410. Diversifying Your Volunteer Team - It Can Be Done!
Time + Talent Podcast
Show Notes: During the height of COVID, CASA of San Joaquin County faced the fact that over 1500 children from the County were living in foster care. These abused and neglected children had been removed from their families and placed in foster homes, group homes (now called STRTPs), or even at our county's homeless shelter. To address this challenge, CASA connects children and youth living in foster care with a community volunteer who makes an 18-24 month commitment to advocate and mentor them. When Dani started with CASA in October of 2021, she was given a bold goal to recruit 42 community...
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409. From AmeriCorps to Her Doctorate: One Leader's Journey
Time + Talent Podcast
Courtney Tull joins us to talk about her work with volunteers and her journey - so far! Starting with her work as an AmeriCorps member she found a connection with the work of leading and engaging volunteers in the community. Since that first experience, Courtney has achieved her CVA (), her Masters in Administration of Human Services, and completed her Doctorate in Social Sciences. While working for Habitat for Humanity Sussex County in Delaware, Courtney began the research for her Doctorate - exploring her suspected connections between volunteering, well-being, and quality of life. She...
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408. Using Volunteer Feedback and Reflection to Boost Engagement
Time + Talent Podcast
MobileServe helps groups like schools - from elementary to college - and companies connect with nonprofits to access service learning opportunities. They also allow those groups to gather information and feedback from the students and employees participating. Kevin Bauman joins us to talk about what they’ve learned by reviewing the information they’ve collected around impact. For volunteers - whether they’re students or adults - volunteering can offer the opportunity to make an impact, but that message doesn’t always get clearly delivered. MobileServe has found that asking volunteers...
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407. Evolving Your Model to Empower Women
Time + Talent Podcast
Theresa Goebel-Menting founded and directs the We EmpowHer Women’s Empowerment Series, aimed at helping marginalized women and their families overcome challenges that may be holding them back from their true potential. This program provides mentorship, support, and education for women in the Fond du Lac community. Since its inception, Theresa has provided direct supervision to members of the committee, as well as direct mentorship to participants involved. In this interview, we chat with Theresa about how she made the decision to move a struggling program out of county government and...
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406. Youth Volunteers as Leaders
Time + Talent Podcast
MuslimDepiction is a nonprofit that brings awareness and teaches about the diversity and culture of the Middle East. Through the help of volunteers and their newsletter, they spread the word about the nonprofit throughout America. They are also currently raising funds to build a school in Bali for over 60 students in preschool-kindergarten. In this episode, Zainab shares how she has engaged volunteers to spread the word on their campuses, pass out flyers, print posters, advocate within their social and family circles, and get involved in their GoFundMe project. She discusses how...
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405. Building Flexibility Through Team-Based Direct Service
Time + Talent Podcast
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404. How One Zoo Reimagined Engagement Through the Pandemic
Time + Talent Podcast
The Chester Zoo introduced a range of micro-volunteering activities alongside our traditional roles to engage the community in conservation action and volunteering in various ways from citizen science projects from home using motion sensor cameras in people's gardens to discover hedgehog habits to digital roles such as writing subtitles, researching and checking data to responding to letters from school children and school groups when they wrote to the zoo. At the same time, the Chester Zoo embarked on attaining their Investing in Volunteers quality standard, which requires documenting...
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403. Helping Veterans Fight Loneliness through Remote Volunteering
Time + Talent Podcast
In this episode, Prince Taylor, Deputy Director, VA Center for Development & Civic Engagement at the US Department of Veterans Affairs shares how their organization moved a friendly visitor program online and adapted it for remote volunteers. The Compassionate Contact Corps is a virtual social prescription program where trained volunteers are matched with Veterans that are experiencing loneliness or are socially isolated. The volunteer typically calls the veteran weekly for 15-60 minutes to provide socialization and companionship via phone or video calls. In our chat. Prince...
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401. Welcome to Season 4
Time + Talent Podcast
Season 4 of the Time + Talent Podcast is here and we're finally caught up! Tobi and Jennifer are back with a second season of the year. We generally post one season per year; however Season 3 was posted earlier this year - having been delayed by COVID. Now, Tobi and Jenimfer are back on track to share innovative and inspirational stories from practitioners in the field of nonprofit volunteer and community engagement. The good news is that nonprofits are building back from COVID and a global pandemic and welcoming volunteers back to service. In this season, we spotlight organizations that...
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402. Build a Better Volunteer Handbook with a Team Approach
Time + Talent Podcast
In 2021, during the pandemic, Holden Forests and Gardens began work on the foundation components for their volunteer engagement strategy. One of those efforts was a volunteer-led task force to redevelop their Volunteer Handbook. In this episode, Tracee Patterson Associate Director of Volunteer and Employee Engagement, Sarah Hartley Manager of Volunteer Resources, and Patrick Biliter Volunteer Handbook Review Task Force Team Leader share the work they did to evaluate and redesign their Volunteer Handbook. After reviewing Handbooks from other organizations they created a digital document that...
info_outlineThe Huron River Watershed Council’s internship initiative addresses a trifecta of community needs, intern needs, and agency needs. Jason Frenzel - Volunteer & Stewardship Coordinator - is taking an iterative approach to its design and his approach has evolved over the years to become ever more aligned with the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) goals for the organization.
In addition, the internship program contributes to growing future scientists and community members that will become ambassadors and continue to advocate for the health of the watershed. Internships also forge strong alliances with local educational institutions.
He recommends that colleagues who want to start or improve intern engagement perform a SWOT Analysis of resources available in their area, so they know the assets they can work with; to make sure they are also creating contingency plans in case things don’t go as expected, and to plan for risk and liability issues for this special kind of community service.
Position descriptions for HRWC’s intern and volunteer roles can be found here https://www.hrwc.org/about/staff/jobs/.
If you want to learn more about the work of the Huron River Watershed Council, visit https://www.hrwc.org/.
You can also find Jason on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonfrenzel/.
Guest Bio:
Jason Frenzel
Volunteer & Stewardship Coordinator
Huron River Watershed Council
Jason has been a Manager of Volunteers since 2001 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His work at the City of Ann Arbor and now the Huron River Watershed Council has given him the opportunity to oversee a wide array of volunteer programming. Jason plays a leadership role in many community initiatives where he has rounded out his experience managing and facilitating small and large groups. He is an advisor to his local volunteer managers network and was the president of the board of directors of AL!VE, the national association of Volunteer Managers. Jason has held his Certification in Volunteer Administration, an international accreditation for Volunteer Engagement Professionals, since 2009. He also served as a City Councilmember in Ann Arbor.