When COVID hit, Network of Community Ministries expanded its reach in Richardson - The Dallas Morning News

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As COVID-19 disrupted classrooms in Richardson ISD, it also disrupted many students’ households and family finances, leaving more people in the district in need of help with food, clothing, bills and more.

The nonprofit leaders and volunteers who serve the RISD neighborhoods did not let the need overwhelm them; instead, the pandemic mobilized the Network of Community Ministries to work more closely with the district.

“It really has increased how we work together,” said Cindy Shafer, director of the network.

The network is a nondenominational charity that assists people living in the 14 ZIP codes served by Richardson public schools with a range of programs. This includes Richardson, but also parts of North Dallas and Garland, an area that Dallas nonprofits don’t quite reach in full.

When the pandemic hit, and children who qualified for free lunch weren’t in school to eat it, the network joined forces with the district to provide boxes of food to schools each week, so families could pick up food in their neighborhoods.

“It became a well-oiled machine,” Shafer said, loading pallets of food on trucks to send to schools each Friday. She said as students returned to their classrooms and school distribution stopped, the network expanded to a mobile food pantry, with trucks that now drive food to neighborhoods across the district.

With a new building, the network offers space to a variety of services that had been scattered before, including the food pantry and the Clothes Closet that provides good quality clothing to students.

Further, Shafer said, the pandemic drew the network closer to the leaders of individual schools, resulting in many more referrals from principals and counselors for families that need help.

Even as donors stepped up to meet the network’s needs, the organization lost volunteers, in many cases people who were more vulnerable than others to COVID and stayed home. Shafer has hired more employees to cover tasks once handled by volunteers; the staff has grown from five pre-pandemic to 21, some part-time.

She worries that donors will become fatigued and slow down their giving. “Whenever increased need happens, you usually can see an end in sight, but right now it just continues to grow,” she said.

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