Need Takes No Holiday : Year-Round Demand Makes Agencies Wish for Volunteers Who Aren’t Just Seasonal

The Spirit of Giving isn’t exactly a hardy soul. With Christmas morning come and gone, he has already packed up and headed out--an annual disappearing act that comes as no surprise to those who head area charities.

Each year hundreds of inquiries a week come in through volunteer hotlines from November until Dec. 25, said Katherine Ransom, director of marketing for the United Way Orange County.

Then, near silence.

“The next working day, Dec. 28, they might get one to two calls a week,” Ransom said.

Many in the nonprofit field say they have struggled to find a way to make volunteerism more than just an annual event for some people. “It’s very frustrating,” said Angi Girton of the Volunteer Center of Orange County, a clearinghouse for 1,500 registered nonprofits. “It’s a shame people only want to volunteer once a year, but that’s better than nothing.”

Agencies find they are caught in a bind, worried about alienating those who want to “experience” volunteer work to teach their children about the poor, especially when their idea of giving time conflicts with the actual needs of clients. Ransom said some families inadvertently get in the way, expecting baby-sitting services at events that are supposed to be about serving the needy, then feeling satisfied that they have done their part.

But nonprofits do not want to offend potential sources of time, food and money, she said.

At Someone Cares Soup Kitchen in Costa Mesa, they turned away volunteers for Thanksgiving dinner because they already had more than enough help. Christmas Eve was also booked.

“At a certain point, too many people just get in the way,” said George Neureuther, the nonprofit’s manager. “Any other day of the year, we’d love to have the help.”

Floyd Bacon, head of the Glendale branch of the Salvation Army, said he was overwhelmed by the scores of volunteers who came into the office to wrap and distribute holiday gifts.

“There must have been 60 or 70 people: youth groups, church groups, old people, young people,” said Bacon, who has worked for the organization for more than 20 years. “I’d like to see a bunch of those people around when the Postal Service does their annual food drive in the spring, but I probably won’t.”

Nonprofit administrators say they try to encourage holiday volunteers to come back. Sometimes, it works. Neureuther first volunteered at the soup kitchen for Thanksgiving four years ago. He recently quit a job as a transportation manager to work full-time to feed the needy.

“My wife and I came to help make Thanksgiving dinner and we kept coming back,” he said. The soup kitchen now averages more than 200 clients a day and needs about 10 volunteers working in two shifts to get the meals made and served. Neureuther said staffing is a daily struggle.

Looking around a room comfortably full with holiday volunteers, Neureuther said it would be nice to be able to believe more of the promises of return visits he hears each season. Still, he said, extra hands in the past few weeks were needed, a sentiment shared by other service organizations trying to brighten the holidays for low-income families.

“It’s hard to maintain the enthusiasm.” said Patti Taylor, the head of Friends in Service to Humanity, or FISH, a nonprofit food bank that serves 6,500 to 7,000 low-income Orange County families each year. “Everyone starts the year off so gung-ho, filled with the spirit of giving, but few people stick with it.”

At the converted restaurant in Costa Mesa that houses Someone Cares, seasonal volunteers spent the days before Christmas wrapping gifts and assembling fruit baskets.

Carol Schelin of Trabuco Hills scooped up candy by the fistful and dropped it into a bag full of fresh fruit. It was Schelin’s first time volunteering at a soup kitchen, a choice she made this year together with her grown children.

“We really wanted to feel the spirit of giving this year,” she said. “We wanted to do something where we really felt involved. We didn’t want to just give money.”

Families like the Schelins, who say they plan to start volunteering throughout the year, help to drive the boom season for charities. The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is the make-or-break time of year for many nonprofits, some of which live off the spoils of the holiday giving season for months afterward.

Leslie Van Fossen of Human Options, a central Orange County shelter for battered women, said leftover Christmas presents will be used for birthdays and special events throughout the upcoming year.

“It would be nice is people would come out more than once a year,” said 17-year-old Lan Nguyen, a year-round volunteer who recruited friends to help at Someone Cares. “People aren’t only hungry at Christmas.”