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 Rebuilding 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.
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