VolunteerSpotlight: Carolyn, Friends of McDonald School Playground Volunteer Leader - Seattle, WA

VolunteerSpot's free and easy volunteer scheduling software saves leaders time and makes it easy to engage friends and neighbors in community service projects. 

Today's VolutneerSpotlight shines on neighborhood hero Carolyn Cunningham, volunteer leader for the McDonald School Playground Project in Seattle, WA.

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Please tell us a little about yourself and your about the McDonald School Playground project.

My husband and I have spent the past two years working with neighbors to improve our local school playground that had become pretty run down. The playground is used by up to 500 neighborhood children and families, but McDonald school is an occasionally-used interim school, and hadn’t been occupied in several years. Several of us joined together to see what we could do to make it a more enjoyable place for kids and parents to gather. In November, 2008 Friends of McDonald School received a $15,000 grant from the City of Seattle, Department of Neighborhoods. We used this grant money to purchase a new play structure and pay for improvement supplies.


What were your volunteer needs on the project?

After months of planning, we finally came to the point of being able to install the new equipment and then to hold a neighborhood celebration. Both the installation and the celebration required mobilizing volunteers in order to accomplish the work; assembling equipment and seating, painting stencils on the blacktop, etc.  About 80 volunteers helped with the installation over two weekends and more than 200 neighbors attended our celebration!

How did you get interested in becoming a volunteer leader? 

I work for United Way of King County’s Volunteer Center so I have a lot of background in volunteerism. Because my job is to promote volunteerism, it seemed only natural for me to step up to handle the volunteer mobilization for our playground effort. I’ve volunteered for many many years – I enjoy community /neighborhood-based volunteering the most as building relationships with neighbors is important to me. One of my favorite volunteer roles was being a Big Sister for many years and building the 1:1 relationship in a useful way.

What’s one piece of advice you have for volunteer leaders out there?  

The biggest challenge is recruitment, and coming up with meaningful ways for people to become involved that fits into their busy lives.

Why did you decide to use VolunteerSpot?

While I’m aware of many web-based tools to promote and manage volunteerism, I was happy to find VolunteerSpot - a simple tool to do just what we needed - organize the volunteers according to the jobs we needed.  It’s one helpful tool to address the challenge of recruiting and organizing volunteers. With VolunteerSpot, we were able to get 30 confirmed volunteers on each weekend of our project. Because they were confirmed, we could communicate with them and let them know what to expect ahead of time. In the end, however,  more neighbors than that showed up to help - what a nice surprise!

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We salute Carolyn and all the volunteer heroes out there everyday making our neighborhoods better places to live! If you're using VolunteerSpot, write and tell us about what you're doing, and give us a chance to shine our Volunteer Spotlight on you!! Just email us at VS@volunteerspot.com.

Back to School Night - Getting Even More Parents to Volunteer

As a PTA leader, I know that Back to School Night might be the one opportunity to connect with ALL our parents. We welcome them, want them to LOVE our school, and most importantly, invite them to participate as volunteers supporting our teachers, our children, and our many fundraisers.

At our school, as you enter the building, there are tables and tables full of clipboards asking for parents to sign up to volunteer as library volunteers, science volunteers, recess and cafeteria helpers, book fair and carnival volunteers, field trip chaperons, silent auction chairs, and more. Our hope is that every parent finds something they can fit into their busy schedules -- whether it's a weekly commitment in the copy room, a one-time volunteer spot at the football concessions stand,  providing cupcakes for the bake sale, or extra classroom supplies for the teachers.

My school has been using the clipboard table forever but now that computers are more common than transistor radios, we've decided to embrace technology and make the sign up process easier than ever by using VolunteerSpot's free and easy volunteer sign up tool. This also lets parents sign up even when they are not physically in the school building, by simply visiting the school website and clicking the 'volunteer' link. 

Starting this Fall, all the sign ups for our different activities at  school will use VolunteerSpot, which has a neat functionality that allows users to create a URL link to the signup sheet, so users on email or visiting the school website or booster club website can simply click on say the 'Fall Carnival Volunteers' or 'Recess Helpers' link and the entire schedule is sitting there awaiting their sign up. Also, by doing sign ups this way (instead of a clipboard), VolunteerSpot also automates confirmation messages and reminders to the volunteers (especially helpful for people who sign up in the Fall for an event in the Spring)!

For schools with good computer access, connected computers can be set up with a committee chair manning the sign up.  Parents can choose their volunteer spots 'on the spot', sign up, and a confirmation message with their assignments will be waiting in their email inbox when they get home. Another option is to have parents request the URL on the spot, and go home to choose their actual assignments (where they can consult their calendars). 

For schools still embracing clipboards, VolunteerSpot makes it easy for committee chairs to turn those parent signatures into online assignments. Once entered into the online calendar, VolunteerSpot takes over with automated confirmation and reminder messages. Donna, the Career Day chair at an elementary school in Pataskala, Ohio sums it up, "Thanks for saving me so much time and making my job so easy!  Because of VolunteerSpot, I'll be the chair next year too!"

Lori, a working-mom and elementary school parent from Augusta, Ga says this, "WOW - that was easy!  Even a computer-challenged mom like me could sign up to help - and I'm liberated from all the reply-all messages our room mom used to send!"

The easier we make it for parents to volunteer and sign up, the greater the participation level we will achieve - and isn't that what every school wants and needs?! So enjoy your Back to School Night and don't forget to volunteer!

Move over wrapping paper: Artwork for Education is our New Favorite School Fundraiser

For the past several years, I've been supporting our preschool and elementary school wrapping paper fundraisers.  I've pretty much had my fill of wrapping paper and have bought enough stuff to wrap presents not just for my kids, but my future grandchildren! I Our other school fundraiser, Cookie Dough Sales, has never tempted me; I wait for the Girl Scouts to bake them and buy them “ready to eat.”

PTAs know that burnout can happen with any school fund raising program; with sales-based fundraisers especially, it becomes easy to say NO when you just don’t need the item. It’s hard to give up or try something new when the school payout is so high – 50% in the case of wrapping paper items – and often represents a significant portion of the school’s budget. 

Finding new ideas to replace and supplement our old standards can be tough, but it’s an important function of the fundraising committee to keep trying new things.

Here at VolunteerSpot, we try to keep an eye out for new ideas – and one of our favorite new ones is a program from Worldwise Education called Artwork for Education. This program is a turnkey school fundraiser where each child creates greeting cards.  Here's how it works --  kids make artwork at school and the artwork is then submitted to Artwork for Education where they produce it into a beautiful fundraising brochure.  Brochures are returned to the school to start the order process and Artwork for Education also posts each design on an online order site, to make it easy for out of town friends and family to participate. The finished cards are sold in boxes of 12 for $20.50 and are shipped back to the school within 3 weeks of order.

This fundraiser offers the chance to get high quality, kid-customized greeting cards for an affordable price -- and returns 40% of proceeds to the school!  It also satisfies two of my primary personal concerns about fundraisers – they are selling something I actually need, and something that’s not packed with sugar! I also love the fact that every child has the chance to see their design in the catalog – whether anyone orders cards or not.

Another part of Worldwise Education's business is selling individual greeting cards through retail outlets – currently Whole Foods Market locations in Southern California.  These proceeds are  returned to schools, many of them low-income schools.  Worldwise Education is also launching an online exchange this year where teachers can get free donated school supplies.

While your school fundraising committee is meeting this summer to find fresh ideas that your parents and community will support - please check out Artwork for Education! Your kids will love seeing their work in print and your school will enjoy the proceeds!