The Check-Up: Area nonprofits in need of volunteers

But now, as a 25-year-old with a full-time job and seemingly endless responsibilities, I admit it has become challenging to find the time to volunteer. Something that I’ve loved my whole life has now slipped through the cracks, the first to go in a long list of activities I once made a priority.

Apparently, I’m not the only one. I spoke with several area nonprofit leaders last week about their struggles recruiting and maintaining volunteers — the backbones of their businesses. A volunteer fair was held Tuesday to help address this pressing need.

Part of the problem, officials suspect, is because of the COVID-19 pandemic, with people encouraged to isolate and limit in-person interactions. Others could be a lack of younger volunteers — often needed for programs that require you to be on your feet or carry heavy objects — and fewer locally owned businesses, which often encourage their employees to volunteer.

On a national scale, volunteer activity remains below pre-pandemic levels, according to a recent Gallup poll. The rates seen in 2020 and 2021 (58 and 56 percent, respectively) are nearly identical to what was seen during the 2008 recession.

The highest year recorded was 2013, with a volunteer rate of 65 percent, the poll shows. That rate remained steady through 2017 (64 percent) before starting to trend downward.

The Community Kitchen in Keene typically offers a food pantry, hot meals and take-home food boxes to Monadnock Region residents on low income. Amid the pandemic, the nonprofit has shifted all of its meals to a take-home, according to Administrative Manager Peggy Higgins.

The kitchen has been able to cut back its need for volunteers because of this, from 70 to 40 per week. However, Higgins said it’ll be challenging to bring back in-person meals with the help it currently has, and no new recruits insight.

“We have definitely talked about what it would look like going back, once we go back to people coming in, but in order to do that, we need volunteers,” she said.

At the Keene Senior Center, which offers a variety of activities and events to community members 50 and older, volunteers are needed for office work, to offer certain programming and to run the private nonprofit’s thrift store.

Executive Director Mary Jensen said the center used to have about 80 volunteers before the pandemic, but now has only 10. This is partially due to the lack of college and high school students able to offer their time amid the pandemic; many were relegated to their campuses for safety reasons.

Jensen is hoping the fall will be more promising as COVID-19 continues to loosen its grip.

“We’re not as busy as we were, because we have fewer members, too,” she said, “but nevertheless, it’s a pretty significant drop in the number of people volunteering.”

Jensen and Higgins — along with 25 area nonprofits including RSVP at Monadnock Family Services, Hundred Nights Shelter and Friends of the Keene Public Library — hosted a volunteer fair this week in Keene in hopes of recruiting more help.