Media Room
2009

ServeAmerica Act press release from the Points of Light Institute

For Immediate Release

SERVE AMERICA ACT PASSES IN THE US SENATE:

GENERATES MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO VOLUNTEER AND SERVE

ATLANTA  (March 27, 2009) –Yesterday, the U.S. Senate passed the Serve America Act, led by Senators Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), by a majority of 79.  The bill unanimously amended and titled by all senators as the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, will dramatically increase levels of volunteerism, improve and expand national service programs, including AmeriCorps, and provide for new pathways of service and social innovation to address our nation's most pressing challenges.

“This legislation signals true bi-partisan support for the nation's first volunteerism and service legislation in over 16 years—it was a tremendous moment as we listened to Senators of both parties speak eloquently about the unifying and emboldening power of service to change our nation and enliven our democracy.” said Michelle Nunn, CEO, Points of Light Institute and co-founder of HandsOn Network, the largest volunteer management and civic engagement organization in the world.  “The passing of this innovative legislation means that millions of Americans – of all ages – to volunteer their time and talents to positively impact the nation’s largest problems – from education to energy efficiency to health care,” Nunn added.

The Serve America Act will include a Volunteer Generation Fund designed to maintain this increase in citizen service in America, putting community volunteers to work in their own hometowns to tackle some of the nation’s most pressing needs.  It is also ensures that volunteers are recruited, trained, and supported in volunteer projects that have measurable outcomes. Under this Fund, grants to nonprofits and state service commissions would be awarded by the Corporation for National and Community Service.  Nonprofit organizations and service commission would then sub-grant these funds to volunteer connector organizations around the country.  .  

To increase the rate of volunteering, authorization levels for the fund would begin at $50 million and grow to $100 million over five years, leveraging billions of dollars in volunteer services to some of the country’s neediest citizens.

“It has been gratifying to participate and witness the evolution of this legislation. We have been pleased, over a number of years, to participate in a growing and powerful service coalition, led by groups like Voices for National Service, America Forward and Service Nation to both conceptualize the ideas in this legislation and advance passage of the bill,” said Nunn.

“We know that people are ready to serve–we have seen the response to President Obama’s message and Americans are stepping forward in record numbers. We see this every day throughout our network of 250 affiliates across the country—the numbers of people volunteering and seeking volunteer leadership roles in their communities is increasing daily. This legislation will help ensure that we can actually train, equip, and mobilize people, our greatest national resource, to change their communities and country,” said Nunn.

The legislation is expected to return to the House for a possible vote on Monday, and then to President Obama for his signature.

About Points of Light Institute

Points of Light Institute is a powerful, integrated national organization with a global focus to redefine volunteerism and civic engagement for the 21st century, putting people at the center of community problem solving. Our vision is that one day every person will discover their power to make a difference, creating healthy communities in vibrant democracies around the world. To realize this vision, Points of Light Institute operates three dynamic business units that share a mission to equip, mobilize and inspire people to take action that changes the world: HandsOn Network, MissionFish and the Civic Incubator.

For more information, contact, Jen Geckler, HandsOn Network, (404) 979-2941 or jgeckler@handsonnetwork.org

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2008

Thursday, December 11, 2008
The Daily News

15 MINUTES   W I T H   B E T S Y   W I L C OX

Heading up a diverse corps of community volunteers

Behind the unobtrusive storefront facade on North Main Street in West Bend lies the engine that drives volunteerism in Washington County, the aptly named Volunteer Center of Washington County. Here, BETSY WILCOX, assistant Candy Shoop and, of course, volunteers, help steer helping hands to various community organizations that need them. To find out a little more about this organization, Daily News staffer Al Dunn spent 15 Minutes with WILCOX, the Volunteer Center director.
 

Daily News: Can you give us some background – how you came to the Volunteer Center?

 Betsy Wilcox: I came to the Volunteer Center in 1999 from the Volunteer Center Ozaukee County, where I was the program manager. It’s just part of who I am, and when the opening came here, I thought what a wonderful opportunity to take hold of this Volunteer Center and join in with this wonderful county. I was pleased to come.

    DN: What are your qualifications for the job?

    BW: I think it’s a combination of education and experience in board leadership. I’ve been part of a nonprofit community about 25 years, in every respect, from both a board member’s side of leadership, as well as the staff side of leadership. My very first professional job was in a nonprofit organization in west central Wisconsin back in 1977, and I have had nonprofit service delivery in my blood ever since. When I left that job, I joined a variety of board of directors, and experienced a great amount of education through those roles, and that contributes to my qualifications.

    DN: What exactly is the function of the center?

    BW: The Volunteer Center was designed on a simple premise: to connect volunteers in the community to community needs through a variety of organizations. The goal was to have a single place in Washington County where volunteers could come and find out what there was to do in meaningful activities in their areas of interest, and then connect them to it quickly.

    DN: How is it funded?

    BW: It is funded through a very diverse funding bank of the United Way of Washington County as a proud funding partner of the Volunteer Center. So is the United Way of Greater Milwaukee. We also receive foundation grants and funds. We are privileged to receive an Urban Areas Security Initiative Grant through the Department of Homeland Security to operate our citizen program in conjunction with the community coalition that oversees that. We also are so fortunate to have the generosity of people through fundraisers as well as contributions from in-kind donations, to cash donations.

    DN: How big is your staff?

    BW: Our staff is at the present time just slightly over two people. We have Candy Shoop, our administrative assistant, and myself, and an extremely part time data manager. We are growing. In January, we’re looking at adding staff positions then.

    DN: Are there volunteers?

    BW: Oh boy, yes. We couldn’t do what we do here without volunteer help. We average about 25 active volunteers a year that work through the Center. Youth from high school, seniors, retired folks, people with just one particular skill that they want to offer or a very, very broad background.
 

    DN: What’s the predominant age demographic of the volunteers?

    BW: It ranges. We used to keep track of volunteer ages, and at that time we placed volunteers who were children who participate as family volunteers, and those are 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds. And our oldest volunteer is probably somewhere in the range of the mid- to upper-80s.

    DN: How long has the Center been here?

    BW: Twenty-five years. This is our 25th anniversary year and it’s been a proud celebratory service year.

  DN: Big Brothers/Big Sisters went through some embarrassment when one of its volunteers, Russell Qualmann, turned out to be a pedophile and assaulted at least one of his charges. Do you do any screening of volunteers, and if you do, what do you do?

    BW: Volunteers need to be background screened, especially when they participate with vulnerable populations – children, people with disabilities and seniors.   Where there is a vulnerable population, volunteers need to be especially carefully background screened, and that is the function of the organization that places them. Because each of those background screening standards changes from agency to agency, we do not background screen volunteers for other organizations. We do background screen volunteers for our organization. Volunteers who are placed with youth, for example, in a leadership role, are background screened through a variety of means through the police department, through the state department of justice, criminal background check is done, we check the sex-offender registries.  There is another answer to this question. We do a strong volunteer coordinator education program here, and that means that the agencies that we represent and serve, 57 of them this year, involve their volunteer coordinators in this education program, and in that program we teach background screening practices and policy development around that.

 
    DN: Where is the biggest need right now?

    BW: Every nonprofit organization that we are working with currently is expressing to us an increase in need. They are seeing more clients in their service programming, more a demand for whatever they are providing to the community, from food to shelter, to toys this Christmas, to parent education programming and environmental agencies are seeing an increase in demand. It’s crossing all sectors. So the answer is we need volunteers to engage in every respect. There is a crying need for hands, for talents, for time. There’s also a need for incoming donations of all kinds – foodstuffs, toys, in-kind donations to satisfy wish-list needs for the agencies. The agencies are in a very difficult pinch. The pinch is that economically it is very difficult to make a budget, reach a budget. On the other hand, we’re seeing an increase in needs which are making more demands on staff time than ever before and more demands on volunteer time than ever before.
 

    DN: Is the challenging economy affecting your operation?

    BW: Not our operation except that we’re seeing tremendous increases in volunteerism and offers of help. Our Thanksgiving season this year, by contrast to years past, was a significant increase in every kind of way that volunteers could be of assistance, from food and turkeys to offers of help, but we need for it to keep coming.
 

    DN: How does one become a volunteer?

    BW: It’s so easy. We are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week on our Web site at www.volunteernow.net. And on that Web site, all of the volunteer opportunities for those 57 agencies. So the registry is available any time a volunteer has an impulse to check it out and get registered right online. The alternative to computer-based volunteer registration is to give us a call, 262-338-8256. We’re here from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday to serve all of the calls of volunteers who are maybe not as comfortable with computers. But the Internet has provided us an avenue to reach people unlike anything else.
 

    DN: Are there set hours, or is it purely freelance, whatever hours the volunteer can put in?

    BW: I think that the important thing for everyone to know is that the minimal volunteer commitment is about two hours long. That commitment can go from that two hours one time, to two hours every couple of months, to two hours every Friday for the rest of your life if you choose to make a long-term commitment.  We do have weekend and evening opportunities as well as daytime opportunities, so pretty much any time in any place, we can find something meaningful for a volunteer to do. We also have at-home volunteer opportunities, so you can sit in your living room. Across the hall, we have gathering between 1,200 and 1,500 hand-crafted items that have been made to 25 handcrafters all year long just for the Christmas holiday season. Those will be placed under Christmas trees all over Washington County.
 

    DN: How many volunteers do you have?

    BW: Last year we placed just less than 1,000 volunteers into about 2,700 different ways of helping.
 

    DN: There was a recent story about the bell ringers for the Salvation Army now being paid, whereas in other areas they are not. Obviously it would be a misnomer, but is that something this volunteer center has contemplated, paying volunteers?

    BW: Not something we’ve thought of up till now, no.
 

    DN: Can you share a story about how the Volunteer Center really made a meaningful difference for someone?

    BW: My mind is flooded with stories. This organization floats along on the buoyancy of meaningful stories from volunteers. We have found a hand-crafter who made 40 Raggedy Ann dolls for this Christmas holiday season, to make 40 children’s lives specially joyful. Day to day to day, everything is a story. We’ve got a scout troop that was looking for something that children could get involved in. We’ve got a family of a mother of three young children who wanted to make Christmas greeting cards, and she’s making at least 80 of them for the Meals on Wheels program in West Bend.

This holiday season we’ve seen more groups come forward than ever before. These groups are family groups, or neighborhood groups, children’s groups like 4-H and Cub Scouts and Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts, and then a lot of companies. Companies are doing enormous collection drives and we’re coordinating all of those acts of generosity with the organizations that need them. It has been a year of groups for holiday response this year.
 

    DN: Away from the Volunteer Center, what does Betsy Wilcox do for relaxation?

    BW: I’m a very active volunteer. In fact, my staff gave me a mug, something about rethinking volunteering, because I am a very, very active volunteer. I just retired from a board of directors. I am enjoying an empty nest. My daughter is finishing college. So I’m spending a lot of wonderful time with my husband. We’re doing some traveling and some home repair, gardening, average enjoyable pastimes and hobbies. I work in my spare time with a number of organizations out of county, especially an emergency response corporation. I do some training and some education in other parts of Wisconsin, so those are spare time activities.

   The Volunteer Center of Washington County links volunteers to community needs
within its 57 member organizations. 
The mission of the Volunteer Center is to enrich the quality of life in Washington County by strengthening its member organizations and linking members to service opportunities.