Today’s blog post comes from Antoine Colonna d’Istria, an intern with HandsOn Network helping to developing Skills-Based Volunteering programs.

We left Atlanta on a cloudy Sunday morning and were greeted in Chicago by a cold but beautiful day. The team at HandsOn Suburban Chicago – formerly the Volunteer Center Northwest Suburban Chicago- welcomed us. By 1pm the representatives of the HON Affiliates / Volunteer Centers from all over the country arrive: Kansas, Ohio, New Jersey, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, New York… all gathered in the “Windy City.”

The purpose of the Boot Camp is clear for us. We are in Chicago to go in depth in the subject and share best practices – a peer to peer exchange regarding Skills-Based Volunteering (SBV) to demonstrate to nonprofits how this powerful tool that can make a tremendous impact in their community.

But, was the purpose of the Boot Camp obvious for everybody? What are the Action Centers’ expectations? And how is SBV perceived and developed in their local communities?

Although they are all at different stages of development, our participants-HandsOn Action Centers in both larger and smaller cities-seem to have the same expectations about SBV. Seeing that SBV could help them meet the growing demand for services from their communities and local corporate partners, they’ve expressed a desire for a sustainable model and some pre-designed programs to implement. Perfect! This is exactly what the Boot Camp was meant for!

In our three day Boot Camp, we will detail the Strategic Action for Volunteer Engagement (SAVE) program developed by HandsOn Suburban Chicago. This program is organized in three stages: Ready, Set, and Go, designed to address nonprofit organizations’ capacity building challenges in a scalable and flexible way.

A key factor for successful SBV projects-and maybe the most important one-is the readiness of non-profits receiving the services of these types of volunteers.

There are few nonprofits ready to welcome and manage skill-based volunteers and projects. The first step a nonprofit organization needs to take to avoid difficulties is a deep readiness assessment. Taking this assessment will help to avoid engaging in risky projects that may discourage volunteers.

In the following blog posts about the Skills Based Volunteering Boot Camp, we are going to learn – through the SAVE program – how the “readiness assessment” phase will truly help the agencies to source internal SBV opportunities. The best way for volunteer centers to learn how to address the challenges that may come up, is to launch an internal SBV project for their own organization with all the various steps and processes.

Antoine Colonna d’Istria is intern with HON for 6 months to help developing Skills-Based Volunteering. He studies Corporate and Public Management at HEC and Sciences Po Paris after a BA in Philosophy at La Sorbonne. He is the co-founder of the young French non-profit Pro Bono Lab. Back in France, his objective is to help identifying community needs and replying to it in using corporate human resources and best practices in volunteer management.