National Volunteer Week Archives

National Volunteer Week 2012

National Volunteer Week is finally here! Nevada Volunteers is so excited to celebrate the volunteers in Nevada that continue to make our state a better place to live!

This year, Nevada Volunteers will be sharing the great works of volunteers in Nevada, as well as volunteer coordinators/managers that continuously support those volunteers. Each day, we will be posting inspiring stories and pictures – keep checking our blog, Facebook, and Twitter for amazing stories!

Thank you to those that continue to give their time, money, and energy to organizations throughout Nevada! If you are not yet volunteering and want to get involved, visit blue.nevadavolunteers.org to find volunteer opportunities near you!

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Gayle Farley with Boys & Girls Club volunteers

Gayle Farley, Volunteer Coordinator at the Boys & Girls Club of Truckee Meadows, poses with some of her fabulous volunteers!

I have over 120 volunteers and they are mostly teens and young adults. Many of them come into the Boys & Girls Club to volunteer for school credits and really don’t want to be here in the beginning until they see what is here for them, and that this Club is for them. I see them working with younger kids and loving what they do. They just want to help out as much as they can. Some of these young volunteers go to school, work, and still volunteer because they love it so much. When I call them to see how they are doing, the calls and emails I get back are often, “it is so nice to have someone who cares about what is going on in my life” –makes me feel that I am doing something really worthwhile. I can honestly say, for the first time in my life, and I have worked for many years, that I feel that I am really where I am supposed to be. I watch these young volunteers grow into great leaders with goals and a purpose in their lives because of what volunteering and the sense of what “giving back” has taught them. And you know, they make me feel pretty special too…..everyday. (more…)

Priceless!

Fred Barrie prepares his talk to a Nevada Volunteers Lunch n' Learn about his new volunteer tracking software.

National Volunteer Week is a time to celebrate volunteers, and Nevada Volunteers has a gem of a volunteer to celebrate. Fred Barrie is a highly talented professional who is the best example ever of what a skilled volunteer can add to an organization. Skilled volunteers are a valuable asset, bringing know-how and experience to an organization to supplement the expertise of staff. Sometimes a skilled volunteer goes way beyond that capacity, propelling the organization into completely new realms of possibility. That is what Fred has done for Nevada Volunteers, and why we want to give him a colossal National Volunteer Week thanks!

Fred is a computer programmer who loves to explore new dimensions in software programming. He’s been working with computers for over 20 years and can’t get enough of them, it seems. When he heard our Volunteer Development Coordinator, Janet Wright, talk about the need for a good volunteer tracking software, Fred said, “I can do that.” (more…)

The Myth of the Free Volunteer

Volunteer coordinators discuss their goals and challenges with Nevada Volunteers staff at a recent meeting in Reno, Nevada.

National Volunteer Week, April 10-16, is a time to celebrate those who volunteer. Volunteers are the backbone of any community, providing services that would otherwise go unmet. Although the time a volunteer gives is free, have you stopped to consider the time and energy needed to recruit, organize, direct, and of course, thank them? Nevada Volunteers knows that volunteer coordinators, whether they are paid staff or volunteers themselves, are a vital part of strengthening volunteering in Nevada, and why we focus a good deal of effort in reaching out to them through our website resources and trainings.

Being a volunteer coordinator is a big job. At a recent meeting at the Nevada Volunteers office in Reno, I listened in on a discussion of the challenges two volunteer coordinators face. One of the coordinators, Heather, has been working to set up a volunteer program from scratch, and perhaps the biggest challenge she faces is to educate others about the enormity of the task. “I know how time intensive it is to manage volunteers,” she said, and though her new volunteer program will increase the capacity of her agency to fulfill its mission, those volunteers will need a lot of training and supervision to be effective. (more…)