Toby Vernon, Executive Director

In the span of a short walk, hike or bike ride through Richmond one can hardly turn a corner without encountering a neighborhood or public place that has been shaped or entirely created by volunteers. Consider the City’s extensive inventory of lovely parks & community gardens; or the many winding miles of well-maintained hiking and biking trails; heck, just look up to the urban forest! All of these beautiful gems have humble beginnings as simple but important volunteer projects that eventually attracted sufficient investment to dedicate staff and organizational resources to.

Until just about eight years ago, before ToolBank began operations here, the dedicated individuals that took on those bold volunteer-powered initiatives that have made Richmond the beautiful, thriving city is it today did so through sheer determination and shrewd resourcefulness. Over many years (and, I suspect, many beers) those folks cobbled together enough tools, equipment, materials, and good-heartedness that the job did eventually get done. But the work of inspiring and empowering a new generation of volunteers very much continues.

Over the last 17 years or so, volunteerism in American has tipped steadily downward, a terrible trend that is both unfortunate and reversible. It’s not certain that Richmond has exactly mirrored this trend but what is irrefutable is that circumstances of the last three years have certainly changed the way and the “why” individuals are volunteering. Each year at the ToolBank, we equip about 10,000 volunteers with over $1 million (retail value) in tools to more than 100 community-based organizations with widely varying missions and objectives. Each tool order tells us a lot about the needs of that particular project, the group coordinating the project, the volunteers, and the community they benefit. In aggregate, all of those individual data points reveal vitally important themes that help us as an organization do our very best to support the changing needs of volunteers and community-based organizations.

Some key takeaways:

Volunteerism through large and incumbent organizations is way down. Volunteerism with informal and grassroots groups is way up.

Like everything else, the COVID-19 pandemic all but completely shut down volunteer programs across America in March 2020. Here in Richmond, a headquarters to eight Fortune 500 companies with historically strong service records, those corporate volunteers vanished for two full years and have only recently begun to cautiously return to large-ish group volunteer projects. While 2020 saw the lowest of low watermarks for volunteerism, it seems that lockdown and a renewed fight for racial & social justice provided fuel to power new individual action and grassroots support. In 2021 a full 75% of our tool orders were loaned out in support of small groups of individual volunteers like “Friends of” groups, faith-based, and neighborhood groups. One of the most hopeful signs of the post(ish)-pandemic voluntary sector is that these grassroots groups have remained active at the same time that corporate volunteers have begun to re-engage.

Focus on environmental justice is stronger than ever. In the hands of grassroots groups, ToolBank tools are a game changer for Richmond’s “Thriving Environment” objectives.

In the last two and a half years, we’ve equipped nearly as many environmental projects as we did in the previous five years before that! Grassroots groups have been reactivating greenspaces, planting thousands of trees, installing acres of new community gardens & farms, converting turf to sustainable landscapes, tearing away noxious and invasive plants, and constructing new community infrastructure. This is all essential work if we are going to meet the recommendations of the Richmond 300 master plan around urban canopy coverage, native landscaping on public lands, and building more climate resilient public spaces.

With easy and affordable access to ToolBank tools, a new generation of volunteers are empowered to reverse the downward trend in volunteerism and shape Richmond into the socially & environmentally equitable city we’ve promised to be. It all starts with a free ToolBank membership. In just a few minutes you can be registered and equipped with hundreds of types of top-quality tools. But don’t wait, your community is counting on you.