Volunteer Recruiting Drive Launched

Skilled volunteers meet to discuss their current projects with Marin Nonprofits.  Featured from right to left:  Tom Batty, Jane Soloman, Judith Saffron, Stan Green, John Kichuci, Julie Burk (Volunteer Services Director) and Bob Kopelman.

From the Marin Independent Journal, Thursday, October 14th, 2010

The Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership of Marin has launched an initiative to recruit more than 1,000 new volunteers ages 50 and older.

The center will recruit volunteers online and will send representatives to senior centers, clubs, businesses and special events, Executive Director Linda Davis said. It also will tap an increased number of "matchmakers" to meet with seniors and find volunteer opportunities for them, Davis said.

The initiative, titled "Share your Lifetime of Experience," will target both retirees and workers in the later stages of their careers, she said.

"We see a future where community engagement is a part of growing older," she said Wednesday at a press conference announcing the project.

The center already runs a number of programs to match volunteers with organizations and volunteer projects, and to advise groups on using volunteers. In addition to recruitment the new initiative will include consulting with other groups to help them take into account the needs of older volunteers, such as more flexible schedules, Davis said.

A key goal of the recruitment is to improve the quality of life for seniors by giving them a sense of purpose, Davis said. Volunteering can also help reduce people's need for medical care and other services in the future, she said, citing studies that show a connection between social connections and physical health.
Marin County Supervisor Judy Arnold said the initiative is well-timed to address a reduction in services provided by the county, which has eliminated about 180 positions over the past three years to help fill a $25 million budget hole.
 

"That's just the first wave of what the economy and this state budget is doing," Arnold said at the press conference.

Also appearing at the event was volunteer John Kikuchi, 54, a former technology marketing executive who retired early last year after losing his job. After a few months of golfing and working around the house, Kikuchi said his wife handed him a flyer for the volunteer center and said, "'You need something to do.'"
Now Kikuchi is volunteering for Marin Advocates for Children, the Marin Human Race -- a project of the volunteer center -- and the Canal Welcome Center.

"I'm one of those that basically gave money and never thought of volunteering my time," Kikuchi said. "I was always too busy."

Kikuchi said volunteering has given him "something to wake up in the morning for," which was lacking in the months after he stopped working.

"Playing golf, you meet people and say hello, but you don't follow up in any way, shape or form," he said.

For more information, visit www.volunteermarin.org or call 479-5710.

Contact Will Jason via e-mail at wjason@marinij.com

Thank you to all  of our wonderful volunteers who have and are making this Volunteer Initiative a success!  If you would like to "Share your Lifetime of Experience" go to www.VolunteerMarin.org today.

Out-of-work residents turn to volunteer service

From the Marin Independent Journal, Sunday October 10th, 2010

When Mike Moore moved to San Rafael from Sacramento last year, he was unfazed by what he thought would be a brief job search."I was up early every morning going to job websites, going to job fairs thinking it was just a temporary thing," said Moore, 44.
By the summer, he became discouraged.
"Weeks turned to months, and I found that I was kind of just hanging out and not really doing anything constructive," he said.
Then Moore volunteered to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity, and he taught English to immigrants through another nonprofit program. He's been volunteering ever since, most recently as an after-school tutor in Marin City. The experience has inspired him to pursue a new career in counseling, and he is taking community college classes with an eye toward applying to a master's program.
Moore is one of hundreds of Marin residents who have become volunteers since the beginning of the economic downturn. Nonprofit and government agencies say they have been flooded with people looking to refresh their skills, update their resumes or simply get out of the house. Across the county, many organizations report volunteer activity has increased anywhere from 20 to 50 percent - at one agency, applications increased more than threefold - with many new volunteers drawn in by joblessness or under-employment.
"I've been here 30 years and I've not seen anything like this," said Joan Brown, who coordinates public sector volunteers for Marin County.

Brown said volunteer interest is at least triple its level before the downturn, and she receives hundreds of applications from people who have lost their jobs.
"We just don't have enough opportunities for all the people who are interested," Brown said. "There are really outstanding, qualified people who I may not even be able to place."
Victoria Snyder, 30, of Mill Valley, was placed recently as a volunteer attorney in the Marin County counsel's office, working on cases involving children who have been abused or neglected. The work matched her experience at a school for emotionally disturbed children.
"I was really attracted to this area of law," she said.
Snyder could not find a position in the legal profession after she graduated from the City University of New York School of Law more than a year ago, and at first she worked in entry-level jobs. She decided it would be better to work in her field even if it meant not getting paid and moving back in with her family to save money.
"To be employable I needed some legal work experience in 2010," she said. "One of the other benefits is just meeting other attorneys. It's been really wonderful because all of the other attorneys that I've met are warm and friendly and are eager to explain how things work."
For some people, volunteering can lead to a paid job. Anthony Lum was a civil engineer and project designer for BKF Engineers in Redwood City until he was laid off last year. He said he applied to nearly 100 jobs but could not get re-hired.
Lum, who lives in Milbrae, first volunteered for Habitat for Humanity and then learned that many Bay Area public agencies use volunteer engineers. He found a position in Marin County's public works department.
"Initially, from a selfish standpoint, I wanted to have some sort of public sector experience on my resume," Lum said.
Lum helps design projects such as guardrails and sidewalks in the unincorporated county. After two months his position turned into a paid job - albeit one without benefits - and he hopes it will be the beginning of a career in the public sector.
"You feel like you are improving the quality of life for the public," he said.
Not all new volunteers are driven by career goals. Other factors include the introduction of mandatory community service in public schools and the retirement of baby boomers who now have more free time, said Linda Davis, CEO of the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership, a volunteer placement agency.
"More and more people are rising up, teaching younger people about volunteering," Davis said. "Sometimes, things happen in the news that make people want to volunteer, like a disaster," such as the Haiti earthquake in January.
All of those factors have contributed to a huge increase - nearly 50 percent from July 2009 to July 2010 - in volunteers placed through the volunteer center. As those volunteers have fanned out across the county, absorbing them has proven difficult for some groups.
Nadine James-Ward, volunteer coordinator for Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco, said the organization has turned away dozens of extra volunteers since starting its first Marin County project - it now has three projects - earlier this year.
"We always have a waiting list of people who want to come volunteer," James-Ward said.
But volunteers can also provide much-needed help to an organization, especially at a time when the economy and cuts to government jobs and services have increased the need for charity work, said Mary Kay Sweeney, executive director of Homeward Bound Marin. The homeless shelter and service provider has used about 200 new volunteers in the past year and a half - out of a total 1,200 volunteers - including kitchen workers, gardeners, office administrators and even psychotherapists.
"They're the lifeblood of any organization," Sweeney said.
Even with the recent increase in volunteers, agencies say they expect to see a still greater need for their services if cuts are not restored. In particular, they anticipate a greater need for volunteers to assist the county's growing population of seniors.
Furthermore, they see a need to better engage seniors as volunteers themselves, because baby boomers might not be drawn in by the traditional volunteer process. This week the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership is launching a new drive to recruit experienced volunteers age 50 and older.
"Marin has a fast-growing aging community," the center's Davis said. "Human beings naturally want to give back."
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
- The Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership connects volunteers with organizations and projects throughout Marin County. For information, visit www.cvnl.org or call 479-5710.
- Civic Center Volunteers places people in volunteer positions in county government. For information, visit http://ow.ly/2QGF7 or call 499-7407.
Contact Will Jason via e-mail at wjason@marinij.com

Volunteering pays off for high school students

written by Linda Davis, CEO of CVNL, taken from Marin Independent Journal, Sunday June 27th 2010, page A 29

Regarding your June 17 story "Novato may require service for high school students," I believe that requiring volunteer service of high school students is the right way to go for Novato, as well as all public schools in Marin.

As a parent of two Novato High graduates and the CEO of the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership (Marin’s Volunteer Center) I can tell you that in the majority of cases youth start volunteering because their parents ‘require’ them to or their school or service club did, not because they decided on their own.

Often people need that first experience to help them develop a real sense of the value of volunteering and a sense that volunteering is something they actually want to do again. Volunteering changes lives, broadens experience and builds compassion and empathy.

Our family went to New Orleans after Katrina and while our boys had volunteered prior to that, it was this experience that sparked the start of their involvement in politics and social justice. They were in high school at the time and both wrote their college admission essay about the experience.

Requiring students to complete community service to graduate is a great way to introduce service and philanthropy, creating life long civic engagement. Students are required to take classes across a variety of disciplines. Do you think that students would take Math, Language, and Science if it were not required? Without requirements students would not receive the benefit of the information from subjects or classes that they are not inclined to take. If the goal of education is to help mold students into well-rounded human beings, shouldn't community service be a contributor to the molding process?

There is much documented about the value of volunteerism, such as-- students who participated in school required community service were 22 percentage points more likely to graduate from college than those that did not and were more likely to have improved their Reading, Math, Science and History scores. (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning Engagement). It is also documented that the younger a person starts volunteering and giving, the more likely they are to donate as adults.

By participating in the life of our community, students are actively improving the quality of that life—whether it is helping to coach a little league baseball team, caring for and feeding animals, visiting a homebound older person, restoring native vegetation, or painting the exterior of a child care center, all these activities add meaning to our personal lives and make a huge contribution to the vibrancy and strength of our community.

At the Center We believe that meaningful service to the community is a defining characteristic of a healthy and productive society. Nonprofits have always relied heavily on volunteers, but in these challenging times, people power has become particularly vital.

Log onto our website, www.cvnl.org any time during the year and access hundreds of service opportunities in Marin’s nonprofits.

We would be happy to work with all of the schools in Marin to assist with volunteer opportunities.

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