Volunteers
BSRI had a 3-day training in April of last year called Service Enterprise training. It is a training a nonprofit can do to help them leverage volunteers to expand their reach and capacity. Service Enterprise is a national change management program, led by Points of Light, that helps organizations better meet their missions through the power of volunteers. Through a comprehensive assessment, training, coaching, and certification model, nonprofits are equipped to engage and manage volunteers more effectively to meet community needs. Research shows that nonprofits that operate as Service Enterprises are as effective as their peers but at almost half the median budget, and they are significantly more adaptable, sustainable and capable of going to scale. (From the Points of Light resource guide) BSRI already had a large volunteer base of about 450 volunteers. However, we want to take our volunteer engagement practices to the next level. We want our organization to be an example of how a nonprofit can help volunteers reach their full potential, and serve the community more effectively. We are proud to say that all of our staff who manage volunteers are now trained on volunteer management practices. And our organization has put into place volunteer policies, procedures, additions to our website to make signing up to volunteer easier. We will continue to use the strategies we have learned to make our volunteer program the best it can be for our clients and volunteers. This certification took a year to obtain, and in that year we have learned a lot! We hope that our volunteers will begin to see some of the good things we have implemented and will implement in the future.
BSRI has been fortunate to receive some incredible support through a few grants recently. In October we received a $65,000 grant from Cape Fear Memorial Foundation for our Mobile Meals project. We now are able to give each of the Meals on Wheels volunteers an iPhone equipped with a user-friendly app. The app enables them to leave notes about a client in real time. Staff can check in and see non deliveries immediately and follow up. And it provides an organized, straightforward system for volunteers delivering meals. The other notable grants we received came from Meals on Wheels of America. We applied for a grant to help us provide more frozen meals and shelf-stable meals amid the coronavirus pandemic. We have acquired more participants in our nutrition program at every senior center. Therefore, we needed some additional funding to help cover the costs of providing more meals. The first grant we received, in April, was for $20,000. Then another round of funding was released a month later. We applied for this grant as well and were awarded $69,000. We will be using those funds to help add additional freezers and meal production equipment and supplies to each of our nutrition sites. This expands our capacity to be able to serve the community meals during this time.
Interested in volunteering? Email spowell@bsrinc.org Or apply online at https://bsrinc.org/volunteer/