It's the million dollar question of the month at VSD - have we seen an increase in volunteerism as a result of President Obama's call to serve?
It's still early to measure actual service, but we do know our web traffic is surging (14,658 visitors this month vs. 11,048 in January ’08).
And this is consistent with an exciting trend we’ve seen at VSD over the last two years -awareness and participation in service is on the rise. See related story: http://www.10news.com/video/18580126/index.html
I thought you might be interested in checking out some of our key areas of growth:
-the Flexible Volunteer Program: a core VSD program with 900+ projects every year!
-web traffic: critical to our success since most of our connections are made through our online database. You’ll note the significant increase last year that resulted from the 2007 wildfires.
In fact, one of VSD's goals after the fires was to sustain the volunteer spirit and action that emerged so strongly in our community. We've made great strides in doing exactly that. We are hopeful that President Obama's call to service will provide even more inspiration for would-be volunteers.
We are actively pursuing partners to ready ourselves and the community for future growth in mobilizing volunteers - and helping build the volunteer engagement capacity of organizations that need them. If you would like to partner with, fund or advise us in this effort or know someone who would, please let me know. We gratefully acknowledge QUALCOMM for generously pledging $50,000 in support of the Flexible Volunteer Program. Their ongoing support has been a critical factor in our growth success.
Thanks for your support!
Sue Carter
Executive Director
Volunteer San Diego
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Is Volunteerism on the Rise?
2 comments:
Volunteer programs are on the rise maybe because of the rise of laid off workers. Though volunteerism is really becoming a 2009 trend starting with Pres. Obama calling for such spirit.
Did it begin with Pres. Obama calling for such spirit, or is it on the wind? Is it just TIME? Did we just figure it out?!
Probably not.
At any rate, our family has enjoyed a new challenge this year - doing something EACH and eVERY day for someone beyond our immediate family and blogging about it in hopes of inspiring others. Whether we inspire or not, we're having fun, feeling good about it and teaching our kids the value of volunteerism.
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