Meals on Wheels losing volunteers

The Meals on Wheels program serving Spokane is facing its worst volunteer crisis in 10 years.

The nonprofit agency is seeing a sharp falloff in volunteers, and that’s leaving unfilled routes that must then be covered by paid staff, said Cheri Mataya-Muncton, executive director of the Mid-City Meals on Wheels program.

“I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and this is the most challenging I have seen it in finding volunteers,” Mataya-Muncton said. “We’re having to fill about three routes a day. Lately I’ve had to do a lot of the day-to-day operations because the staff is out.”

While there’s no hard data or research to support it, Mataya-Muncton said the high cost of gas has likely deterred new volunteers. About 85 percent of delivery volunteers are retired and on fixed incomes.

From a pool of about 1,000 volunteers, 50 people come in each workday to do 25 routes. That translates into 350 to 400 meals delivered in an area between the Palouse Highway south of Spokane to Deer Park. Each volunteer’s route includes about 15 homes, and takes 60 to 90 minutes.

On Wednesday, a small pack of volunteers drove into a north Spokane church parking lot to pick up meals of roast beef, potatoes and sliced pears for delivery. None of the drivers said they were considering stopping their volunteer work due to gas prices.

“Twenty miles a week won’t kill me,” said Jan Rule, while waiting for the white truck to arrive with the meals.

Rule, who’s retired, has delivered meals for five years, sort of a payback to the agency that delivered meals to her mother when she was in her 90s and recovering from a broken hip. Rule said workers actually changed a light bulb for her mother. She offers her clients the same kind of help.

Her route takes 60 minutes, but she’ll chat with folks for several minutes.

The meal recipients are the “frailest of the frail,” Mataya-Muncton said.

They are mostly elderly, and some are disabled, including kidney transplant patients.

Last year, Meals on Wheels developed a fund to give volunteers a $3 gas voucher, but those funds ran out, Mataya-Muncton said.

In Spokane Valley, Meals on Wheels is faring a little better, but it too is seeing a lack of new volunteers.

In the last few months in Coeur d’Alene, program coordinator Vickie Harrison has been forced to fill in on routes, too, a couple of times a week. The decline in volunteers could grow into a concern if it gets any worse, Harrison said.

Many times the programs see a wealth of new volunteers when schoolteachers suddenly show up to help for the summer.

“I have no new teachers,” said Pam Almeida, director of Spokane Valley Meals on Wheels. “We definitely have a need for substitutes.”