Valley Stream clubs struggle to find volunteers

Volunteer organizations are the touchstone of Valley Stream, but the numbers of volunteers providing service to the community appears to be dwindling.

For those looking to volunteer in Valley Stream, there is a bevy of worthwhile options to sign up for, from its veteran organizations to cultural arts groups — some with a deep history and others far newer to the neighborhood.

More service groups, however, are seeing membership and volunteer numbers thinning. Others, given their aging volunteers, foresee a potentially large shortfall ahead, making it vital to bring in new blood to keep their groups viable.

According to Valley Stream Lions Club Vice President Jim Zabatta, recruitment and retainment of new volunteers are the top priority.

A once-leading volunteer organization in Valley Stream, the club has fallen on hard times, said Zabatta who has been a pillar of the organization while holding almost every conceivable leadership office. In its heyday, its club meetings averaged 50 members. Its charity events like the Annual Dance for the Blind held wide acclaim from the community. Zabatta noted there was a time when the club could simply rely on word-of-mouth endorsements to get new volunteers through the door. 

That time is undoubtedly over.

The club’s membership has been on a steady decline for years, down to 12 active volunteers. “We have a few committed members who are determined to keep the Lions Club alive and grow our membership,” Zabatta said. The club is taking more proactive recruiting tactics including a recruitment drive where each member brings down a potential new member from their social circle.

Part of the enormous drying up of volunteer pools could be chalked up to a generational difference, suggested Zabatta. In a post-World War II world, returning soldiers were eager to settle down, establish households, and form friendships and community connections around formalized volunteer organizations.

Nowadays, the emphasis on traditional organized volunteering has been frayed. Instead, the grinding pressure of work-life obligations puts a big demand on people’s time, argues Sister Margie Kelly, director of the pantry outreach program at Holy Name of Mary Church.

“I’ve made it possible for people at our food pantry to volunteer for small things,” said Sister Kelly, whose organization has fed dozens of needy families in Valley Stream.

Wrangling young people to volunteer has also posed a challenge, noted Sister Kelly, whose helpers tend to be older, often retired, and who’ve fostered a lifelong connection to the Holy Name of Mary Church.

“I find that people don’t have the time or the interest of making full-time commitments like they did when we first started our pantry 40-some-odd years ago,” she added. “People had once come and devoted their lives to this. That’s no longer the case.”

The Valley Stream Lions Club has similarly eased up its volunteering obligations, cutting the number of club meetings from its typical three monthly to one meeting a month.

However, these conventional explanations for dwindling interest offered by traditional volunteer groups aren’t new. In 2013, the Valley Stream Garden Club, an organized group that enjoyed all things horticulture and shared that joy through service activities throughout the village, folded after nearly 50 years.

Then as now, officials spoke of the hectic work-life schedules of young people and other prospective members impeding their ability to haul in recruits.

It may be the case that for many older volunteers who were raised at a time when organized volunteering was deeply woven into family and public life, a chance to serve in any capacity was what mattered most.

However, observers note that for the Gen Z generation in particular, the type of volunteer service and its messaging seems to matter more than previous generations.

A driving decision for young volunteers to invest their time and efforts hinges on whether they can visibly see their actions having a sustained impact in resolving urgent causes, especially on things like climate change and social justice issues.

Trends also suggest that the younger generation opts for more spontaneous and flexible volunteering opportunities over the reliable rituals of weekly club meetings. They are also seemingly turned off by rigid leadership service projects, where rules and orders are given from the top down. They are instead pulled toward grassroots, group-directed, and group-led efforts.   

The Valley Stream Lion’s Club may need to strike a balance of appealing to younger crowds while remaining true to its original roots of service, but it’s a struggle Zabatta believes is worth fighting for.

“We welcome everybody and we’re open to new ideas,” said Zabatta. “At the end of the day, we want our members to gain the satisfaction of helping people.”

Have an opinion on this article? Send an email to jlasso@liherald.com.