Despite pandemic, RSVP’s reach expands in 2021
Turning lemons into lemonade. That’s how RSVP Executive Director Michele Moll views the continuing need to deploy the Delaware Valley community service organization’s 1,200 volunteers virtually and by telephone due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Looking back at 2021, Moll said: “I realized this year that there’s always going to be a place for virtual volunteering. It enables us to reach people we never could reach before. It also lets us include volunteers who might have mobility or disability issues, or just prefer to provide their services from home.”
RSVP’s numerous programs center on education, wellness and support for other nonprofits. Prior to last year, its volunteers — many of them seniors — often traveled to schools and other community locations. The need to go virtual has created new ways to deliver longstanding services, as well as a new program that seeks to bring online technology to people who lack digital skills or access.
Asked to describe their top highlight of 2021, five RSVP program coordinators described ways that remotely-delivered services have benefitted the community, sometimes in new ways.
Technology training
A program launched late last year to provide online skills to seniors has blossomed into a robust initiative to “bridge the digital divide,” said Tech Training coordinator Michelle Hang. She is developing illustrated online lessons in five areas: internet safety, email, web browsers, apps and Zoom.
Several Chester County nonprofits and RSVP have banded together to form the Digital Equity Coalition. They intend to bring online access and skills to Kennett Square-area agricultural workers who often lack them. Through this coalition, Hang is “training trainers from trusted community organizations” who will in turn provide online instruction as early as spring 2022 to those who have been unable to function online.
RSVP is also in discussion with several school districts to bring internet skills to parents who have been shut out of services such as online grade reports and teacher conferences.
“My highlight is developing material that could ultimately help hundreds, even thousands of people,” said Hang. “It’s a huge ‘big picture,’ and I’m excited to see what impact we can make.”
“I’m getting trained in RSVP’s tech sessions so
we can deliver the training to families,” explained Kelly Figueroa, an instructional technology coach for the Kennett Consolidated School District.
She envisions a process where “when new families register for school, the registrar will ask if they need connectivity or training. We will make sure all our families have internet access and the knowledge to use it.”
RSVP’s internet lessons “have been excellent. The amount of information they’ve been able to provide has been nothing short of amazing,” she said.
Math and reading programs expand
The pandemic has brought an expansion of RSVP’s already virtual math education program, My Free Tutor, as well as increasingly sophisticated software to the VELLO virtual reading program, provided to students in grades 1 to 5 in partnership with the United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey.
“My 2021 highlight is that we’ve been able to expand our virtual math program not only to serve high school students, but also students as young as thirdgraders and as old as firstgeneration college students,” said My Free Tutor coordinator
Anabella Tracy. “That in turn has opened the program to volunteer at-home tutors who might be intimidated by teaching high school math but are comfortable tutoring skills like multiplication.”
Jackie Matusow, RSVP’s literacy programs coordinator, said 2021 has brought positive feedback from parents of elementary school students receiving VELLO reading tutoring. The program began in the summer of 2020.
“Parents have told me that their children have done much better with their reading and that VELLO has been a big part of that improvement,” she said.
“Other parents have said their kids are very enthusiastic about reading now. We’ve also found that kids, parents and volunteers have become more confident in their online technology skills,” said Matusow.
“I feel we are so lucky to get the support of excellent volunteer tutors,” said Aheyon Baek, whose firstand third-grade sons began VELLO reading sessions in the summer. “We speak Korean in the home and I didn’t want them to fall behind in school. Their grades are meeting or exceeding expectations, and the program has improved their interest in reading.”
More help for other nonprofits
For many years through its Volunteer Executive Consultants (VEC), RSVP has helped other nonprofits to fundraise, professionalize their operation and attract participants. Last year the pandemic forced VEC to provide its services via Zoom teleconferences and this year, “we’ve used Zoom to expand our reach in several ways,” said program manager Sheri Burke.
For example, attendance at a set of spring and fall workshops offered to nonprofit managers is no longer limited to the 40 people who can fit in RSVP’s King of Prussia conference room.
“Our Meet the Funders workshop in September had 63 attendees learning about fundraising strategies,” said Burke. “Not only that, we’re recording the workshops so people who could not attend can view them later.”
Also, “operating virtually has let us help more people than we used to, and to include volunteer consultants who live outside the area. We now have one VEC living in Minnesota, and another joined us from the Lehigh Valley,” she said.
Alan Frankel, a retired corporate executive and consultant, has led numerous VEC teams.
“We can take on much larger projects through Zoom than we could in the past. It’s much easier to get people together and it’s also allowed us to include more volunteers who are still working,” he said.
In 2021 Frankel led a VEC team that at times included seven volunteers. They helped the Maryland Foundation of Dentistry to create a procedures manual for its 250-300 dentists, who provide free services to lowincome people. They also created a marketing and communications plan and blueprint to recruit and retain volunteer dentists.