Jim Hamel: Are you taking nonprofits for granted a bit more than you thought?

To The Daily Sun,

“What a difference a week makes!.” I’ve heard a lot of that sentiment lately, comparing our collective lives this week with what normal life was just a week or two ago. Obviously, a lot has changed. Many suggest that some things will never be the sam — and that that may ultimately be a good thing.

One thing is for sure: there’s an enormous amount of uncertainty now. People are anxious and scared. Many working people — living paycheck-to-paycheck, and now seeing those paychecks stop — are suddenly thrust into crisis mode. Many of the rest of us also feel a sense of this international crisis, but really, we’ve just experienced some disruption and inconvenience. It makes one stop and think.

It makes me reflect with gratitude for New Hampshire’s robust nonprofit sector. There are well over 5,000 nonprofits in New Hampshire that, collectively, are absolutely vital to the quality of life and sense of community that most of us enjoy — and maybe until recently, mostly took for granted.

I think particularly about some of the people that we serve in the nonprofit I work at — people whose disabilities require care 24/7, 365 days/year. And I think about the direct-care workforce that provides their care — still showing up, still plugging in. The same is true, of course, of our health care professionals and first-responders. These are nonprofit people doing the work of humanity, protecting our communities and the most vulnerable among us.

This crisis offers a reminder for us each to evaluate how well we align our resources to reflect our values. We all have something to give — our time and talent foremost, our energy and interest, our advocacy. And for those with even modest financial discretionary capacity, our giving of dollars too—yes, even when the market is going south. Maybe especially when the market is going south.

The daily news these days is definitely unnerving, but there’s also a growing sense of community-mindedness, of people looking out for each other. Many of us are thinking about what we can do to help during this time of national crisis. We can, as many of us are now doing, look out for our neighbors, and we can also look out for the nonprofits in our community that look out for our neighbors — especially if, like me, you might just have been taking your community’s nonprofits for granted a bit more than you realized.

Nonprofits are vital in times of crisis; that’s perhaps easier to recognize in such times as these. But nonprofits perform vital community-building, life-enhancing services every day. And their success and impact is inextricably tied to the communities they serve, which support them. Gratefully, many people do support their local nonprofits. Most of us can do more — and perhaps seeing more clearly during this time of crisis how valuable nonprofits are — we will do more.

Some things will never be the same — and that may be a good thing.

Jim Hamel

Vice President of Development

Lakes Region Community Services

Laconia