Volunteers of the Dolores Huerta Foundation help distribute food for farmworker communities in the Central Valley in this December 2021 photo. Image via Delores Huerta Foundation

The pandemic has made it even more challenging to run a community-based organization, but after two years, many have learned that collaboration is the name of the game.

This winter, the Dolores Huerta Foundation partnered with PepsiCo’s Food for Good program, aiming to combat food insecurity in rural communities – specifically farmworkers.

“It was just a good fit for DHF and PepsiCo to partner, because we have essentially the same mission of being able to address food insecurity, specifically in rural areas,” said Dolores Huerta Foundation Deputy Director Cecilia Castro.

Castro said that prior to the pandemic, there were already families facing food insecurity.

“It’s definitely nothing new to the Central Valley. We’ve had food deserts in the Central Valley, lack of access to transportation, of course, the climate here makes it very challenging for families to even be able to commute to different locations,” Castro said.

During the pandemic, the foundation received several calls from community members who reported that food banks were distributing food during work hours, or at hard-to-reach locations for rural communities.

“Many of our farm worker families had to continue working throughout the pandemic,” she said.

Families continued going to work, but were met with challenges of accommodating their school-age children who were being educated remotely. Some schools halted providing meals for children as well.

Because of the compounding issues, the Dolores Huerta Foundation addressed food insecurity head-on.

The foundation has begun hosting volunteer-led food distributions. In the past year alone, it has hosted 51 food events and has served almost 13,000 families with more than 900 volunteers.

“Now that we are coming towards the holidays, it’s going to be very, very important,” Castro said. “Many of those same families that tend to our fruits and vegetables are the ones that often don’t have access to fresh food choices.”

The organization works in Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties, as well as Antelope Valley. The organization works to empower the community members to become their own advocates for improvement.

The foundation is also working on establishing community resource centers – the first will be placed in Sanger. Its hope is to establish a formal partnership with the Central California Food Bank to have a more sustainable way to provide families with the food they need.

Eileen Heisman, CEO of the Pennsylvania-based National Philanthropic Trust, said organizations that rely on giving are doing relatively well right now.

“I think those that have suffered the most are the small grassroots neighborhood-based organizations,” Heisman said.

For these small organizations that are struggling to stay afloat, she says they should look to people who have been loyal donors in the past.

“I think that if they’ve depended on foundation grant making, they need to go to the foundations as personally as they can and talk about what the gaps are in the revenue, and then to demonstrate they have a plan,” Heisman said.

She also suggests merging with like-minded organizations or tapping into reserve funds if they’ve exhausted all other options.

Arts and cultural organizations have also taken a hit throughout the pandemic. For annual galas, they lost ticket sales in combination with donations. But largely, the advancements of the Covid-19 vaccines have allowed organizations to resume operations.

“I think we’re seeing a more normal economy in the charitable sector,” she said.

Heisman said there was an enormous spike in giving at the beginning of the pandemic, and again in the summer of 2020 toward social justice organizations.

Fundraising has changed throughout the pandemic. Like most business sectors, communication shifted digitally, and nonprofits took on giving through digital channels.

Heisman said there have been many virtual galas, and when individual donors might meet with the CEO over a meal, those started taking place on Zoom.

“I think social media became much more amplified because people weren’t seeing each other,” Heisman said.

Though it was probably much harder to acquire new donors, she said.

“It was a really odd time because a lot of fundraising is very personal, especially major gift work, and so you have to find ways to make it personal,” said Heisman.

Digital giving mainly affected older generations, rather than Millennials who have long been digital givers.

Giving from middle-income households has gone down over the last 10 years, but the dollar amount per donor has increased.

It means that giving has shifted to the high net worth populations, Heisman said.

Looking ahead, online giving still shows room for growth. Online giving still just makes up about 15% of giving, according to Heisman, so it’s expected to increase as baby boomers retire and Millennials take over as the majority of the workforce.

Charities might be in for the challenge of capturing middle class donors, though.

“I think in order to get middle class folks back, we need to look at our tax laws and I think we need to incentivize them and get them back involved,” Heisman said.