COVID-19 Pandemic, Physical Distancing Policies, and the Non-Profit Sector Volunteer Force

Although COVID-19-related physical distancing has had large economic consequences, the impact on volunteerism is unclear. Using volunteer position postings data from Canada's largest volunteer center (Volunteer Toronto) from February 3, 2020, to January 4, 2021, we evaluated the impact of different levels of physical distancing on average views, total views, and total number of posts. There was about a 50% decrease in the total number of posts that was sustained throughout the pandemic. Although a more restrictive physical distancing policy was generally associated with fewer views, there was an initial increase in views during the first lockdown where total views were elevated for the first 4 months of the pandemic. This was driven by interest in COVID-19-related and remote work postings. This highlights the community of volunteers may be quite flexible in terms of adapting to new ways of volunteering, but substantial challenges remain for the continued operations of many non-profit organizations. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Rethinking Long-Term Care.

Across Canada, the long-term care sector has received increased attention since the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The now often-cited statistic - 80% of deaths in the first wave occurred among individuals residing in institutional long-term care - is tragic enough and is only compounded by the fact that the number of deaths in long-term care were still higher in the second wave in all but two provinces. Many have argued that the impact of the pandemic was amplified in the institutional long-term care sector because of a number of long-standing shortfalls in funding, space, staffing and infrastructure. For example, Canadian provinces had lower average direct hours of care (three hours per day) provided to residents in long-term care facilities than even the average of four hours per day provided in the United States (Hsu et al. 2016).