A Fresh Face
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

The Problem

Your agency wants to engage low-income community members, but you can’t figure out how exactly to serve their needs. Another local organization provides help and services to the low-income population, but doesn’t have a strong volunteering program in place. How can your two organizations learn from each other to create programming that both helps low-income community members and teaches them to help others?

One of the communities that Volunteer! Baton Rouge (VBR!) serves is one of the poorest areas in the city. The community is mainly low-income, single-parent and African American; of the local schools available, 80 percent participate in Title I (a federal funding program for disadvantaged school districts) and 99 percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunch.  Even though nearly a quarter of Baton Rouge’s residents (and 18 percent of its families) live below the poverty line, VBR! wasn’t sure how to best engage the low-income population in volunteer service.

In 2004, however, they held the Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network’s Essential Strategies for Partnering with Volunteers in Low-Income Communities training for nearly 50 local agencies, and met up with one — HOPE Ministries — that seemed to connect with the program’s ideals. “They just really got it,” said Janet Pace, president & CEO of VBR! HOPE Ministries’ programs served low-income citizens with a client-choice food pantry and a mentoring program, but had difficulty attracting volunteers because of their location within this poor community.

The Solution

Both VBR! and HOPE Ministries had something to offer each other. They just had to figure out how to mesh their programming — to create opportunities for low-income citizens of Baton Rouge to both serve and receive services.

Through their efforts, each organization would gain valuable tools from one another. HOPE Ministries would learn how to strengthen their fledgling volunteer efforts and VBR! would be able to engage low-income communities for the first time.

How They Did It

HOPE Ministries had been working on their own volunteering program, but Pace saw how VBR! could lend expertise. She began working with them on public relations, as well as creating a formal system for engaging volunteers. Their first project together was a marketing brochure; they quickly progressed to putting together a volunteer council from within the community to provide an insider’s perspective on the programming.

With the help of VBR!, HOPE Ministries began holding quarterly open houses where they provide information on both volunteering and how to work towards financial solvency. “That success,” said Pace, “led us to open a satellite office.”

After seeing HOPE Ministries’ success in engaging low-income community members, Pace realized that it took more than the right technique to reach out to impoverished communities. It took an organization that community members could relate to.

If the methods they had been using were sound, Pace reasoned, then perhaps VBR!’s inability to reach out to low-income communities wasn’t a technical flaw. She realized that the communities’ perception of Volunteer! Baton Rouge was unclear — without meaning to, they’d portrayed themselves not as a resource where residents of low-income neighborhoods could serve as volunteers, but as an organization that sent help to those “needy” areas.

Pace applied for a VISTA grant, and brought on Andrea Warner as part of the Points of Light Foundation’s Strengthening Communities Grant, and put her in charge of the new office. Now, VBR!’s satellite office, based in a community center which serves as the hub of the community and staffed only by one AmeriCorps*VISTA, engages an entirely new population than the original office ever could.

Andrea worked to engage faith-based organizations and neighborhood associations in the area — more than 35 nonprofits and 50 churches — and began to create links between them, running through the central hub of Neighboring, VBR! and 1-800-Volunteer.

Results

Faced with a daunting task — how to rejuvenate her entire organization’s image in a community — Pace realized that a satellite office in the heart of a low-income neighborhood might give the Volunteer Center a fresh face. It could also, she knew, help encourage men, women and children from those neighborhoods to become volunteers with VBR! And in partnership with Pace’s incredibly motivated VISTA, Warner’s, VBR! satellite office became a strong, effective resource for Baton Rouge’s low-income neighborhoods. “I’m about access, and making things open to the community. I have a strong heart for expanding into unreached communities, and I thought a satellite office would be a great way to do that,” said Pace.

As for United HOPE Ministries, they have successfully recruited close to 50 volunteers from their client base. Volunteers help support all aspects of operations for the Client Choice Food Pantry, from unloading the food bank truck and stocking shelves, to assisting new clients in making healthy food choices. Six out of twelve intake coordinators and 70 percent of the mentors with the Family Mentoring Program are “Neighboring” volunteers from the community served by United HOPE Ministries. Clients are inspiring neighbors to volunteer and become more engaged in their community.

Lessons Learned

• When working with new communities, it’s not just your programs that may need tweaking — it’s the way you approach the community members themselves. Make sure you approach them with dignity and respect, and view them as volunteers instead of clients.

• Consider bringing on a new staff member to lend a fresh perspective on your outreach programs. Pace’s application for a VISTA grant provided her with a new employee at little cost to Volunteer! Baton Rouge, one who could make an impact on an underserved community.

• Reach out to organizations who already have a link to the communities you wish to engage. HOPE Ministries’ client base mirrored the kinds of volunteers that Pace wanted to bring into VBR!’s programming, making outreach that much easier.

Resources

Volunteer! Baton Rouge began engaging local agencies by offering the Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network’s Neighboring: Engaging Low-Income Communities in Volunteering Curriculum, a module of the Volunteer Management Training Series. To learn more about this programming, offered by more than 100 Volunteer Centers nationwide, contact training@PointsofLight.org

Contact Information

If you’re looking for more information on Volunteer! Baton Rouge’s programming for low-income communities, including their new satellite office, contact Janet Pace at jpace@volunteerbatonrouge.org.