Officials at Stamford-based Americares say Giving Tuesday is critical for them to keep their free clinics staffed.

The Americares distribution center in Stamford has been busy amid the pandemic where employees work to ship out medical supplies to health facilities in 26 countries in the fight against COVID-19.

However, employees say preparing the deliveries are just part of the non-profit's day-to-day operations.

Americares also runs four local health clinics, including one in Norwalk.

Together, the clinics serve around 3,000 low-income uninsured patients each year, and even more this year because of the pandemic.

Americares’ free clinics executive director Karen Gottlieb says the clinics have had to limit the number of volunteers for safety reasons due to the pandemic.

She says the clinics have also lost volunteers who are high risk for COVID or just not comfortable with working right now.

As a result, the number of paid staff has gone up.

"The challenge is financial," Gottlieb says.

"We do get small donations from the cities that we serve, but most of it is private donors."

Gottlieb says Americares is relying on donations from the communities they serve, and they could use all the help they can get right now.

"We need to be able to serve more people, and the only way we can do that is with financial support," she says.

For more information on how you can donate on Giving Tuesday, click here.