6 Days Until the Volunteer Recruitment Coffeehouse Night!

6 Days and counting as of today! I'm so excited!

Today, I'm going to focus on the importance of our volunteers, here at Cabrini Connections and at other organizations as well. After all, we have a whole campaign devoted to recruiting new volunteers, thus our Volunteer Recruitment Campaign. As any non-profit knows, volunteers are essential to making organizations run, and run well. In tutoring and mentoring programs especially, it's the volunteers who are doing what the organizations have set out to do: tutor and/or mentor a child.

So, of course we need to recruit new volunteers every year to do the job of being tutors and mentors. Different programs have different groups of people that they draw from to get volunteers. Working in the Schools is known for tapping both the corporate and the retiree community to find volunteers. Retirees are a great resource because they have a lot of free time and they also have a wealth of wisdom and experience to impart on young people. Chicago Lights at Fourth Presbyterian Church draws from the population that goes to church at Fourth Presbyterian. Churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship are another wonderful place to recruit volunteers because most faiths have some emphasis on giving service to the community. Cabrini Green Tutoring, East Village Youth Program, and Cabrini Connections all tend to draw from the population of young professionals who are great for their energy that they give to the kids and for their willingness to also help out with fundraising and putting on social events like Martini Madness, our next event after the Coffeehouse Night, which will be hosted on Friday October 17th. (Look for more details about that coming soon!)

However, unfortunately, volunteers move on. They may go to grad school, get married, have babies, or have to move for their job. We hope that they will still be able to stay in touch with us as they transition and that possibly that they will be a tutor/mentor elsewhere if they can't be one at Cabrini Connections. This reality of volunteers leaving though is what spurs us to put on the Volunteer Recruitment Campaign every year. There are so many people who have the potential to be fantastic volunteers, they just need to be reminded that there is a need.