Community colleges are often praised for their responsiveness to their students and the people in their communities. There might be no better example of this agility than how advancement leaders at two-year institutions have helped facilitate a tangible response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s stunning sometimes, how quickly this can happen. Community colleges are really about helping your districts and they show that those connections are really strong,” says Danielle Wilberg, associate director of annual funds and alumni relations at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois, U.S. “When you only have five total administrators, it makes things much faster to just say, ‘yes.’”

Community colleges, and their foundations, jumped to support students with emergency aid and provide the necessary tools for remote learning in this time of social distancing. Many provided unused PPE, or personal protective equipment, to health care workers on the front lines of the crisis. This wasn’t the way that advancement professionals expected to celebrate Community College Month in April—although their actions certainly display the institutions’ commitment to their constituents and beyond.

Below are just a handful of examples of how community colleges have raced to help those most in need.

Montgomery College

On April 2, Maryland’s Montgomery College donated more than 3,100 pieces of PPE, including masks, gloves, and surgical gowns, to the Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security. According to David Sears, senior vice president of advancement and community engagement, it took the college’s Coronavirus Advisory Team less than a week to identify the materials, temporarily suspend restrictions that normally prevent donations like this, and deliver the PPE.

“Our community college was looking for a way to help the community,” he says. “Typically, policies and procedures don’t allow us to make donations to other organizations or entities. We were able to fast-track suspension of that policy in the face of this national crisis.”

The materials came from the health sciences program, although the college, located in Montgomery County, Maryland, U.S., had more PPE on hand than usual due to a planned mass casualty drill on April 25. With that canceled because of the pandemic, the protective gear was able to go to those who needed it most.

The college also has sought to help its students of greatest need. Joyce Matthews, executive director of the Montgomery College Foundation, says that when the institution canceled hundreds of events, $400,000 worth of funding was able to be reallocated to a student-centered fund. The foundation added another $150,000 and has been garnering new donations for a student emergency aid fund.

As the college and foundation have been working to ensure that every student has home computer access and deliver monetary aid for other student needs, Matthews says that she and her colleagues strive to streamline the process, recognizing that “good professional judgment” should outweigh procedure at this time.

“We tried not to have it layered in bureaucracy and multiple checks,” she says. “We have made over 1,000 awards so far. The beautiful notes of gratitude we’ve received from our students confirm what a meaningful difference this makes.”

Foundation for Los Angeles Community Colleges

With remote learning becoming the temporary normal for education, the Foundation for Los Angeles Community Colleges made it a priority to provide laptops to students who had previously relied on computers on campuses or in public libraries for their coursework. Fortunately, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti had previously started a program that provided promise students refurbished laptops for $90 each.

Because that system was in place, a team was able to tweak it to provide laptops to all students who needed them, says Michael Fuller, director of institutional advancement for the foundation. Still, the number of applicants soared into the tens of thousands.

Fuller speaks to the “digital divide” that exists for low-income students within the Los Angeles Community College District (and throughout the U.S.). He estimates that at least 12% of students have insufficient connectivity and hardware for remote learning. When applied to LACCD’s 230,000 students, that percentage means a tremendous number of people struggling to continue with their studies.

“We’ve never had this sort of volume of applications … where there’s been a need to do it so quickly,” Fuller says. “The staff has been working seven days a week just to keep up. It’s a huge operation.”

Amidst delivering thousands of laptops to students, the foundation also has attended to other realms of student need, including gift cards for groceries and money for emergencies. Fuller praises new and existing donors who’ve recognized the need by giving more or relaxing restrictions on donations so that additional students can benefit from financial assistance now.

“We have one of the highest-need populations of any community college district in the nation. For many of us, these are small amounts, but they make a big difference, whether it’s a $90 laptop, or a $50 grocery card, or emergency grant of $500-600,” Fuller says. “I’ve never had a job in my career when I felt that the work that we do as a team is more important. Our big hope, of course, is that we’re allowing more students to continue their education.”

Los Angeles City College Foundation

As the executive director of the Los Angeles City College Foundation, Robert Schwartz also has been helping L.A. students face the difficulties of this crisis. In early March, the foundation raised approximately $70,000 to administer flu shots to 5,000 students, with the idea that if students’ immune systems were protected from the flu, they would be less susceptible to the effects of COVID-19.

Not long after, Schwartz and foundation staff pivoted to putting together an emergency student support fund, anticipating that there would be immense need for it. He says that the foundation’s in-house accountant worked with administrators to identify funds that could be allocated from cash accounts, along with endowments that were unrestricted or allowed for the use of emergency support. The foundation also sent out appeals to alumni and donors. By early April, the emergency fund had $200,000 available.

“If we’ve got a lot of money sitting in various accounts, there’s no better time than now,” Schwartz says. “There are only two reasons to use it. One is to keep operating at full steam. The other is to just give out money to these students as fast as we can. In this case, we have the resources to do both.”

He says the foundation is sending funds in $500 increments to students who need the money for food, rent, or laptops and internet connectivity. There have been logistical challenges in doing this, especially for students who might need aid more than most.

“A lot of these students are single parents. About 20% of our students are estimated to being housing insecure,” Schwartz says. “We’re getting these emails about students who are literally on the street. And then it becomes how do we get money to them? We’re taking it one step at a time as fast as we can go.”

While solving those problems, Schwartz and his team are dedicated to raising more money to help additional students by organizing a fundraising campaign and relying on the LACC Foundation board to get out the word about the extreme need. The foundation has already purchased $43,000 worth of laptops and has applied for FEMA and Small Business Association loans to offset costs. Schwartz anticipates that the foundation will be able to provide a total of $300,000 in emergency support to students, if he and the staff are successful in their fundraising endeavors.

Parkland College

As the pandemic worsened, the advancement team at Parkland College also made an appeal to donors, but in a different way. When Parkland canceled events that were to be sponsored by some of the college’s major corporate donors, staff reached out to ask if those donors would be amenable to shifting that money to a student emergency aid fund.

“It made the stewardship much more positive to say we have this immediate need, we would like to do this with that funding,” Wilberg says. “And they felt that they could make an impact on a need that wasn’t even foreseen at the time they gave. They feel good about it.”

The fund existed before, though not at this level. Wilberg praises her team’s relationship with the dean of students office, which is responsible for granting Parkland students money for educational demands, especially for hardware and connectivity for online learning. To reinforce this need, the central Illinois college launched a campaign titled Today. Tomorrow. Together. as a way of communicating Parkland’s response and encourage the institution’s major donors to pitch in.

“It took a seven-day turnaround for this,” Wilberg says. “Our marketing department was a great partner in this.”

Parkland also has a large health professions program and is partnered with three health providers in the area where students do their clinical rotations. Once shelter-in-place orders were issued for Illinois, college staff tallied the on-hand PPE and divided the materials among the three establishments.

Sierra College

Staff at Sierra College also divided up the institution’s PPE and donated items to two hospitals in Roseville, California, U.S., close to the college’s campus in Rocklin. In addition, Sierra staff offered the use of the college’s nursing lab (normally used for simulations, but identical to hospital facilities) as overflow space for local medical professionals, while making its currently empty dorm rooms available to county officials for quarantine needs, if necessary.

“It’s been received really well. It shows, when we say, ‘community college,’ we really are the community’s college,” says Sonbol Aliabadi, foundation executive director at Sierra. “We all come to each other’s aid.”

But some of the efforts at Sierra go beyond the local community. Aliabadi says that the college owns many 3D printers, some of which have been placed in students’ homes in order to manufacture face shields for health care workers as fast as possible. The shields have been delivered to hospitals outside of Sierra’s local area and into the greater Sacramento region.

Of course, like community colleges around the U.S., student emergency needs are a factor and Aliabadi says that Sierra staff are doing their best to keep up with the extreme need. She and others have been handing out gift cards for gas and groceries to students, at safe distances, in a college parking lot.

“All students are heavily impacted. But it seems to me that community college students are a lot more vulnerable because so many are self-supporting. The cases I’m seeing are just heart-wrenching,” Aliabadi says. “But there’s always a silver lining. People come out of the woodwork.”

She recognizes that the gift cards and other emergency funds wouldn’t be possible without the support of donors, which is why she’s directed foundation staff to set aside time each day to call donors and thank them, while also asking if they need any help.

“A lot of them are older. ‘Can we do grocery shopping for you? Can we run errands for you?’” Aliabadi says. “Everywhere you look, you see the impact. But all of us can be there for each other.”