Be A Community Action Hero for Animals!

Barbara Dillbeck taught elementary school in Michigan for over 20 years and is currently the Curriculum Director of generationOn. She is an active grandmother of four and an avid animal welfare advocate.

My ‘Point of Light’ is a dear friend who has enriched my life in so many ways.  She has shown me what pure joy looks like, helped relieve stress, listened carefully to all I have to say. She is compassionate, empathic, dependable, and bearded – yes, bearded.

I adopted Kayleigh two years ago from an animal shelter – or I should say she adopted me! She was literally on deaths door when I visited the local shelter. Most of the dogs barked and came to the gate of their cages when I passed by, but Kayleigh, a large adult dog, seemed to have given up hope of a rescue. She lay forlornly on an old dirty blanket and only raised her eyebrows when I spoke to her. When the shelter assistant brought her to the “Visiting Room” so I could meet her, she walked calmly up to me, put both paws on my lap, leaned into my chest and laid her head down – she had made her choice of a forever home.  As soon as she walked out of the shelter with me her light began to shine and it has illuminated my life ever since.

Kayleigh gives me comfort and companionship every day and she now depends on me to provide everything she needs to survive on a daily basis and also to survive in emergency situations. Remember hearing those stories of pets being separated from their owners during Hurricane Katrina? Many pet owners had to abandon their pet family members when they went into emergency shelters. I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for the families. Since then the Federal Government passed a law requiring communities seeking funds for disaster preparedness to include plans for family pets and service animals in their evacuation and emergency shelters. The law is called PETS Act (Pet Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act). There are special things that pets must have in order to be allowed to stay in shelters. Click here to find out more about emergency preparedness for pets.

I imagine many of you have had the same privilege of being unconditionally loved by a ‘point of light pet.’   Shelters do a wonderful job of rescuing and caring for animals but unfortunately many are short of funds and overcrowded.  Five to Seven million pets are rescued by shelters every year. Shelters do receive donations but often people choose to donate to “no-kill” shelters not realizing that this puts an even greater burden on shelters that are forced to euthanize animals due to lack of funds or space. We can all acknowledge the fantastic privilege of having an animal companion by helping shelters – donating money and/or supplies and volunteering.

A way that we can also assure that our pets will be cared for in an emergency.

There are some great suggestions for animal related service on the generationOn website. Be a community action “hero” for animals this summer!

This summer you can make your mark on the world and inspire others to do the same through generationOn’s  Hasbro Community Action Heroes summer program! Visit communityactionheroes.generationon.org to find out more about the range of youth service projects you can get involved in, as well as the national recognition and prizes that you can win for your creativity and effort.

A Generational Effort to Create, Preserve and Sustain Our National Parks

Michelle Nunn reflects on her families experiences at the national parks this summer.

My son, Vinson, is a great enthusiast for earning badges and pins of any sort, so we became devotees of the Junior Ranger program as we traveled through the national parks this summer. To earn his badges, we identified sage brush, learned what Sitting Bull did during the Battle of the Little Big Horn (stayed with the women and children), and discovered how long it took to carve the figures on Mount Rushmore (14 years).

We talked to lots of volunteer park service rangers who helped fill us in on the key, elusive answers to the Junior Ranger challenges. The successful completion of each booklet was rewarded not only with a badge, but also a swearing-in ceremony. Vinson was led, often by a volunteer ranger, in a pledge of re-commitment to our national parks and to the preservation of our nation’s special places and spaces: “As a Junior Ranger, I promise to teach others about what I learned today, explore other parks and historic sites, and help preserve and protect these places so future generations can enjoy them.” Thus, the National Park Service is cultivating the next generation of volunteers and advocates for conservation.

Our National Park System of 397 extraordinary geological, historical and cultural wonders was built upon the passionate advocacy of citizen activists like Ferdinand V. Hayden, Yellowstone’s first and most enthusiastic advocate, and John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club and champion of Yosemite. As documentarian Ken Burns pointed out, “You’d be hard pressed to find something that was a purer expression of the democratic impulse, in setting aside land, not for the privileged, not for the kings and nobility, but for everybody. For all time.” This extraordinary heritage was created by citizen and volunteer leaders and it continues to be protected by a network of volunteers. The National Park Service has 22,000 employees, but ten times as many volunteers – 221,000.

My family enjoyed national parks ranging from Glacier to the Badlands to Mount Rushmore. At each park, I was struck by the constellation of volunteers, friends groups and private donations that support the National Park System. There are young people serving as volunteer Rangers, seniors who live in state and national parks as resident volunteers, and tens of thousands of volunteers who clear trails, fight fires, teach classes and help interpret the rich history and ecology of the parks.

The preservation of a special place like Crater Lake seems providential. But, it took three decades of advocacy and citizen leadership to make it happen. In 1870, when William Gladstone Steel was just a schoolboy, he unpacked his sandwich from its newspaper wrappings. As he ate, he read an article about an unusual lake in Oregon with startling blue water surrounded by cliffs almost 2,000 feet high. (So, perhaps it was providential). He first visited Crater Lake 15 years later and was so moved by its beauty, he began his tireless volunteer advocacy to have it preserved forever as a public park. Steele’s proposals to create a national park met with much argument from sheep herders and mining interests. He persisted and, in 1902, Crater Lake became a national park.

American Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner wrote, “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” To sustain this extraordinary American legacy for all people and all time, the national parks depend on the next generation to volunteer our time, donate our money, and speak up to expand and preserve our country’s extraordinary parks. We need those Junior Rangers to take their vows to heart.

Change Notes: AmeriCorps ‘Champions of Change’ Honored at White House

Friends, 

Morgan Tracey knows a lot about the word “champion.”  She’s from Champion, Ohio. She’s training to be an Olympic champion in skeleton, a sledding event similar to the luge. And on Friday,

she’ll be named a White House Champion of Change for her outstanding record of community service.

Tracey put in thousands of hours becoming an athletic champion – and a civic leader. She had

coaching to perfect her sport and the national service program AmeriCorps to develop her skills in the community. 

As a member of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, she built houses for low-income families in Blythe, Calif. She restored a historic building for community use and worked with the local food bank in Astoria, Ore. She prepared tax returns in Phoenix and worked with the Boys and Girls Club in Pasadena, Calif. And she spent summers working with the U.S. Forest Service as a wildland firefighter and was a senior firefighter on the Eldorado Interagency Hotshot Crew in northern California.

Like our Olympic athletes, AmeriCorps members are the vanguard of a generation. They are doing the critical work of communities – raising graduation rates, transitioning our veterans back to civilian life and responding to disasters.

Trained in some the most of the most innovative and important organizations in our country (Teach for America, YMCA, Habitat for Humanity, City Year) and tackling the most pressing needs, AmeriCorps equips and trains the citizen leaders who will define our future.

Over the past 50 years, 250,000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps, helping improve the quality of life for people overseas. In just 18 years, three times as many – 775,000 – have served in AmeriCorps, piloted by President George H. W. Bush and designed by former President Bill Clinton to improve the quality of life back home.

Peace Corps has produced a lot of well-known alums – from University of Miami President Donna Shalala to former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd to CEO and co-founder of NetFlix Reed Hastings. AmeriCorps is poised to do the same, serving as a training ground for participants who get thousands of hours of practice in developing the muscles of citizen leadership.

A longitudinal study by the Corporation for National and Community Service found that AmeriCorps alums are more likely to enter public service careers than those who didn’t serve. In fact, 60 percent of AmeriCorps alums now work in education, military service, nonprofit or public agency jobs.

AmeriCorps has created a pipeline for civic leaders like these:

• Marissa Castro Mikoy’s service in AmeriCorps led her to a now 14-year career in education. She’s now director of operations and evaluation at the Teaching Trust, a Texas-based nonprofit that “prepares educators who want to lead change from the inside out.”
• Noelle Ito built a long record of service, starting with an AmeriCorps assignment at the New Community After School and Advocacy Program in Washington, D.C., then organizing special events for a host of good causes. Today, she’s working for Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, helping develop 50 giving circles across the U.S. as a new way to build democratic philanthropy.
• John Fetterman worked with AmeriCorps in Braddock, Penn. Four years after moving there, he became the town’s mayor, winning his election by one vote. In 2009, he won a second term by a nearly three to one margin. Given Fetterman’s strong focus on safety, Braddock is now in its 40^th consecutive month without a homicide.

You’ll likely hear more about these three and about the tens of thousands of others who have left their AmeriCorps assignments with a can-do attitude and a deep sense of responsibility to community and to others.

This week, a dozen Champions of Change – all AmeriCorps Alums – will be feted at the White House. Their service to their country will be honored. Their futures will be worth watching, their pipeline – AmeriCorps – worth preserving.

In service,  

Michelle Nunn

CEO, Points of Light

P.S. You can watch the first-ever convening of AmeriCorps Alums at the White House live-streamed at Whitehouse.gov/live. You can also find my column on Huffington Post Impact. Take a minute to like it on Facebook and share it with your friends.

Support Our Heroes

Simone A. Bernstein is a junior at St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York. She is a summer intern at

generationOn

, an active volunteer in her hometown of St Louis, Mo. and in her college community. Simone co-founded

VolunTEENnation.org

, an online resource for youth to easily find volunteer opportunities.

As military dependents, my brother and I appreciated the generosity of our community when our dad was sent overseas. Friends, neighbors and the kindness of strangers helped us get through the long and challenging months of our dad’s deployment. My brother and I wanted to pay it forward and find ways that we could give back and support our community. We were both active in scouting and in our religious school service projects, but we wanted to do more. Unfortunately, many nonprofit agencies required volunteers to be 18 years or older to volunteer on site. When my dad was deployed, the community jumped in to help my family. It meant the world to my mom that our community was there to help if we needed something. I was very touched by the kindness and outpouring of support we received. I wanted to volunteer at the local veteran’s medical center to show my appreciation for those who served our country, but I was too young. I also wanted to volunteer to understand the problems that exist in our community, so I found other ways to get involved in supporting our troops overseas and the veterans at home. With the help of generationOn, there are lots of military project ideas now online for youth of any age to get involved and start making a difference. Find projects online

here.

I am fortunate that I have a roof over my head, food on the table and an opportunity for an education. Not everyone is as fortunate. I wanted to step away from my neighborhood and see if I could try making an impact in the surrounding community. With the

Community Action Hero campaign

, youth can create there own service projects. With generationOn, youth of all ages can get involved in a project this summer, reflect on it and even receive a Hasbro gift for participating. Volunteering offers youth the opportunity to connect with their community. The Community Action Heroes campaign unites and connects youth with a common goal and desire to engage and unite through service. It is a powerful message to recognize youth volunteers around the world focusing on some of our many critical global challenges: supporting the military, helping people gain access to clean water, eradicating hunger and improving literacy rates throughout the world. What can you as a youth do to celebrate our military and show appreciation for the time and dedication they provide our country?

Create care packages for troops,

gather used cell phones to exchange for calling cards, preserve a veteran’s story for the Library of Congress or check out other project ideas and resources on the campaign site

http://communityactionheroes.generationon.org/

. Volunteering teaches us that we are all responsible for the well-being of our communities. It is an empowering message to realize that youth around the world can and do make a positive impact and brighten the lives of our military. This summer’s almost over, but there is still time to make a difference!

 Make your mark on the world and inspire others to do the same through generationOn’s Hasbro Community Action Heroes summer program. Visit communityactionheroes.generationon.org to find out more about the range of youth service projects you can get involved in, as well as the national recognition and prizes that you can win for your creativity and effort.

The Power to Ask

Michelle Nunn writes about her service trip stop in Sheridan, Wyoming.

Imagine that you are driving down the road with your dog in the back, minding your own business, when you find yourself being followed by a woman who parks when you park, then jumps out of her car, races to your side and starts talking about the difference you can make by contributing to the local animal shelter.

Margie Taylor, chair of the Sheridan, Wyoming Land Trust, told me all about this stalker-cum-volunteer enthusiast, describing her as positively undaunted in her pursuit of resources for the local animal shelter. She believed that everyone who had a pet was a natural contributor to the shelter, and she had the boldness to make the ask. I discovered in Sheridan an impressive group of citizen leaders who had learned to ask their fellow citizens to contribute, participate and help in a great variety of ways.

Sheridan is a town of 18,000 in northern Wyoming at the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains. I visited my friends, Michelle Sullivan and Brian Kuhl, who, along with other residents, have made a thoughtful choice to plant roots in Sheridan and raise their families. I guess you don’t end up here by accident.

As I sat around the table with leaders of the Sheridan Community – representing Habitat for Humanity, The Land Trust, the Scott Foundation, The Center for Community Creation – I asked them what makes a city like Sheridan thrive, retain and attract new generations of leaders, and maintain its civic dynamism.

One person mentioned a sense of accountability to one another: “When you live in a small community, you know that if you don’t do it, nobody else will either.” Another said that folks tended to gather at the local YMCA, which then became a place to get things organized. Several people mentioned either approaching others or being approached themselves while wrapped in towels after a workout – evidently a good time to make the ask.

I was fully attired on a recent Saturday morning when I joined 150 volunteers in my first-ever Human Cattle Drive (alternatively called the Trail Trudge, Tromp or Trollop) to help break in a gorgeous new, 12-mile trail created by the Sheridan Land Trust with help from cooperative private land owners. Families and neighbors alternatively tromped and visited with friends as they tamped down the path that the community will enjoy for decades to come.

A Serve Wyoming VISTA leader, Jamie Ostermyer, helped organize the Tromp, recruiting dozens of volunteers. Everywhere I have visited, there are AmeriCorps members working with energy and enthusiasm to make things happen. AmeriCorps volunteers Amy Strauss and Alex Selig were making magic at the YMCA, creating tutoring and enrichment programs.

My next stop was quite a change of pace. I visited the Green House – a new long-term care facility for elders that’s breaking the mold. The Green House Living movement, a care model for elders that throws out much of the institutional culture of nursing homes and embraces a home-like environment, inspired two local volunteers to get moving.

Carman Rideout, executive director of the Senior Center and one of the volunteer founders of the Green House, told me about the moment when the idea of a new kind of care was introduced. A handful of fellow volunteers literally jumped up and down, declaring, “We can do this!” They needed every bit of that enthusiasm as they worked for six years to raise more than $3 million, battle skepticism and bureaucracy, and hold onto the vision of what was possible.

I saw a small collection of homes, each with 12 residents, and felt a real spirit of compassionate care along with the encouragement to live full lives. The Green House model is spreading around the country, but Sheridan’s is the only independent, volunteer-driven center. I expect it to influence the principles and expectations of care throughout Wyoming.

At my last stop in Sheridan, I met a group of leaders that included Arin Waddell. Arin was moved by a story and the passion of a friend who wanted to help kids fight hunger after she discovered her daughter filling her pockets with food every morning to share on the bus to school. Arin and her friends came up with a plan to make sure children weren’t going hungry over the weekends. Today, children in need can pick up one of The Food Group’s backpacks full of nourishing food, at school, no forms or names needed.

But it wasn’t always easy. As the program grew, the group was approached about the need to feed 48 more children. They didn’t know how to say no, but they had no way of saying yes – they had no additional capacity. And then a local plumber, who had seen a flier about the program (posted by Arin’s hairdresser), stepped forward. He organized a group of plumbers, welders and workmen, who took care of the entire cost. Within a year, The Food Group was sending nourishing meals home with 248 children each week.

Arin described building up her courage to ask people to help – to ask restaurants to donate food, a local band to donate its talents and volunteers to hold a fundraiser (they raised $18,000 right out of the gate). She discovered that in asking, she issued an invitation for participation and inclusion that people were happy to accept.

As I discovered anew in Sheridan, a growing circle of asking and responding is an essential part of building a vibrant community. In this vital exchange, we nourish one another in ways both physical and spiritual. One key question for all of us is, how do we broaden the circle of civic leaders – those who lead and ask others to serve?

The real secret behind strong civic leadership? Quite simply, the power and courage to ask.

I’m A Community Action Hero for Health

Lauren Stock, age 13, is an eighth grader at Greenhill School in Dallas, Texas. Outside of school and High School Heroes, she dances, plays softball and is involved at her synagogue. She is a 2011 generationOn Excellence in Leadership and Service awardee, an honor that recognizes young people’s impact on local, national and global communities and inspires those around them to do the same.

When I was 9, my mom was diagnosed with t-cell lymphoma, a rare form of blood cancer. My mom’s treatment included more than 600 hours of chemotherapy and extended hospital stays. In addition, the doctors said she needed a stem cell transplant to survive. I didn’t know anything about a stem cell transplant and neither did the rest of my family.

We needed a complete stranger to donate healthy blood cells to save my mom’s life. And so the international search began to find her the perfect donor. Her donor coordinator at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, looked through the National Marrow Donor Program databases daily, but no one was found.

My family planned a bone marrow registry drive to find a donor. A few days before our drive, a match was found. But we understood that the drive was not just about my mom; there were many people in the world who needed a donor, so we stepped up our efforts to recruit volunteers and potential donors. We had hundreds of volunteers sign up to help at the drive. To spread the word, I went to all of the first through fourth grade classes to explain what was happening and how the students could help by telling their parents to come to the drive. I also had each class decorate “Get Well” banners for my mom and “Thank You” banners for potential donors.

At our donor drive on March 29, 2009, more than 800 potential donors registered for the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), and we raised thousands of dollars. People learned what it meant to be a donor. It is an easy cheek swab to get registered and a big commitment to be ready if identified as a potential match.

Just days later, my mom moved to Houston and received her stem cell transplant at MD Anderson. The stem cell transplant took only 20 minutes, and these were her life-saving minutes.

After many months, my mom was introduced to Keith, the stranger who saved her life, and he immediately became part of our family. Keith registered 13 years earlier at a college donor drive and had never been a match before. He didn’t know who he was saving and it didn’t matter to him. He saved my mom’s life and he is my hero forever.

Now, three years later, my mom has fully recovered and is healthier than ever.

Through my mom’s illness and recovery, I understood the enormity of the need to increase the number of potential donors in the National Marrow Donor Program donor database. In the fall of 2010, I started a program at my school, Greenhill School, called High School Heroes. My goal is to educate students when they turn 18 on how they can make a difference by becoming a potential stem cell or bone marrow donor. I hope that my efforts to teach people about the donor registry as soon as they are eligible (age 18) will increase the number of potential donors and make a difference for blood cancer patients in the future.  

My mom getting sick really changed my view on life. I realized how many people wanted to help but didn’t know how. I also realized that we all have the ability to save someone’s life – to cure cancer. Most people don’t know about bone marrow donation or what a big deal it is for a patient with blood cancer. I do, because without my mom I couldn’t be the girl I am today. I will always be so grateful to Keith. Her donor. The man who saved her life.

So what can you do?  

• Identify your passion. What do you want to make better in the world?
• Develop a plan of action. What are you trying to accomplish, and what steps are you going to take to get there?
• Recruit your friends, family and wider community to help you.
• Realize that no matter how big or small the action, we all have the ability to make a difference.

This summer you can make your mark on the world and inspire others to do the same through generationOn’s Hasbro Community Action Heroes summer program. Visit communityactionheroes.generationon.org to find out more about the range of youth service projects you can get involved in, as well as the national recognition and prizes that you can win for your creativity and effort.

A Well-Deserved Reputation in Minneapolis

Minneapolis has long been considered a bastion of civic virtue, and for good reason. With the highest volunteer rate among large cities, the city understands the impact of giving back.

HandsOn Twin Cities – the longest operating volunteer center in the country – continues to find new ways to create change. I had the chance to meet with its board members and staff, led by Executive Director Kristin Schurrer, to learn more about their evolving work.

For those looking for innovative ideas, here are two: HandsOn Twin Cities will sponsor a speed-volunteering experience (think speed dating and you’ll understand the matching that goes on!) for 10,000 people at an event at the Mall of America. And the group will also launch a skills-based, done-in-a-day volunteer expo in the fall.

Minneapolis also has a rich history of corporate philanthropy. Since 1946, Target, which opened its first store in Minneapolis, has contributed 5 percent of its annual income to support families and communities. That philanthropic leadership continues to be the high-water mark among corporations nationwide and has influenced many other Minneapolis-based companies to give back. Along with Target, I had the chance to visit with General Mills, which engages its employee volunteers to combat hunger in Malawi, and Best Buy, which engages its employee volunteers to help teenagers explore the world of technology and even choose tech careers.

I also visited with my friend Paul Terry, CEO of Staywell Health Management. His group works with corporations to improve employee health and reduce health care costs. Paul and I have been collaborating on a journal article that compares some of the key lessons and intersections of the service and wellness movements. (Stay tuned for a look at the role of champions and incentives in both worlds.)

I met with Jenny Friedman, the author of “The Busy Family’s Guide to Volunteering” and founder of Doing Good Together, who is all about cultivating a new generation of citizen leaders. Jenny is launching a new web platform called Big-Hearted Families to help families find ways to cultivate empathic children – children who are engaged in volunteer service, understand the issues around them and are equipped for a lifetime of citizenship.

I’m also inspired by Hunger-Free Minnesota, which to my mind embodies the civic ambition of the city. By 2015, this statewide coalition plans to close Minnesota’s gap of 100 million missing meals annually and sustainably. The campaign has a staff of only two but will mobilize thousands of citizen volunteers to feed hungry neighbors and community members.

This kind of civic campaign, uniting sectors and mobilizing citizens toward concrete goals, is an exciting indicator of the future of Minneapolis — and the nation.

Not-So-Secret Salamanders in Milwaukee

Michelle Nunn continues her service tour with a stop in Milwaukee.

I must confess that my concept of Milwaukee was a bit trapped in old stereotypes. I was expecting a cold Midwestern city with musty factories and dusty breweries. That’s not what I got.

As we pulled in for a short visit, I was taken in by the fabulous lakefront parks, spectacular new Santiago Calatrava-designed Museum of Art, and the rivers winding through the cities with kayakers and scullers pulling into shore-side cafes and pubs. We discovered a Safe House spy restaurant with trapdoors and a password-only entry point that was great fun for kids and adults alike. It is a city of secreted charms. 

The next morning, I got an equally pleasant surprise. As we pulled into Riverside Park, we discovered the Urban Ecology Center – a 20,000-square-foot environmental community center replete with a secret entry slide, a room full of Wisconsin animals that can be examined and held (the salamander was the favorite), a beehive, observation deck and a bicycle-operated fountain.

Imagine a traditional community center and then reimagine it as a drop-by urban ecological oasis with an equipment library of kayaks, bikes and snowshoes, a green space for families to play games and learn about their local environment, and an antidote to Chuck E. Cheese birthday parties.

This unique place was started by a group of neighbors who, in the 1990s, decided to take back Riverside Park, which had become degraded and crime-ridden. The neighbors worked together on park clean-ups and began an alliance to support the park. They hired their first executive director, one of their fellow volunteers, Ken Leinbach.

Ten years ago, they brought a trailer in to act as a hub for their activities and, over the last decade, they have created an extraordinary organization that now has three branches. Our family enjoyed a magical tour with volunteer coordinator Susan Winans. (Susan is an AmeriCorps Alum. It seems that every time I meet dynamic, new generation nonprofit leaders, they tell me they started their journey with AmeriCorps.)

We also were met and escorted by Bonnie Andrews, the manager the Volunteer Center of Greater Milwaukee, housed by the Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee. Bonnie and the Volunteer Center have been providing volunteer support to Riverside Park for years and have seen the organization’s transformation. Bonnie shared some of the familiar challenges the city faces, from unemployment to struggling school systems, and explained how the Nonprofit Center works to meet these needs with human capital, training, expertise and new resources.

As we literally dragged our kids away from the salamanders, slides and beehives, we talked with Ken, the social entrepreneur behind the Ecology Center, about the ingredients behind its success. Ken’s newest challenge: how to respond to the dozens of communities around the country and the world that want to do just what he did.

As I travel the country, I can literally see that so many of the answers to our problems lie in programs that already exist. Going to scale is Ken’s challenge right now, but it’s a challenge all of us face as we work to build a thriving civic society.

Business Behind the Scenes in Chicago

Michelle Nunn shares her experiences in Chicago on her Service Tour across country.

You can’t help but marvel at Chicago in the summertime. On an evening stroll from the Museum Campus down the lakefront and up through Grant Park to the new Millennium Park, you see extraordinary cultural institutions, beautiful parks, a lively street life and wonderful restaurants.

But what isn’t so visible – a collaboration of business, civic and government leaders, all determined to take on tough city problems in smart, new ways – is just as noteworthy.

Here are three organizations that are engaging business in innovative ways:

• The Chicago Civic Consulting Alliance was founded more than 20 years ago to bring the expertise and leadership of the business community – pro bono – to bear on the challenges of leading and managing the city. Working with governmental leadership, Civic Consulting takes on meaningful challenges that can be effectively tackled with business resources, scopes the project and solicits from the business community the right skills and human capital to address the problem.

I had the chance to sit down and visit with Gillian Darlow and Alexander Gail Sherman, both members of the Alliance’s management team. They told me that Civic Consulting has leveraged more than $20 million of pro bono services from businesses ranging from Allstate Insurance to Edelman to U.S. Equities Realty. Their newest focus: public safety.  By defining a macro community problem and giving businesses and skilled volunteers the opportunity to work together to solve it, they are creating a way for the larger community be a part of solving the city’s greatest challenges. 

The Alliance’s model is now being copied in cities across the country, which is as it should be.

• Chicago Cares fills more than 40,000 volunteer slots annually and partners with hundreds of corporations. Part of its secret sauce involves engaging volunteers from businesses and training them as project managers and leaders. In this way, volunteer engagement becomes not only a problem-solving project for the city, but also a team-building project for businesses and an important leadership development opportunity for employees. That’s a triple-win, to be sure.

Most recently, Chicago Cares has turned a simple model around – they bring the kids to the volunteers. As part of their Read-with-Me program, they bring children to the offices of General Growth Properties so employees can help kids with reading comprehension, pronunciation and vocabulary. While honing academic skills, the children get a chance to get outside their boundaries and into the workplace with caring adults.

• I also met HandsOn Suburban Chicago’s Board President Tom Gaynor, who took time in between jobs to volunteer and put his skills to work, helping nonprofits figure out how to use volunteers to do mission-critical work. HandsOn Suburban Chicago is now working with dozens of nonprofits to outline high-impact volunteer projects involving marketing skills, financial analysis and human resources management. They are using VISTA AmeriCorps members and an RSVP program to mobilize and channel the passion and skills of experienced and talented volunteers to boost impact for those they serve.

Chris Smith, COO of HandsOn Suburban Chicago, told me that the organization itself has been transformed by adopting the principles of Reimagining Service‘s Service Enterprise model, bringing in talented volunteers to infuse new capacity, leadership and excitement into their own organization. They’re walking the walk.

Next time I come to Chicago I want to take the architectural tour – and a walking tour of volunteer successes.