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.
On Saturday April 16th we celebrated 
Other young volunteers spent the entire afternoon helping one of our regular volunteers, who is a professional chef (kind of like chef Ramsey), prepare a gourmet dinner for clients at A77 – a well known organization caring for AIDS patients. There was nice interaction between the clients (who came to the kitchen out of curiosity, for a chat, to say thank you or simply to ask what we were preparing for dinner) and our young volunteers. Everything felt natural. As I observed the kids, I thought “Could adults have done this any better?” The answer was no.
Similarly, I was struck by the warmth that teens demonstrated to the homeless people for which we organized a bingo plus snacks afternoon. When I asked our teen volunteers what they thought of the experience they said they had never fully realized that some people really have close to nothing and that you can make them very happy with a small gift and a smile. 
Another group painted a 20 meter mural together with the clients of our partner (a day care for disabled people). When I say together, I mean together: they all mixed up and had lots of fun. Sometime barriers are more in our minds than anyplace else.
A group helped il Volo (whose clients are young people with borderline personality disorder) decorate a restaurant where they were hosting a big fundraising event the same night: hundreds of colored balloons were blown and placed everywhere to cheer up the generous donors (and make them even more generous).
Other groups did gardening for our partner 
Today’s post comes from Lezlee McDaniel, Community Engagment Manager with 
All of this hard work and dedication is an inspiration to our office. From their own hearts, five amazing projects will benefit people all over the city of Jacksonville. This is truly an inspiring day of events for youth service and HandsOn Jacksonville.
Today’s blog post comes from Lenny Lend-A-Hand, 
Personally, I’m looking forward to putting an artistic spin on community education by painting storm drains with the message “PLEASE DON’T POLLUTE! Drains to the Mississippi River!” With the longest river in the nation rushing right between our Twin Cities, it’s our civic duty to engage, inform, and remind patrons to do their part in improving local water resources. (Plus with clean water, I’ll be even more excited to take a summertime dip in the good ole Mississippi!)
Today’s blog post comes from Lauren Cantrell, an intern at 
Today’s post comes from Arthur Coddington, Director of Online Programs, 
Today’s post comes from Rafael González, Chief Service Officer for the City of Los Angeles.
Starting an employee volunteer program shouldn’t happen on whim. While it may seem easy enough to get a group of employees together for a volunteer event, some planning needs to go into your employee volunteer program or it won’t be as successful as it could be.
