The purpose of this list is to track feedback we are receiving on community-level needs that are surfacing related to COVID-19.
This list will be growing/tracked regularly.
- Animal Welfare: Increased need for pet food donations and support of distribution efforts. Many families facing sudden unemployment struggling to feed household pets, in addition to family.
- Burial Assistance: Many low-income families who have had sudden loss of family members due to COVID are unable to pay for burial costs.
- Census Outreach: Need to redirect efforts from door-to-door outreach and rallies to online and phone campaign; New concerns about participation challenges
- Child-Care Related: Places where low-income families go for support for children (diapers, formula, food); Child care due to school cancellations; Loss of afterschool activities
- Criminal Justice System: High risk in jails and prisons for spread of virus
- Civil Rights: Stigma toward Asian-Americans, immigrants and others from perceived sources of virus
- Cultural Organizations:
- Decreased revenue from restriction on events with large number of people
- Inability to pay artists
- Developmental Disabilities Community: Particular challenges with enforcing social distancing rules among some populations; Increased need for cleaning supplies of group facilities
- Domestic Violence: Limited resources for individuals and families facing domestic violence/spousal and child abuse; Increase in incidents due to social distancing, quarantines and financial impacts on families; increase in need for emergency placements for children due to violence
- Education:
- Fear of limited educational opportunities for youth as result of closed schools and/or limited quality of online education being offered as replacement
- Community colleges are seeing students drop out because they don’t have access to either computer or internet – or both
- Financial Education/Assistance: Conflicting information about tax filing deadlines; inability to assist with tax preparations in some cases
- Food Access:
- Increased demand for food across populations – youth, families, seniors
- While some school meals offered, transportation to those meals can be barrier
- Many food pantries and soup kitchens closed as congregate meals not allowed, etc. Those that are open reporting challenge with maintaining staff, and can’t utilize volunteers because they don’t want to risk volunteers getting sick. Maintaining professional cleaning of facilities also a challenge.
- Health-Related Nonprofits:
- Growing needs of medical personnel – as they tend to others, they have increased risks of separation from their families, connection to resources, personal protection for their jobs (masks, etc.)
- Increased needs of Federally Qualified Health Centers, Health Departments
- Increased testing options, specifically – need for “drive through” or other alternative testing sites
- Telemedicine awareness and education
- For community based health clinics
- For seniors
- For NICU units, who typically provide CPR training- looking for ways to do virtually
- Planning for large increases in hospital usage, including needed Personal Protection Equipment.
- Mental health needs among youth, seniors, laidoff workers and others
- Need for health check phone calls for seniors
- Need for mentoring support/mental health support for families
- Physical health of youth with no gym class, sports
- Fear of spread of virus with limited access to cleaning supplies for low-income families (SNAP, Bridge Cards do not cover)
- Inability to keep standard preventative doctor appointments
- Homeless Population: Need for support of shelters/warming centers – particularly need for increased cleaning supplies
- Housing Related: Mortgage assistance, fear of evictions with limited pay
- Immigrants/Refugees: Refugee resettlement efforts halted as the majority of cases scheduled have been cancelled; Increased needs of refugees in a system that was already under stress
- Internet Access: Particularly for low-income communities (urban and rural), for employees now being asked to work at home, and for college students now working online
- Nonprofit & Operations Needs:
- Cancelled fundraising event and decrease in volunteers leading to decline in revenue
- Lack of ability/resources to move to virtual operations in some cases
- Place-based organizations (youth centers, summer camps, senior congregate meal programs) face unique challenges in building longer term strategies for recovey.
- Seniors:
- Needs for more ability for virtual programming/contact mechanisms as they will be more isolated/high risk
- Difficulty getting needed medications
- Elimination of congregate meal programs due to social distancing has posed increased challenges for food access
- Small Business:
- Access to capital to pay overhead costs like rent, payroll, and utilities, due to loss of revenue
- Technical assistance navigating the overload of information, grant applications, and resources in the entrepreneurial ecosystems
- Paying small business loans
- Supporting employees amid layoffs or filing for unemployment, healthcare access, and crowdfunding to be able to pay employees
- Restaurants shifting to a carry out model
- Building or improving eCommerce websites, or shifting to online sales
- Transportation:
- Some families unable to get transportation to bring home children from closed colleges/universities.
- Barriers in transportation to school food sites
- Particular barriers for disabled – some usual transportation methods not operating