Responding to COVID-19’s Impact

As the Greater Cincinnati region’s primary connector of volunteers to nonprofit needs, Cincinnati Cares has responded to the COVID-19 crisis with a series of actions aimed at helping the community respond and recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Even before March’s declared federal, state and local states of emergencies, Cincinnati Cares saw dramatic declines in its volunteer referrals. The scarcity of volunteers doing what keeps nonprofits in our community humming is readily apparent. And it’s a triple whammy. Typically in disaster-related or financial crisis, nonprofits can rely on volunteers to offset donor contribution decreases and service-delivery and event income declines. But not now, due to social-distance warnings. To mobilize volunteers in a way that doesn’t put them in harm’s way, we’re connecting with the more than 750 nonprofits we work with regularly to help them design virtual volunteer opportunities. We’re also giving our partners a way through our redesigned site at cincinnaticares.org to communicate to the public how COVID-19 has impacted their work — giving our community a way to see the collective impact of this devastating development as well as our community’s response. For the first time, the public can use our site to make donations to the local organizations that need them most. And we’re reaching out to the public to let them know they can still help, and we will connect them to volunteering that can be done remotely and online. Nonprofits wanting to engage volunteers virtually should add their “COVID-19 ways to help now” as well as the stories and impact data on how COVID-19 has affected them by going to https://cincinnaticares.org/register-nonprofit/. Prospective virtual volunteers should go here: https://cincinnaticares.org/virtual-volunteering/

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