In brief
Location: 64 Passaic St., Hackensack
Area served: Bergen County and surrounding areas
Key member: Nina Bachrach, CEO
Origin
Bergen Volunteers is a 501(c)(3) organization that is the hub of Bergen County’s social welfare network. Bergen Volunteers offers services in collaboration with volunteers and nonprofit agencies to address critical community needs.
Bergen Volunteers was founded in 1966 by the Junior League of Bergen County and a group of concerned residents who saw the need for a clearinghouse matching prospective volunteers with agencies that needed their help. This continues as a key service of our organization.
Mission
Bergen Volunteers turns caring into meaningful action by engaging volunteers to improve lives and strengthen the communities. This is achieved through volunteerism in community programs, community engagement and civic leadership.
We provide critical services to youth, families, veterans, seniors and those who are economically disadvantaged in our community. We connect volunteers with our own programs and those offered by our agency partners in the nonprofit community.
Goals
Bergen Volunteers will continue to shore up the cracks in our social welfare system through our Ida response and recovery, Afghan refugee assistance and supporting community members who are food insecure.
Programs
Direct service programs
- CHEER: Home support, such as grocery shopping and medicine pickup for the elderly.
- CHORE: Residential maintenance.
- Mentoring: Connects adolescents between the ages of 8-21 years old with significant personal challenges, first-generation college students, caregivers and senior citizens with trained adult mentors.
- All Wrapped Up: Our holiday gift giving program.
- Bergen READS: Helps elementary school students from districts with high populations of at-risk students learn to enjoy and improve their reading skills.
- Making-It-Home: Providing gently used furniture for individuals and families moving into permanent housing.
- VITA: An IRS-certified program providing free tax assistance to low- to moderate-income individuals and families, the disabled, the elderly and ELS who need assistance with their tax forms.
Civic leadership
- Leadership and civic training through Bergen LEADS, College LEADS and Teen LEADS.
- Friday Forum: A powerful networking and learning series that delves into community issues and challenges.
Community engagement
- Redefining Retirement: Matches volunteers with our programs to other nonprofit agencies in Bergen County.
- Summer Campership: A scholarship program where children from lower-income working families are sent to local day camps.
- Corporate Engagement: We help business leaders engage their employees with community service opportunities to fulfill their corporate social responsibility to those in need.
- Necessities Drives: We run drives for items not covered by SNAP, school supply drives, food security assistance, summer food drives for students on free and reduced lunch who do not receive food over the summer, and drives for on-the-spot relief, such as for Hurricane Ida and Afghan refugees.
- Training: We provide volunteer managers training, board training and leadership coaching.
Achievements
Some achievements in the past year:
- Provided 1,732 hours of literacy support for more than 200 students.
- Gifted holiday gifts to families in need.
- Helped 668 seniors age safely in their homes.
- Visited 135 homebound seniors and individuals with disabilities.
- Furnished 79 homes of veterans & formerly homeless families.
- Completed more than 200 free tax returns for low income families.
- Provided 285 hours of mentoring, offering guidance, support and resources for children, caregivers and families.
Beyond our own service programs, we matched 900 volunteers with nearly 100 nonprofits.
Fundraising
Our organization collaborates with businesses
and corporate partners, helping them with their
Corporate Social Responsibility and, in turn,
sustaining our organization. We fundraise through grant-writing, events and individual giving.
Finally
During the pandemic, hundreds of volunteers devoted more than 25,000 hours of service to our community programs. We continued to provide our critical services to people who need us the most through our programs and by offering volunteer opportunities.
Conversation Starter
For more information about Bergen Volunteers go to bergenvolunteers.org or call 201-489-9454.
