In the meantime, the nonprofit has increased the number of paid drivers from three to six to make sure meals get delivered, he said.

The agency is also looking at shortening routes — right now most have 30 stops — as a way to attract people, as well as offering volunteer stints in the office and in its paws program that delivers pet food.

Routes can take two to four hours depending on the driver, the number of meals to be delivered, and how spread out the stops are. In fiscal year 2022–2023, 250,000 meals were delivered.

While there is an onboarding process at Meals on Wheels, the process is much more extensive at The Marine Mammal Center. The latter also requires a commitment of at least six months for some of its positions. This has to do with being so heavily regulated by state and federal agencies that consistency is necessary.

The center has opportunities well beyond Marine County. It’s scope of responsibility goes from the top of Mendocino County to the bottom of San Luis Obispo County.

The agency has veteran volunteers—those who have been there 40 years, with dozens who have logged 20 years. Mostly its people are in their 20s and retirees.

Today, though, the hard part is getting people who want to make the commitment as opposed to dropping in when convenient, which is possible at less regulated organizations.

“I think people are more selective about making their commitments as people come out of COVID and they are realizing they have this one precious life to live. A lot of people are being much more selective in their volunteer opportunities,” Figlock, the volunteer engagement manager at the animal center, said.

Kathryn Reed is a journalist who has spent most of her career covering issues in Northern California. She has published four books, with the most recent being Sleeping with Strangers: An Airbnb Host’s Life in Lake Tahoe and Mexico. She may be reached at kr@kathrynreed. com, or follower her at kathrynreed.com, Twitter @Kathryn0925, or Instagram @kathrynreed0925.

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