United Way Matches Buncombe Businesses to Nonprofits During National Volunteer Month

Eighteen months after Hurricane Helene, the Appalachian Community Fund's market in Black Mountain still depends on volunteer labor to stay open. Aeroflow Health sent a team there earlier this week to repaint the space and tend its garden, a short-term deployment that preserved access to groceries and household supplies for the roughly 2,000 residents the market serves each month.

The work came through United Way of Asheville & Buncombe County's Hands On Asheville-Buncombe volunteer center, which used April's National Volunteer Month to push local employers toward structured commitments with county nonprofits. Allison Hargus, co-director of the Appalachian Community Fund, said the market has run almost entirely on volunteer capacity since the floods and warned that financial damage from a storm like Helene does not resolve when the water recedes: families living paycheck to paycheck absorb the impact slowly, keeping demand for food and supply distribution high long after media attention on the storm fades.

Denise Gonzalez, United Way's director of volunteer engagement, said the business-team model works because employees get to do tangible physical work alongside coworkers outside the office, building team cohesion while filling concrete operational gaps that understaffed nonprofits cannot cover on their own.

Three tasks remain most urgent for volunteer teams at county sites this month: repainting and restoring distribution spaces to make them more welcoming for residents arriving to collect aid, sorting and shelving donated goods, and assisting directly with grocery and supply distribution runs. Without volunteers handling those physical roles, nonprofit staff must step away from casework and benefits navigation, the specialized work that connects storm-affected families to assistance programs they cannot access alone. That diversion of staff time is where recovery progress stalls.

Businesses can register teams through the Hands On Asheville-Buncombe portal, which tracks open projects and schedules across partner sites. Nonprofits needing organized volunteer support can submit requests through the same system. With the month closing at the end of April, United Way is pressing Buncombe employers to commit now; at the Appalachian Community Fund market in Black Mountain, the work of keeping 2,000 residents supplied has no off-season.