Northwest Arkansas Council and Pure Charity teamed with Get Shift Done to launch Get Shift Done for Northwest Arkansas, which mobilizes adversely affected hospitality industry workers to create community impact during these challenging times. The result: Furloughed, unemployed, or reduced-hour workers are paid an hourly wage to provide hunger relief to food-insecure community members.
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the hospitality industry and put our already at-risk populations in desperate need of meals. Non-profit organizations that address food insecurity are experiencing spikes in the need for volunteers to meet the escalating challenge.
The solution? Pay laid-off food industry workers to help Northwest Arkansas hunger relief efforts.
The Get Shift Done initiative, now a national movement, launched in North Texas to provide supplemental income to food service workers who had lost their paychecks and to provide much-needed help for non-profits working to alleviate hunger. The Pack Shack learned about the innovative program and brought the idea to Northwest Arkansas Council. Northwest Arkansas Council moved quickly to convene the right partners to organize Get Shift Done for Northwest Arkansas, which uses Shiftsmart technology to register workers for paid shift work at hunger relief non-profits in the area, including Fayetteville Roots, The Pack Shack, Seeds That Feed and Salvation Army Northwest Arkansas Area Command. With the generous support of Walmart Foundation, Willard & Pat Walker Charitable Foundation, Walton Family Foundation and Get Shift Done on the national level, Get Shift Done for Northwest Arkansas is helping workers earn income while also building capacity to meet community need for meals. Please consider contributing to this temporary relief effort.
We are using the Shiftsmart platform to connect volunteers, supporters and non-profits to deliver these essential functions and provide basic incomes and food security for affected children and families. And, by providing a skilled, at-the-ready workforce, we can support the non-profits, school systems and other hunger relief programs with efficient and effective help to meet the surge in demand.
The Get Shift Done initiative was created with the goal of bringing critical stability to communities. Affected populations, businesses, organizations and non-profit organizations are activated on a local level and empowered to provide services in the communities they call home.
You can help by donating to the Get Shift Done Fund for Northwest Arkansas.
Get Shift Done is connecting the hospitality workforce affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with local non-profits to serve and provide hunger relief to the Northwest Arkansas community.
Get Shift Done for Northwest Arkansas aims to connect restaurant shift workers, who’ve been faced with reduced shift options, unemployment, or have voluntarily quit due to fear, with non-profit partners like Fayetteville Roots, The Pack Shack, Seeds That Feed and Salvation Army Northwest Arkansas Area Command to provide $15/hr. shifts to flexibly fit their schedules and help with community-based non-profit organizations, especially as these hunger relief groups struggle to meet the needs of the community during the pandemic.
Visit GetShiftDone.org, and continue to check back for updates. To learn more about supporting Get Shift Done for Northwest Arkansas, contact Jeannette Balleza Collins at jeannette@nwacouncil.org. For media inquiries, please contact Nate Green at nate@nwacouncil.org.
Both the non-profits whose volunteers were not coming to work due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the hospitality workers who were displaced from their jobs due to the mandatory closing and staged reopening of restaurants.
With fewer volunteers working shifts at food banks and other non-profit agencies dedicated to serving the food insecure, Dallas business and community leaders Anurag Jain and Patrick Brandt saw an opportunity to fill those shifts with people from the food service industry and pay them an hourly wage. Northwest Arkansas Council learned about the innovative program from The Pack Shack and connected with Get Shift Done to develop a regional pilot.
As a temporary relief effort, Get Shift Done for Northwest Arkansas provides vital support in a non-competitive way to hospitality companies that are doing a balancing act with safely reopening their dining rooms in observance with Arkansas requirements, hiring at a pace that matches consumer demand, and retaining headcount for federal loan forgiveness. Workers, who will no longer be receiving federal pandemic unemployment compensation after July 31st, can pick up shifts as needed and are encouraged to return to their employers when consumer demand warrants rehiring and/or more hours. During this unprecedented time, the initiative is meant to be supportive of entrepreneurs in the interim time of market stabilization when residents are expressing they are not quite ready to patronize establishments for dine-in services.
Please visit and use our DONATE link. And thank you. We are all in this together.
Get Shift Done for Northwest Arkansas’s fiscal sponsor is Pure Charity, Inc., a 501c3 non-profit. Get Shift Done for Northwest Arkansas is also supported by Northwest Arkansas Council, Walmart Foundation, Willard & Pat Walker Charitable Foundation, Walton Family Foundation and Get Shift Done on the national level.
Yes.
Register your furloughed employees as one group through our app. The app can be found here.
We are supporting workers from the hospitality industry.
Details about this are included in our app platform, Shiftsmart. You can learn more by completing our registration process within the app itself. To be eligible for the program, workers must have relevant food experience and have both a smartphone and a bank account.
After you register with the Shiftsmart app, you are part of the system and every step and feature of the process is handled from there. Using the Shiftsmart app, you will be able to create your profile and payment account, as well as be notified of available shifts and accept the shifts you want to work. For additional information, please review this document.
For workers who are drawing unemployment, according to Arkansas Department of Workforce Services, "Deductions will be made from your Weekly Benefit Amount when your earnings are more than 40% of the Weekly Benefit Amount.” Only if workers earn over 140% of their weekly benefit will they experience deductions from their traditional unemployment benefit. If a Get Shift Done worker nears earnings of $600 in supplemental income, then ShiftSmart will notify them that they will be issued a 1099 documenting income that must be claimed on personal taxes. Get Shift Done for Northwest Arkansas is a structure in place to provide supplemental income quickly (within 24 hours of a completed shift).
