Spreading Love, Stopping Germs: GLIDE Foundation Expanded Reach with Enhanced Disinfection

For nearly 60 years, GLIDE Foundation has been a center for social justice, dedicated to fighting systemic injustices, creating pathways out of poverty and crisis, and transforming lives. Located in San Francisco’s diverse and culturally rich Tenderloin neighborhood, most of GLIDE’s clients are experiencing poverty and struggling to afford housing, food, and meet other basic needs. GLIDE has remained open throughout the pandemic and continues to provide wraparound services that include: three free meals every day, case management, housing navigation, childcare, harm reduction, policy advocacy, and spiritual nourishment via GLIDE Memorial Church, a subsidiary of GLIDE Foundation.

GLIDE knows that providing a caring environment starts with providing a clean and safe environment. Surface disinfection is critically important and it is no small task to ensure that the 135,000 square-foot community service hub, childcare facilities, kitchens, offices, and church Sanctuary are kept clean and healthy year-round. We spoke with Erby Foster, Chief Financial and Operating Officer, and Matt Dudley, assistant manager of GLIDE’s facilities team, about the role disinfection has played in providing life-changing services to the community amidst the ever-evolving pandemic environment.

The Challenge: Safely Serving Those in Need During a Global Pandemic

Not once in the last two years has GLIDE stopped serving the community. When the pandemic first hit San Francisco in early 2020, the biggest challenge for the facilities team was to maintain a high level of cleanliness throughout GLIDE’s facilities, with a limited number of staff available to get the job done.

“Our goal at GLIDE Foundation is to help maintain a safer and healthier environment while providing our services to the community,” says Foster.

While COVID-19 may not spread primarily via surfaces, the pandemic did bring greater attention to pathogens that can spread in high-traffic areas, and the facilities team found themselves in need of a highly effective yet efficient process for enhanced disinfection.

“Whether in the church Sanctuary or in the kitchen where we prepare our free daily meals, there are so many high-touch surfaces at GLIDE that need attention,” Dudley says. “We have to make sure we’re reaching every critical surface. It’s probably three or four times the amount of disinfecting than we had done before the pandemic, which was already a lot.”

CloroxPro Products Filling the Need

Although Dudley’s team was short on manpower and time, they responded to meet the challenge of keeping their spaces safe. To balance the staff’s capacity with growing demand, GLIDE Foundation and Dudley’s team turned to CloroxPro for help, and brought in the Clorox^® Total 360^® Electrostatic Sprayer and Clorox^® TurboPro™ Handheld Electrostatic Sprayer.

“The day our CloroxPro devices were delivered might still be my favorite day,” Dudley recalls. “Incorporating the electrostatic devices and chemistry allow us to clean and disinfect more spaces, more effectively and in less time.”

Saving time while still achieving the right level of cleaning and disinfection is critical for GLIDE Foundation as more volunteers, staff, and clients start to return to the building, including those attending the iconic GLIDE Memorial Church Sunday celebrations. Though the organization continues to observe social distancing protocols, mask requirements, and vaccine checks, the proper disinfection of high-touch surfaces is a key component in helping to keep their spaces safe. As the church reintroduces in-person weekly Sunday Celebrations, the facilities team disinfects the Sanctuary between the two morning services.

“As far as efficiency, it’s a no-brainer,” Dudley says. “On Sundays, we go through the space with the TurboPro™ and it takes one person 25 minutes to do the whole building — every pew, every handrail. Without the Clorox TurboPro™ device, it would take a crew of four or five people to do the same work in the same amount of time.”

The facilities team was also able to reduce their disinfectant chemistry usage. “The Clorox^® Total 360^® System allows us to more effectively and efficiently cover high-touch and hard-to-reach surfaces for more comprehensive disinfection,” Foster explains. Since the Clorox Total 360^® Disinfectant Cleaner stays wet for the recommended contact time and then dries on surfaces, the team can spray and keep on going with no wiping needed.

Staying Safe While Expanding Services

GLIDE has continued to extend its reach throughout the pandemic to meet community needs citywide, and the 2021 holiday season was no exception. Many communities in San Francisco were hit hard, especially those who were already struggling. In fact, 93% of the families that GLIDE serves have lost income as a result of COVID-19. Entering a second COVID-ridden holiday season, GLIDE recognized how important it was to provide kids with the holiday joy that they deserve and was determined to continue its Annual GLIDE Toy Wonderland tradition.

In mid-December, GLIDE delivered nearly 800 bags of new toys across San Francisco that were hand-picked for children based on their interests and ages. This was an increase of 150 more children served from 2020, which helped meet the rising need caused by the pandemic, inflation and the current economy.

Prior to the pandemic, the Toy Wonderland was an in-person event that gathered hundreds of children and families together for a special, joyful day. With the growing threat of the Omicron variant, the event was modified for a second year. Rather than convening families under one roof, GLIDE brought the toys to the children in their home neighborhoods.

Over the course of several weeks leading up to the toy deliveries, the toys were collected, sorted and packed in the GLIDE Memorial Church Sanctuary, the same place where the Sunday Celebrations are held. For the facilities team, special attention was paid to the disinfection of the Sanctuary during the toy packing to ensure that GLIDE was minimizing any threats that could be caused by the spreading of germs.

“Having the Clorox^® Total 360^® Electrostatic Sprayer and TurboPro™ Handheld Electrostatic Sprayer made disinfection really convenient and easy,” Dudley explains. Because the Total 360^® Disinfectant Cleaner can be left on surfaces without wiping it off when used as directed, the staff was able to disinfect all critical surfaces in less than 30 minutes.

A “New Normal” for Sanitation at GLIDE

“Even if the pandemic ended two variants ago, it will always be important to clean and disinfect,” Dudley says. GLIDE staff are interacting with thousands of clients on a daily basis and are focused on making every interaction as safe as possible, which includes surface disinfection to help minimize the spread of illness-causing germs.

“The Clorox^® Total 360^® System enables us to provide our local community with greater peace of mind when visiting our facility,” says Foster. “We are proud to serve our local community with this premium technology and help provide them with enhanced safety against the spread of germs.”

For GLIDE’s facilities team, CloroxPro is here to stay beyond the pandemic and the products have taken the place of other steps done in the past. Incorporating Clorox^® electrostatic solutions into GLIDE’s cleaning procedure helps eliminate illness-causing germs from surfaces while also minimizing time spent on disinfection.

“The Clorox^® Total 360^® Electrostatic Sprayer, TurboPro™ Handheld Electrostatic Sprayer, Total 360^® Disinfectant Cleaner, and Anywhere^® Daily Disinfectant & Sanitizer are going to be a really important part of our program going forward, regardless of how long the pandemic lasts,” Dudley concludes. “They’re reducing manual labor, they’re eliminating bacteria and viruses on surfaces and they’re more cost effective. It’s a triple win.”