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The Impact of COVID-19

COVID-19 has significantly impacted volunteerism across the country and around the world. Strategic volunteer engagement is critical to the response to and recovery from this crisis (read our statement).

  • According to Fidelity Charitable’s August 2020 report, The Role of Volunteering in Philanthropy, two-thirds (2/3) of donors said they have decreased the amount of time they volunteer or stopped entirely due to the pandemic.
  • VolunteerMatch found that while volunteer cancellations decreased to 48% in July 2020, down from 68% in March 2020, cancellation numbers remained unacceptably high for volunteerism to be leveraged for critical operations. Encouragingly, organizations engaging volunteers reported a 9% increase in volunteer turnout by July 2020— a notable increase from only 3% in March 2020. Volunteers most likely feel the urgency to be of service, growing accustomed, once again, to a “new normal”, and are slowly growing more willing to be of support to their communities through service.

In good times and bad, research demonstrates a strong connection between organizations that operate with volunteer engagement as a core strategy for mission accomplishment and the overall health and effectiveness of the organization. Take for example:

Models and Case Studies

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