SAVE: Strategic Action for Volunteer Engagement

The Urgent Need: Recently, there has been a significant cut in human service support due to the current budget shortfall in Illinois. During these hard economic times, nonprofits are experiencing a significant increase in demand for services while simultaneously facing substantial decreases in funding and resources. As a result, nonprofits are struggling to keep their doors open as they are forced to lay off staff, increase wait lists, cut programs and close sites all together.
With the goal of creating a national model and addressing the local economic crisis, The Volunteer Center of Northwest Suburban Chicago (TVC) developed the Strategic Action for Volunteer Engagement Program (SAVE) to bridge the gap between community need and available resources.
The Program: The SAVE program focuses on strategically preparing nonprofits to fully leverage the skills of volunteers. These volunteers contribute career expertise to help nonprofits meet their missions and overcome business challenges such as program cuts, staff layoffs, denied services and more. Through the easily implemented SAVE model and facilitated processes, struggling nonprofits are able create a plan for fully leveraging and integrating the expertise and skills of volunteers into their organization.
If you would like any additional information, please contact us via the SAVE contact form.
To find out more, read the latest issue of our newsletter, the SAVE Report.
Adopt a Nonprofit
The SAVE program will soon be recruiting new community and corporate partners to be a part of the Adopt a Nonprofit component, which connects skilled volunteers from corporate and professional groups with area nonprofits.
The SAVE program will soon be recruiting new community and corporate partners to be a part of the Adopt a Nonprofit component, which connects skilled volunteers from corporate and professional groups with area nonprofits.
Other Skills-based Volunteering Resources
To learn more about skills-based volunteering, please follow the links below to access case studies, news articles, best practices, tips, templates and more:
- HandsOn Network
- Corporation for National and Community Service
- Points of Light Foundation
- Taproot Foundation
- Taproot Foundation's Pro Bono Action Tank
- Deloitte Community Involvement
- The Allen Group – “ Global Trends in Skills-based Volunteering”
Recent Updates
The Volunteer Center is proud to announce that we were invited to present the SAVE program at both the National Conference on Volunteering and Service and Illinois Conference on Volunteer Administration (ICOVA).For more information:



