If you want to volunteer serving meals or handing out clothes or toys at a Skid Row mission this Christmas day, you’d better hurry.
Holiday volunteer slots at the Midnight Mission, for one, started filling up at the beginning of November, and managing the flood of interest is intense, says Georgia Berkovich, the organization’s chief communications officer.
“We will end up having to turn away hundreds. During the holidays, basically we work every day, all day,” she says.
To be sure, she considers this a good problem to have. The challenge for the Midnight Mission and other Skid Row shelters is turning the seasonal interest into year-round support. The neighborhood known as the epicenter of LA’s homelessness crisis always draws big crowds and, often, high-profile faces during the holidays — particularly on Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, when many local missions put on celebrations with special meals, giveaways and services.
“We see a skyrocketing interest early on,” says Andy Bales, chief executive of Union Rescue Mission, “and then the week of the event people are still trying to get in.”
Many nonprofits have certain times of the year when interest swells, according to Efrain Escobedo, president and CEO of the Center for Nonprofit Management. It can either be a huge hassle or a huge asset, he says, depending on how organizations manage the situation.
For instance, if an organization has the resources to collect information from everyone expressing interest in volunteering around the holidays, they can come back to their volunteers for more help later. “Just building that connection and that base of people that you can reach out to is important,” he says. “A volunteer today can be a donor tomorrow.”
That’s the thinking at the Los Angeles Mission, where Mayor Karen Bass, among other high-profile figures, handed out food on Thanksgiving Day. There, CEO Troy Vaughn says his colleagues compile databases of people who want to donate time, especially now, when the numbers are big, and note whether they have skills that might enhance the organization’s operations year-round.
“For example, if people have a legal background, we have a pro bono legal clinic here on-site,” he says. “Many of them come back.”
The Midnight Mission has a similar strategy. Berkovich says they try not to give people hard no’s if the holiday events they want to serve at hit capacity.
“We have volunteer opportunities every day of the year, 365 days a year,” she says. “If you feel passionate about something, we can create a volunteer experience.”