Want to Volunteer? Start Here

Imagine you’re a civically minded individual moving to Centre County for the first time, and you want to get involved with a local nonprofit as a way to meet people and get to know your community. Or, maybe you’re a Penn State student who would like to find a short-term volunteer gig in order to accumulate a few community service hours for your sorority or fraternity. How do you find the right opportunities?

Perhaps you’re the director of a nonprofit organization in need of volunteers to mentor kids or answer phones or park cars at an event. Or, maybe your charity needs donated goods, like books, dog food, or furniture. How do you find volunteers or donations?

There is now a one-stop resource that can easily connect potential volunteers with charities that need help. Volunteer Centre County shares the needs of local nonprofits through its website, volunteercentrecounty.org, and, coming soon, through a mobile app (VCC).

The organization was conceived back in 2018 at a Penn State Intergenerational Leadership Institute summit at Millbrook Marsh, when participants brainstormed ways to increase intergenerational volunteerism and activities in the local community. Ann Echols, a retired professor of business and a long-time volunteer community activist, was one of those participants.

“We asked ourselves what Centre County needed most, and we decided we needed a central place to find out who needs what, in terms of volunteers or donated goods,” she says. 

With support and guidance from Grace Hampton, Echols took up the mantle. Hampton, retired director of Penn State’s School of Visual Arts and an accomplished leader in the local nonprofit world, would become the organization’s first, and longest-serving, board member. 

Echols was able to put Volunteer Centre County under the umbrella of a similarly missioned nonprofit she had previously run, Sedum Inc., saving the new organization the time-consuming step of establishing itself as a 501(c)(3) charity, and thus allowing Echols time to focus on finding and working with coders to design the functionality of the new website.

The development phase was slow going, she says. Technological challenges, coupled with a global pandemic, delayed the launch of a fully functional Volunteer Centre County website until 2022.

Now that the initial development phase has ended and “the plane has left the hangar,” as Echols (now the organization’s executive director) says, Volunteer Centre County is ready to move on to phase two. The focus turns from technology to growth, which means spreading the word about Volunteer Centre County and attracting community members to use the site.

It also means focusing on recruiting more community partners and increasing the level of collaboration with them.

Community partners are the nonprofit organizations who post their needs on the Volunteer Centre County portal. There is no cost to be a community partner, but to qualify, an organization must be headquartered in Centre County. It also must be either a government entity, a public school, or an official 501(c)(3) charity in good standing with the Pennsylvania Department of Charities, Department of State, and the IRS. (Exceptions are allowed on a case-by-case basis; for example, Union Cemetery, a 501(c)(13), is a community partner.)

Once approved, community partners are granted unlimited website posts requesting volunteers and donated goods. Posts are moderated by Echols before they are published, mainly for consistency, but also to ensure that the requests are not about fundraising, politics, or religion.

Community partners also receive free postings on Volunteer Centre County social media channels, and publicity through the “Spread the News” Volunteer Centre County blog. 

As of June, almost sixty nonprofits have signed on as community partners. 

Partner postings on the website range from long-term needs, like museum tour guides, tutors, receptionists and even board members, to short-term project help, such as parking attendants for festivals or ushers for theater productions. Item donation requests range from hard candy to bus tokens to gently used furniture and appliances. 

The Jared Box Project, which provides activity boxes to children who are being treated in hospitals across the United States, has been a community partner since July 2022, according to Executive Director Cindy Kolarik.

“We use the site to invite volunteers to donate toys for us to use to make Jared Boxes. In addition, we have used the site to invite the community to our One Million Smiles Celebration on August 6,” she says. “Volunteer Centre County is a great resource for our community and for nonprofits located in Centre County.”

As an example of how the website is being used as a resource, Echols says the AFL-CIO recently reached out to the organization, looking for ways attendees can volunteer their time to give back to Centre County for a few hours while they are in town during an upcoming conference.

“Because Volunteer Centre County exists, we were able to get three community partners to provide opportunities for them. If we weren’t here, how would they know who to call?” she says.

Echols says it can be especially difficult for organizations to find long-term volunteers, so one of Volunteer Centre County’s goals is to help their partners with that challenge.

“I don’t know if people understand how important the ongoing volunteers are to organizations. Office receptionists, for example, have to be vetted and trained, and there has to be so much trust,” she says. “There is such a need for those long-term dedicated people.”

The website can also be helpful for people who need to complete court-ordered service hours, and Echols foresees an increase in people seeking volunteer opportunities in response to new federal legislation requiring able-bodied adults to either work or volunteer in order to receive certain benefits.

As the organization considers the future, Echols says she looks toward some other well-established community volunteer portals as examples, including pittsburghcares.org in Pittsburgh, volunteerfairfax.org in Virginia, and activategood.org in North Carolina.

Volunteer Centre County employs one part-time staff member, who keeps in touch with community partners to keep their postings up to date. Besides Echols and Hampton, the board of directors includes Suzanna Windon, who brings her expertise as a Penn State assistant professor of youth and adult leadership, including volunteer management; Zach Barton, former executive director of Leadership Centre County, now with Lori’s Hands; and Echols’ husband, Stuart Echols, who is stepping down to spend more time with the local charity he founded, Talleyrand Intergenerational Activities (also known as Talleyrand Croquet). 

“Without this strong and supportive team, absolutely nothing would have been done,” Echols says. “They are critical to making Volunteer Centre County happen.”

Currently, the nonprofit relies entirely on donations to cover operating expenses, but Echols hopes to begin applying for grants soon. 

Ultimately, Echols is striving to lead the organization to become an important asset to its community partners, which in turn helps Centre County, she believes. 

“We’re about collaboration, not competition. We live for our community partners. We want them to think of us first when they’re in need of volunteers,” she says. “We are looking to amplify all those charities that make this area so special and partner with others to better serve Centre County.” T&G

Karen Walker is a freelance writer in State College.