Skilled Volunteers SAVE Non-profits Time & Resources

A new program from The Volunteer Center of Northwest Suburban Chicago (TVC) aims to provide a “skills stimulus” to the non-profit sector by connecting two groups hit hard by the economic recession: out-of-work professionals and area non-profits. By taking a few hours a week outside of their job search to share their skills and expertise, these volunteers help organizations, many of which are facing massive cutbacks, while also helping to build their resume.
 
TVC’s skills-based volunteer program, called SAVE, strategically places marketers, consultants and other professionals with high-impact volunteer roles. Tom Gaynor, a skilled volunteer working to develop SAVE’s consulting process, said the program has the potential to transform the nonprofit sector by giving them access to a whole new pool of talent, for free.
 
“It could help them get places that it would take them years to get to, if ever, and that speed and agility is important to succeed in this world, especially for non-profits,” Gaynor said.
 
Gaynor recently initiated the SAVE program’s “adopt-a-nonprofit” program, which serves as a model for connecting the members of networking and professional groups with non-profits in need of assistance. The first major pairing through this model is between Little City, a Palatine-based non-profit, and the Executive Networking Group of Greater Chicago (ENG). According to Chris Campbell, the Executive Director of ENG, group’s members, who normally get paid over $100,000 dollars a year, will be providing their expertise to Little City for free.
 
“We have 480 people who aren’t working, who are all professionals; a wonderful way to occupy their time in transition is to give back through volunteerism,” Campbell said.
 
Executives from ENG, whose backgrounds include everything from marketing to engineering, will work on various projects to help Little City become a more robust organization. Their first projects include working to improve employee retention, developing plans for social enterprises, and improving Little City’s fundraising efforts.  
 
Shawn Jeffers, the Executive Director of Little City, said the timing is perfect because social service agencies across the state of Illinois and the country are facing “dramatic cuts” in both state and national funding.
 
“When there’s an economic downturn the need for human services actually goes up, and so we’re faced now with greater demand and fewer resources,” Jeffers said. “At a time when our resources are being cut substantially, we can still maintain high quality of services because we have volunteers coming in.”