Volunteer Coordinator Spotlight | ReStore Community Center
ReStore Community Center is a nonprofit ministry center. They seek to meet the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the community through a variety of programs and resources, including a thrift store, a free weekly community meal, financial and benefits supports, emergency food assistance, a community garden, fellowship experiences, and volunteer opportunities.
Today, our VolunteerSpotlight shines on Julie C. Brewer, Volunteer Coordinator for ReStore Community Center. She uses VolunteerSpot to coordinate the many wonderful volunteers who help with various duties.
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Please tell us about your organization and your volunteer needs.
We typically have a wide range of projects going on for which we need to organize volunteers. Additionally, we have ongoing community center upkeep jobs that can be done every day the center is open. So some needs are short, one time instances, but others are ongoing, regular opportunities to help.
How did you get started as a volunteer leader?
I fill the AmeriCorps VISTA position at ReStore Community Center, meaning that most of my service is indirect. I'm the one behind the scenes trying to help increase the ReStore staff's ability to serve the community. Part of my role as the VISTA is to organize and manage effective volunteer recruitment, training, and retention.
What’s one piece of advice you have for volunteers or their leaders out there?
Say "Thank you." Say it often and say it sincerely. Even if it's a small task, there's nothing more affirming for a volunteer than to know that her service was deeply appreciated. Everyone seems to work harder and more willingly if the services offered are both noticed and valued.
Why did you decide to use VolunteerSpot?
ReStore is located in Ada, Ohio - a small, rural college town. The students are a wonderful asset to our community and many students need to fulfill community service hours as part of their course requirements. Other students simply enjoying being off-campus for a breath of fresh air. Regardless of why they come to volunteer, we enjoy having them come. At the end of their semesters, though, typically heaps of students pour into our community center wanting to fulfill their service requirements. Our kind-hearted and generous staff were always in a pickle, not having enough work for the volunteers, yet not wanting to turn anyone away. So, with one of our interns, I began the search for an online volunteer system that would allow students to sign up ahead of time and that would keep our staff from being inundated all at once with volunteers. We looked at a lot of different online systems and finally chose VolunteerSpot because it was the first one we found that would fit our need for ongoing volunteer sign-ups. It was also really important to our organization's budget that we were able to use the free version of this online program, too. Using VolunteerSpot has saved us a lot of headaches already!
Anything else you’d like our readers to know about your organization or volunteering?
"How can I help?" is one of the most relieving phrases I've heard from some of our volunteers. It's great to be able to have volunteers who are willing to do whatever is most helpful at the moment. Thanks to all of you who volunteer regularly, the services, programs, and resources that our community center and I'm sure many others offer would not be possible if it weren't for our wonderful volunteers. THANK YOU!
For more information, visit http://restorecenter.wordpress.com/
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We salute Julie and all the other volunteer leaders out there making a difference. 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 [email protected].
