National Volunteer Week Funds Available

The Institute for Human Services Brings You:National Volunteer Week Mini Grants

National Volunteer Week: April 21-27, 2013

Are you planning a volunteer event as part of National Volunteer Week during April 21-27th?  Could you use some additional funds to enhance your project's impact?

If you have answered "YES" to either of these questions then consider applying for a mini-grant from 2-1-1 HELPLINE Give Help and the Regional Volunteer Center of the Southern Tier!

Because of this partnership, we are to be able to offer mini-grants to support local volunteer efforts in Chemung, Steuben and Schuyler Counties during National Volunteer Week. If your organization is currently planning an event for that week and could use some additional funding to enhance your efforts we encourage you to request a mini-grant of up to $350. If you are interested in applying for a mini-grant, simply fill out our online application by going to the link below. Please complete the survey by Friday March 29th. Decisions regarding project funding will be made by Friday April 5th, 2013.

Apply Here!

  

If you have any questions, please contact Tess McKinley at mckinleyt@ihsnet.org or at (607) 776-9467, ext. 217. 

2-1-1 HELPLINE Give Help coordinates volunteer support services, by serving as a volunteer clearinghouse and resource center that is supported by United Way of the Southern Tier to increase civic engagement in our area.  Interested in volunteering?  Want to add your volunteer opportunities to our database?  Learn more here.

The Regional Volunteer Center of the Southern Tier is a collaboration designed to promote and enhance local volunteer efforts in our community. Under the leadership of the Institute for Human Services, United Way of Broome County, and United Way of Tompkins County, local non-profits are coming together to create a dynamic regional partnership to enhance and strengthen local volunteer efforts.  The Regional Volunteer Center of the Southern Tier is one of ten regional volunteer centers in New York State.

The Inexpensive Solution to Volunteer Protection

The Inexpensive Solution to Volunteer Protection

Sometimes, volunteers have accidents - injure someone, get hurt themselves, or have an auto accident. Usually, their own insurance is not enough to take care of the damage. And the nonprofit organization's insurance does not protect the volunteer in some critical areas of risk.

Your nonprofit organization has the option of adding volunteers as additional insureds on the commercial general liability (CGL) policy. However, such an endorsement usually excludes volunteers' travel between home and the place of volunteer duty. Also, a CGL endorsement excludes coverage for claims made by one volunteer against another. Finally, the organization risks sharing its own limits of insurance - under the CGL policy - with the volunteer.

Covering volunteers under workers' compensation usually is not the wisest approach. First, a volunteer's injury would affect the claims experience of the nonprofit, which could increase workers' compensation insurance costs. Second, workers' compensation does not protect the volunteer during travel to and from their volunteer duty. 

However, there is an inexpensive solution to the problem...

  

To protect volunteers, the Volunteers Insurance Service (VIS®) program offers the following three coverages separately or combined:

• Up to $50,000 in accident medical reimbursement as a result of covered accident - at a cost of $3.94 per volunteer per year;
• Up to $1,000,000 in personal liability insurance - $1.72 per volunteer per year with a minimum premium of $100;
• For those volunteers who drive, up to $500,000 in excess automobile liability insurance above the volunteer's own insurance -$6.34 per volunteer per year with a minimum premium of $100.  

Total cost per volunteer, if all coverages are selected: $12.00 per year. The organization simply insures the greatest number of volunteers it expects to have at any given time.

VIS® Membership is required in order to sign up for any of the above programs; which an annual membership fee of $135 (July-June fiscal year).

For More Info Click Here

How New York City Helps Nonprofits Get More Bang For Their Buck

Billings-Burford, the head of NYC Service, discusses the courage and innovative spirit organizations must have to use volunteers to help expand their services.

In the face of a volatile economy, adaptation is key. Families, small businesses, and all levels of government must adjust to the ever-changing environment. Nonprofit organizations are no exception.

This post is part of a series on the future of service in America, in conjunction with Catchafire.
As resources become increasingly limited, the need for services provided by those organizations grows. However, often these limited resources also prevent nonprofits from maintaining the status quo of service delivery, and in response, organizations are forced to cut programs and focus staff energy on development work. But this can severely hamper innovation.

To avoid--or at least reduce--reliance on those usual models of dealing with limited resources, nonprofits must develop and implement bold, innovative adaptations. Such innovations require immense courage, but have the potential to both maintain an organization’s service delivery and foster a mentality of renewal desperately needed in the nonprofit sector.

Rosabeth M. Kanter of the Harvard Business School describes two types of courage: intellectual courage, required to challenge conventional wisdom, and moral courage, required to stand up for a principle rather than stand on the sidelines.

“”There are two types of courage: intellectual courage, required to challenge conventional wisdom, and moral courage, required to stand up for a principle.

In the years since our launch in 2009, NYC Service has witnessed the most success and added the most value to organizations that have demonstrated both of these types of courage by using volunteers in new and strategic ways.

Engaging volunteers in unprecedented roles is a central tenet of the NYC Service philosophy. The first to take this approach in municipal government, our ideas have certainly been met with resistance. But nearly three years later, our partnerships with City agencies have maintained or expanded the delivery of services to New Yorkers. Shape Up NYC, an initiative of the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, recruits volunteer fitness instructors to teach free classes, attended by an average of 3,000 New Yorkers each week. This represents a 150% increase in attendees, an expanded capacity that would have been impossible without volunteers.

This new approach to volunteerism isn’t just happening in New York, it’s happening in cities around the country through the Cities of Service coalition. Thirty mayors have already hired a Chief Service Officer or launched a high-impact service plan, with more doing so each month. And it’s working. In May 2010, when Nashville experienced a flood of historic proportions with over $2.5 billion in damages, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean tapped citizens to power recovery efforts and to help prevent future flooding. Using volunteers, Nashville planted over 800 trees in strategic areas and built almost 100 rain gardens to help reduce the build-up of storm water. Similarly, nonprofits must tap volunteers to administer programs that may otherwise be cut.

“”Innovations challenge conventional wisdom and thus require intellectual courage. Their implementation almost always requires moral courage.

Skills-based volunteering is another example of using volunteers strategically. Individuals with industry-specific skills are an underutilized resource for nonprofits that need assistance in specific areas. Nonprofits like Catchafire and Npower specialize in recruiting and placing such volunteers, but nonprofit volunteer departments can build such a strategy into their operations. This matching model has proven successful; through Taproot’s Professional Services program, the Mentoring Partnership of New York was paired with volunteer website developers and graphic designers who updated the organization’s website and produced new marketing materials.

By definition, innovations challenge conventional wisdom and thus require intellectual courage. Their implementation almost always requires moral courage. As the economic recession continues, this courage will be required by even more organizations. Nonprofit leaders must identify new and untapped resources--we make the case here for volunteers, but there are surely others--to maintain and even increase the impact of their organizations.

Though volunteerism itself is not a new concept, using it as a serious strategy to meet critical community needs is still in an experimental phase. NYC Service has proven its effectiveness and encourages nonprofits across the board to pursue a similar approach.

How to Change the World…

…Whatever the size of your wallet. These ideas, with budgets from $20 to $20,000, can help better the lives of others—and your own.

Got any plans for next week? Perhaps you could begin changing the world.

Yes, household budgets remain tight. But you don't have to be a lottery winner to make a difference in your community or halfway around the globe. People who are winding down first or primary careers and looking for new directions are discovering that for the cost of a weekend getaway, they can help change the world. Or start to.

Bob and Jo Link, for instance, retirees in Portland, Ore., serve on a nonprofit board that awards scholarships in Belize. Mr. Link, age 69, also troubleshoots computer problems for African refugees. This after the couple spent two years in the Peace Corps, helped with Hurricane Katrina cleanup, assembled computers for schools in Guatemala and worked with deaf orphans in Peru.

The cost to them? A few plane tickets, some scholarship donations and sweat equity.

"When you do this kind of stuff, you get back more than you really expect," Mr. Link says. "A lot of people wouldn't, or couldn't, put two years into the Peace Corps, but they could afford to spend a week in Peru."

We decided to look for ways that people, whatever the size of their savings, can change the lives of others—and their own. So go ahead: Pick one of the following budgets and write it on your calendar: "CTW."

$100 and Under

SERVICE PROGRAMS: In some cases, you actually can get paid while you're helping to make a difference.

The Links, for instance, earned $300 apiece each month in the Peace Corps, where about 7% of the organization's volunteers last year were age 50-plus. Closer to home, AmeriCorps, one of the largest national-service programs, is aiming for 10% of its 85,000 participants to be at least 55 years old—up from 4% in fiscal 2009.

AmeriCorps volunteers receive federal stipends averaging $11,800 for a commitment of 10 months to a year. They can also receive education grants of as much as $5,350, which, starting this year, they can transfer to their grandchildren, says Patrick Corvington, chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the agency that runs AmeriCorps. Work varies from part-time service in a volunteer's own community to full-time opportunities across the country. Options include helping to rebuild communities on the Gulf Coast and installing solar-electric systems in low-income California neighborhoods.

BECOME A LENDER: For what you spend today on lunch, "microfinance" allows you to play a big role in jump-starting modest entrepreneurial undertakings around the world—whether it's boosting inventory at a produce stand in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, or providing additional nets to fishermen in Cambodia.

f you're interested in lending to an individual entrepreneur overseas, Kiva.org lets you choose the borrower on its website. If the loans are paid back, you can fund another loan, donate the proceeds to Kiva or get your money back. DonorsChoose.org, where you can pick a classroom project to fund with as little as $1, sifts proposals by cost, school poverty level and subject. Requests might include $140 for dry-erase markers or $2,000 for camcorders and laptops for budding filmmakers.

Heifer International, through which $20 buys a flock of chickens or $5,000 delivers an "ark" of animals to a family or village in Asia or Africa, finds that many people age 50-plus seek out the cause around holidays. Then, as they learn more about it, many wind up joining study tours to the communities raising the animals, coordinating fund-raising efforts in the U.S., or working at several Heifer learning centers, says Steve Stirling, executive vice president for marketing in Little Rock, Ark.

$300 to $4,000

GIVING CIRCLES: One way to get more bang for your charity buck is to join a so-called giving circle, a group with a common interest that pools its resources and collectively decides where to put its combined money to work.

In the 1960s, Sally Bookman studied social anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Now she leads a Dining for Women chapter with two dozen women, many of them retirees, attending monthly dinners in Santa Cruz, Calif. At each meeting, they eat a potluck dinner and chip in about $30 each to support women entrepreneurs in developing countries.

The national Dining for Women group, based in Greenville, S.C., picks the cause du jour and sends educational materials to local chapters. But the members' life experience gives the gatherings their flavor, says Ms. Bookman, 67. "At one meeting we were learning about women in a remote village in the jungle in Peru, and one of our members had been to that village for three days with her husband," she says.

If you join a giving circle, you can choose simply to write checks, or take a more active role researching where the circle's money might have the most impact.

"VOLUNTOURISM": Trips on which people do volunteer work, typically overseas, have exploded in number and type in recent years.

How do you choose among the estimated 10,000 trips out there? Ask how the work you do will fit into the overall scope of the on-the-ground project, says Alexia Nestora, founder of VoluntourismGal.com, an industry blog. If you're working with children, ask how what you do will build on what the previous volunteer did. (You don't want to be the 20th volunteer to teach them to sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" in English, for example.) Also make sure the operator provides emergency medical insurance and has an employee living in the country who speaks English in case of political upheaval or a natural disaster.

Mark Sanger, a 58-year-old retired transportation engineer in La Grande, Ore., has taken several weeklong trips with Globe Aware, a Dallas nonprofit that coordinates volunteer travel work. In a tiny Costa Rican village, his crew slept in A-frame cabins and helped villagers build housing in hopes of drawing national-park tourists and generating additional income. He also spent time eating meals in local families' homes, where you could "see how they interact with their kids, what pictures they have on their walls." He enjoyed his next trip even more, teaching English to children in Cambodia.

"It was like a whole other world opened up to me," he says. "There's a sense of adventure…without your life in danger every day. It's a nice balance of doing something interesting, exciting, different and incredibly rewarding."

Your room, board and airfare in some cases are tax-deductible if you travel with a nonprofit. Vincent Mirrione, 69, of Newman, Calif., has taken seven trips with Cross-Cultural Solutions, a nonprofit operator in New Rochelle, N.Y., for six to eight weeks at a time. His work at a Guatemala soup kitchen and orphanage, Russian senior centers and a project that Mother Teresa started in India have wound up costing about $300 a week after the tax break, he says.

BACK TO SCHOOL: Retraining, as a classroom teacher, for instance, can jump-start a second career as well as benefit others.

"Green," of course, is hot. Clover Park Technical College, Lakewood, Wash., offers a number of environmental-sustainability programs, which include classroom study and hands-on field work. The programs last 12 weeks to two years, depending on an individual's goals.

Pam Kirchhofer, 49, enrolled there in a 15-month sustainable-building program after she was laid off as a personal-finance counselor. The attraction: "You're helping people save money by conserving energy and resources, and…you're being a good steward of the Earth," she says. The tough part: "I haven't had a math class in 28 years, and we just did an energy audit of this woman's house using algebraic equations."

$5,000 to $10,000

JOIN A BOARD: A director on a board? You? Why not?

"Almost half of all nonprofit board seats never get filled. Nonprofits would love to have more qualified candidates, but they don't know how to tap into really talented people in the community," says David Simms, a partner with Bridgespan Group in Boston, which advises nonprofits. (One new resource for a board-seat search: The websites where nonprofits place want-ads for volunteers also are starting to post vacant board seats.)

Bonnie R. Harrison, 61, a retired Corning Inc. executive, became involved with Southern Tier Hospice in Corning, N.Y., after serving as her father's caregiver while he was also receiving hospice services. To join the board, Ms. Harrison asked her father's hospice nurse to write a recommendation. Shortly after Ms. Harrison retired last year, the hospice board's chairwoman stepped down, and Ms. Harrison was asked to take her place.

"The challenge of working along with the board, the staff and different organizations has been a great help in making the transition away from a high-pressured job," she says.

BECOME A BENEFACTOR: So, you like the idea of having a charitable vehicle to help others, but you aren't Bill Gates. Consider a donor-advised fund, a good tool for people who want to give away amounts starting at about $5,000 a year.

Such funds can be set up through big financial-service companies, like Fidelity Investments, as well as university, religious and community foundations. The fund will invest your assets and make grants based on your guidance. Typically, you become eligible for an immediate tax deduction.

"It might be a little more than you can handle doing on your own, yet you don't want to set up the superstructure of a foundation," says John Gomperts, the recently named director of AmeriCorps. "You might go to a community foundation and say, 'I want to give this money away, and I care about the humane care of animals, so please give me some suggestions and administer this for me.' "

$20,000 and Up

START A NONPROFIT: You have a cause you're passionate about, and nobody seems to be tackling it. So you dream of starting a nonprofit to that end. Expect to spend at least $10,000 to $20,000 on start-up costs, including the legal expenses involved in creating an organization and asking the government to grant you a tax exemption, called 501(c)3 status.

First question: Are you sure there are no similar efforts? The U.S. has about 1.5 million nonprofits, and "many of them are doing phenomenal work," says Mr. Simms in Boston.

If your idea truly is unique, try to find a community foundation to "incubate your effort so that you can worry about the service you want to provide" instead of setting up the business end, says Christopher Stone, faculty director of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Elaine Santore is the 59-year-old co-founder of Umbrella of the Capital District, a Schenectady, N.Y., organization that helps older adults, in part by matching them with retirees-turned-handymen. She and her partner jump-started the program before receiving their not-for-profit status. "I would clean houses if need be, and he would mow yards," she says. "It's good to be hands-on at first so you know what it's like."

ENDOW A SCHOLARSHIP: What if you win the lottery, or your stock options go through the roof? The sky's the limit: You could fund scientists trying to cure cancer, build a new stage for your local symphony, or even start your own university and town, as did Domino's Pizza founder and philanthropist Tom Monaghan.

One of the more popular big-ticket items, though, is creating your own college scholarship. With $1 million, you could set up an endowment that should last for decades, says Becky Sharpe, president of International Scholarship & Tuition Services Inc., Nashville, Tenn., which administers privately and publicly funded scholarships.

Joe Scarlett, retired chairman and chief executive of Tractor Supply Co., Brentwood, Tenn., started a family foundation in 2005 with $2.5 million to provide college scholarships to business students from middle Tennessee, and he hired Ms. Sharpe's company to run the award program.

"We generate way too few business leaders in our country, so we wanted to focus our scholarship money on business," says Mr. Scarlett, 67. The foundation now has a balance of approximately $24 million, thanks to additional gifts from the Scarletts and growth in its value, and is expanding its efforts, supporting students in high schools and even preschools.

Original Article by Kelly Greene from WallStreetJournal.com

NY ranks last in volunteering

The Albany Business Review reported that New Yorkers are not very beneficent when it comes to giving their time. Not at all.

In fact, the Empire State ranks 51st out of 50 states and Washington D.C. when it comes to volunteering, according to the annual Volunteering in America report.

Nationally, however, about 1.6 million more volunteers served in 2009 than in 2008, making this the largest single-year increase in the number of volunteers since 2003, when data was first collected for the study. The report is produced by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a government-sponsored nonprofit. Higher unemployment rates also increase volunteerism.

Nationwide, a total of 63.4 million volunteers contributed 8.1 billion hours of service in 2009, an estimated dollar value $169 billion. Overall, the volunteering rate increased in 2009 to 26.8 percent, up from 26.4 percent in 2008.

Volunteering data used in the annual report is gathered through the Current Population Survey, conducted monthly by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Volunteers are defined as individuals ages 16 and over who perform unpaid activities for or through an organization.

The study showed that 2.9 million, or 19 percent, of New York residents volunteered in 2007-2009, compared with the national average of 26.8 percent. The Capital Region fared better, but still placed in the lower half of the rankings. It ranked 44th out of the 75 mid-sized cities that were studied for the report, with 27.1 percent, or 200,000, of its residents volunteering.

Compared with other mid-sized cities in New York, the Capital Region placed behind Binghamton, ranked 30th, and Poughkeepsie, ranked 41st, and ahead of 71st-ranked Syracuse. Nationally, Provo, Utah, ranked first among mid-sized cities and El Paso, Texas, was last. Utah was the top state for volunteerism.

Volunteers in New York contributed 405.5 million hours, or $8.5 billion worth in service from 2007-2009.

Read more: New York dead-last in volunteerism - The Business Review (Albany)

New Trends in the Arts?

A recent posted article from the Nonprofit Ventures blog offers news on a newly opened arts center that is a for profit enterprise. Is this a new trend? Share you thoughts. As the posted article relates:

The name is sure to grab the attention of would-be theatergoers. It’s catchy, it’s ambitious, it emphasizes a sense of place.

And yet, when the Rhode Island Center for Performing Arts at the Historic Park Theatre hosts its first stage production next weekend, the people who enter the state’s newest live entertainment venue will find more than just a theater.

In its new incarnation, the building that once housed the Park Cinema is also home to a café, a nightclub and a 200-seat all-purpose area that can serve as a restaurant for theatergoers, a comedy club and a room for receptions and business functions. Read more here.

Pro Bono Work Helps Firms Fight Economic Slump

The Wall Street Journal reported that aome small businesses are following the recession playbook of the unemployed.

Just as many laid-off workers are volunteering more to fill up their free time and enhance their résumés, small-business owners and their employees are doing more pro bono services or volunteer work as a marketing and customer-relations strategy.

The recession hit Studio G Architects Inc. of Boston particularly hard last fall, causing 2008 revenue to drop 30% from the prior year, says Gail Sullivan, the principal. Clients of the 16-year-old architectural firm killed or put on hold 10 projects last October. With work slowing down, the company began providing 15 to 20 hours a week in pro bono services to keep employees occupied and potentially attract future contracts. It worked.

This spring the firm prepared preliminary design projects, such as a playground for severely handicapped children, for various charities. The projects later received full funding and Studio G obtained several contracts, which ranged in value from $16,000 to $100,000. "Offering the pro bono services has given us a chance to maintain our design vigor [and] resulted in people hiring us," Ms. Sullivan says.

For a small business that has lost clients or seen revenue-generating projects dry up, performing free work is a way to keep employees engaged while cultivating new relationships. Donating services to charity groups, churches, schools and other nonprofits can "increase local visibility, deepen local business ties and create opportunity for new business," says Christine Banning, vice president of marketing and communications at SCORE, a Washington-based group that provides free counseling to small businesses.

While it is a strategy that can bear fruit in a tough economy, she warns that small-business owners should set parameters in terms of how much they give away. With charitable giving falling in 2008 for the first time since 1987, dropping about 2% from a year earlier, according to a Giving USA study released last month, more nonprofits could be seeking donations from local businesses.

That is why Robert Politzer, president and chief executive of GreenStreet of New York Inc., made sure his pro bono work can benefit his company in the future.

At a networking event four months ago, Mr. Politzer met the director of the Hudson River Clearwater Sloop Inc., a nonprofit that aims to preserve and protect the Hudson River. Now, the green-building and consulting firm is serving as the volunteer construction manager of the group's new headquarters in Beacon, N.Y. As a public-relations move, GreenStreet is uploading videos on YouTube as it documents the pro bono work. Read more here.

How can your nonprofit position itself to take advantage of these opportunities? Do you have examples of your own success with pro bono work? Share them here.

How to Stand Out On One More Day Aimed at Volunteers

The NY Times featured a story about how a handful of nonprofits, with help from the White House, are working to rebrand occasions like Martin Luther King’s Birthday and Sept. 11 as national days of volunteering. As the article relates:

Add one more to the calendar: Mandela Day, July 18, when people around the world will be urged to perform 67 minutes of community service to honor the 67 years (and counting) that Nelson Mandela has fought for racial and social equality. The holiday is the brainchild of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and 46664, the advocate group that bears Mr. Mandela’s prisoner number.

But how to sell the public on yet another working holiday? An ad campaign.

Gotham, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, is starting a campaign worth about $5 million, focused almost entirely in New York State, to introduce the holiday and break down the barriers that prevent people from volunteering.

“For 67 years Mandela has been fighting social injustice, and he’s even done it from a jail cell,” said Peter McGuinness, chairman of Gotham, which is based in New York. “We want to use his example to empower people to make a difference”

But Mr. Mandela’s face will cede the foreground to a more symbolic image for the ad campaign: hands. Everything about Mandela Day — including its icon and its television and Web ads — revolves around images of the hands of volunteers, meant to represent the impact an individual can make.

In a 30-second television spot that will begin showing on major networks on June 22, the hands of a volunteer in a soup kitchen fade into the hands of someone reading to a child, which fade into the hands of another person helping an elderly woman use a computer, and so on. Print ads will run in major newspapers and magazines, and outdoor ads will appear on bus shelters and phone kiosks.

Gotham has also produced a Web video in which actors like Morgan Freeman, Forest Whitaker and Sharon Stone show their hands to the camera. Visitors to the Mandela Day Web site will also be able to splice themselves into the video and share it with friends. Gotham executives say they hope that the video will go viral, spreading the message globally.

That site will also help people find their 67-minute volunteer opportunities. Through a partnership with VolunteerMatch.org, users can search for work based on cause and ZIP code. The site will include a heat map showing which areas are in greatest need that will “cool off” as people commit volunteer time. Read more here.