Washington, D.C. -To move toward capturing the skills and talents of a new breed of volunteers, the Corporation for National and Community Service today announced four grants to organizations that will develop next-generation volunteer management tools and practices.

The grants, totaling $687,988, will go to the Girls Scouts of the USA, Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, America SCORES, and the Maine Commission on Community Service. Grantees were selected from more than 400 national and local applicants in a highly competitive process.

The organizations will use the grants to professionalize their volunteer management practices and infrastructure, using research-based innovations that are responsive to their volunteers. The projects include integrated databases for attracting and matching volunteers, using sports as a way to break down reluctance of volunteers to work with disadvantaged youth, and providing professional volunteer management training. The Corporation will share lessons learned from these grantees with the wider volunteer community, ultimately helping more organizations be more effective in recruiting and retaining volunteers to meet social needs.

“Volunteering isn’t just nice, it’s necessary to tackling our hardest problems, and it’s critical that organizations that use volunteers recruit, train, manage, and thank them they way they would any valued colleague,” said Corporation CEO David Eisner. “I salute these winning organizations for seeing the profound value of volunteers and finding new ways to maximize their impact in solving tough problems.”

Last April, the Corporation reported in its Volunteering in America study that while America’s overall volunteer rate remains at historically high levels, nearly 21 million of the over 61.2 million Americans who volunteered for nonprofit organizations in 2005 didn’t volunteer the following year. This represents an estimated annual loss to nonprofits of approximately $30 billion dollars worth of volunteer labor.

The agency is working on a number of fronts to stem the tide of volunteer attrition and bolster volunteer management practices, including placing a greater emphasis on volunteer mobilization and management in its Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America grant programs; conducting extensive research on volunteer demographics, providing volunteer retention training and technical assistance materials to the nonprofit sector through its Resource Center; and releasing a white paper about the importance of treating volunteers as valuable human capital assets.

The grants announced today are part of this larger effort and support the agency’s five-year strategic plan goal of 75 million volunteers serving their communities by 2010. Organizations were required to provide a 33 percent in-kind or dollar match in order to qualify for funds. Grant amounts may change as a result of budget negotiations.

When it comes to matching over 900,000 volunteers with opportunities to serve more than 2.7 million girls nationwide, the Girl Scouts of the USA face a monumental task that can no longer be operated under the neighborhood volunteer system of the 1950s. The organization will use their $154,060 grant to test their Council Enterprise System in four local councils as part of their multi-faceted effort to streamline and automate volunteer management and to offer today’s volunteers more flexible roles that fit the complex lives of today’s women.

“We want to enrich the volunteer experience in Girl Scouting so that our volunteers can continue to help girls develop qualities that will serve them all their lives, like leadership, strong values, social conscience, and conviction about their own potential and self-worth,” said Kathy Cloninger, CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA.

Taking their cue from Internet-savvy companies, Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, Inc. will use their $134,412 grant to create the Nazarene National Service Network, a permanent volunteer management infrastructure encompassing local congregations, nonprofits, Nazarene Disaster Response, and the Nazarene Higher Education System.

Daniel Soliday, CEO of the Olathe, Kansas-based organization, said, “We’d like this integrated database to help us to tap volunteer skills and match opportunities as effectively as the well-known on-line merchants can track individual preferences. If we do that, we can create a new corps of volunteers – including our already active college students -- who are focused and motivated to volunteer more hours, more consistently to end poverty.”

Attracting new volunteers in greater numbers, and better coordinating volunteer placement, is also the focus of an initiative being led by America SCORES, the nation’s largest after-school soccer, literacy, and service-learning program for disadvantaged youth. The Corporation’s $200,000 grant will support a new initiative, called Up2Us (Urban People for Urban Students) to create a national coalition of over 40 sports-based youth development programs in a coordinated effort to recruit, train, and retain volunteers.

“Our organizations use sports to help kids build life skills, develop a love for school, and to be successful in life,” said Paul Caccamo, America SCORES’ CEO. “Through this grant, we’ll engage tens of thousands of volunteers in programs that, combined, serve more than 100,000 disadvantaged youth across the country.”

While 33 percent of Maine’s adults volunteer, a 2005 survey of the state’s 9,000 nonprofits and found that professional volunteer management training is both sought after and sorely lacking throughout the state. The Maine Commission for Community Service, together with the VolunteerMaine Partnership and faculty from several Maine colleges and universities, will use their $199,516 grant to develop and implement a year-long professional development program for 100 volunteer managers across the state. The initiative is called INVEST -- Increased Nonprofit Volunteer Education and Skill Training.

“If we help volunteer managers address operational issues that impact retention success, we can attract as volunteers both the retiring boomers who are coming into the state or even young professionals who have different expectations relative to volunteer roles,” said Maryalice Crofton, Executive Director of the Maine Commission for Community Service. “Our goal is to effect real, lasting change in local capacity.”

The Corporation for National and Community Service improves lives, strengthens communities, and fosters civic engagement through service and volunteering. Each year, the Corporation provides opportunities for more than 2 million Americans of all ages and backgrounds to serve their communities and country through Senior Corps, AmeriCorps and Learn and Serve America. For more information, visit nationalservice.gov.

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