42 Key Leaders Unite in Detroit for Points of Light Conference in June

Organizers of the Points of Light Conference on Volunteering and Service, which provides the singular opportunity for thousands from around the world to come together to shape the future of volunteerism, today announced an influential and dynamic group of leaders to serve on the host committee for the annual Conference being held on June 27-29 in Detroit. Community leaders are uniting from across the Metro Detroit area and beyond to spearhead the Conference and share their time and talents to help shape this year’s themes and strategic goals of the Conference.

In addition, the host committee will assist with planning and promotion of speaker and celebrity engagements as well as a variety of exciting experiences – from live music to identifying the greatest needs in terms of potential service opportunities throughout the three days of conference. “I am thrilled to work with so many thoughtful and collaborative leaders that have a deep understanding of the Detroit area and its values of innovation and citizen engagement,” said Tracy Hoover, president and CEO, Points of Light. “Host committee members know what the city has to offer the volunteer sector and will bring both their unique and powerful civic experiences to continue to inspire the next generation of changemakers.” The following individuals have agreed to volunteer to serve as host committee members, with others expected to be named later:

Tonya Allen, President and CEO, Skillman Foundation
Angela Beckman, LMSW, Director, Volunteer Engagement, United Way for Southeastern Michigan
Carolyn Bloodworth, Director of Corporate Giving, Consumers Energy, Secretary/Treasurer, Consumers Energy Foundation
Donna Murray Brown, CEO, Michigan Nonprofit Association (co-chair)
Kyle Caldwell, Executive Director, Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy (co-chair)
Dan Carmody, President, Detroit Eastern Market
John C. Carter, Managing Director and Market Manager, Michigan Middle Market J.P. Morgan Securities LLC
Sheilah P. Clay, President and CEO of Neighborhood Service Organization
Rob Collier, CEO, Council of Michigan Foundations (co-chair)
Tiffany Douglas, Senior Vice President, Market Manager, Bank of America
Dan Doyle, National Sales Manager, Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau
Ed Egnatios, Program Officer, W.K. Kellogg Foundation
David Eisner, President and CEO, Repair the World
Ben Falik, Director, Repair Communities Detroit, Repair the World
Joe Gaglio, Principal, Audit and Enterprise Risk Services, Deloitte & Touche LLP
Shelley Gitomer, Vice President, Philanthropy & Community Engagement, MGM Resorts International
Bill Hanson, Chief of Staff, Skillman Foundation
Ginna Holmes, Executive Director, Michigan Community Service Commission (co-chair)
Rich Homberg, CEO and President, WTVS, Detroit Public Television
Hassan Jaber, Executive Director, ACCESS
Luther Keith, Executive Director of ARISE Detroit
Mary L. Kramer, Vice President/Group Publisher, Crain’s Detroit Business
Janet Lawson, Director, Ford Motor Company Fund
Bryan Lively, Vice President, Sales and Customer Success, CrowdRise
Heidi Magyar, Director of Community Outreach at General Motors
Jenny McArdle, Chief Service Officer, Flint
Patricia McCann, Vice President, National Civic Affairs Manager, Comerica Bank
Susan Murphy, Vice President United Way for Southeastern Michigan
Mariam Noland, President, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan
Kari Pardoe, Associate Program Officer, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
Jon Ramer, Founder, Compassion Games International
Willie Rytlewski, Director of Global Citizenship, The Dow Chemical Company
Debora Scola, Community Engagement Director, USA Today
Paula Speevak, President and CEO, Volunteer Canada
Michelle St. Pierre, Director of Marketing, St. Vincent de Paul
Shirley Stancato, President and CEO, New Detroit Inc.
Janice M. Tessier, Vice President, Manager of Corporate Contributions and President, Comerica Charitable Foundation
Chris Uhl, Vice President, Social Innovation Skillman Foundation
Brian Walker, Manager of Convention Services, Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau
Bill Wenzell, Focus Hope
Alexis Wiley, Chief of Staff for the City of Detroit
Robert Wolfe, CEO, Crowdrise

For more on the 2016 Conference, visit www.volunteeringandservice.org.

About Points of Light’s Conference on Volunteering and Service

Points of Light’s Conference on Volunteering and Service is the world’s largest service-related convening of nonprofit, government, business and civic leaders. With The UPS Foundation as the title sponsor, the 2016 Points of Light Conference on Volunteering and Service will be held June 27-June 29 at the Cobo Center in Detroit, Michigan. For registration, visit www.volunteeringandservice.org.

About Points of Light

Points of Light – the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service – mobilizes millions of people to take action that is changing the world. Through affiliates in 250 cities and partnerships with thousands of nonprofits and corporations, Points of Light engages more than 4 million volunteers in 30 million hours of service each year – we put people at the center of change. For more information, go to www.pointsoflight.org.

Points of Light Civic Accelerator Founder Ayesha Khanna Named to Foreign Policy Magazine’s List of Top 100 Global Thinkers

Ayesha Khanna, who created the Points of Light Civic Accelerator to support startups with social missions and citizen action, was recently named to Foreign Policy magazine’s Leading Global Thinkers of 2015, which includes heads of state, top minds in medicine and science, world-renowned artists and entrepreneurs at the forefront.

The magazine says of Khanna and the other honorees: “Just as the globe’s intractable problems aren’t confined neatly to the realms of politics and policy, neither are the individuals imagining innovative solutions.”

This spring, Khanna and her team are leading the seventh class of the Civic Accelerator, the country’s first accelerator program and investment fund supporting early-stage, civic ventures addressing critical social problems. This session will focus on creating greater access to financial and digital tools, technologies and services. The application period opened this week.

Foreign Policy magazine pointed to Khanna’s work guiding last spring’s class, which accelerated ventures that create greater opportunity for women and girls. Khanna shares the honor with Shannon Schuyler, head of corporate responsibility at PwC and president of the PwC Charitable Foundation, a founding supporter of the Civic Accelerator along with the Starbucks Foundation.

“This honor showcases the contributions of women entrepreneurs and, more broadly, the innovative ideas and sustainable solutions that come from diverse individuals who are working in their communities to solve these complex social issues around the world and need help to tap into capital and resources to scale their impact,” Khanna said. “I am thrilled to share this honor with a true leader from one of our corporate partners that is forging the way to lend their talent and resources to help these entrepreneurs and their civic ventures succeed.”

Schuyler said of Khanna, “I am consistently inspired by the work Ayesha spearheads with the Points of Light Civic Accelerator to provide female entrepreneurs with the education, tools, mentoring and investments they need to start ventures that drive sustainable social change. Last year I was honored to stand side by side with Ayesha in Chicago with a dozen emerging entrepreneurs looking to address some of the world’s most significant challenges in dynamic new ways. The PwC Charitable Foundation is proud to play a role, with Ayesha and Points of Light, in the elevation, education and enlightenment of so many disruptive, empowered and truly special change agents.”

Khanna, who joined Points of Light in 2010, has worked across sectors and led nonprofit, for-profit and political organizations. She incubated and is a director of Fuse Corps, which matches experienced fellows with mayors to drive innovation. She also led and transformed several leading nonprofits, including the YWCA and United Way, and worked with leading Fortune 100 companies while with Andersen Consulting Strategy (now Accenture) after teaching and building health care centers in central India.

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About Points of Light
Points of Light – the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service – mobilizes millions of people to take action that is changing the world. Through affiliates in 250 cities and partnerships with thousands of nonprofits and corporations, Points of Light engages more than 4 million volunteers in 30 million hours of service each year – we put people at the center of change. For more information, go to www.pointsoflight.org.

About the Points of Light Civic Accelerator
The Points of Light Civic Accelerator is the first accelerator program and investment fund in the country focused on “civic ventures” – for-profit and nonprofit startups that include people as part of the solution to critical social problems. The three month, boot camp-style program convenes 10-15 teams in person and online with the goal of equipping each startup to seek investments and scale their social innovation. The Civic Accelerator was launched in 2012, in partnership with Village Capital, and receives generous support from PwC Charitable Foundation and Starbucks Foundation, both founding partners, and from Capital One, Dentons US LLP, Singing for Change and official hotel sponsor, Hilton Worldwide. Visit cvcx.org for more information or follow the Civic Accelerator on Twitter at @civicacceleratr and across social media at #CIVICX.

New Capital One and Points of Light Partnership Creates Opportunities in the Digital Economy

The Points of Light Civic Accelerator, the first national accelerator program and investment fund in the country focused on “civic ventures,” has launched an application to call for innovative, early-stage social ventures with business models that focus on digital and financial inclusion to help more people succeed in the digital economy.

For the Digital & Financial Inclusion Challenge, the Civic Accelerator is pleased to announce that Capital One will join as the Spring Cohort Supporting Sponsor, along with founding supporters PwC Charitable Foundation and Starbucks Foundation. The Civic Accelerator receives additional support from Dentons, Singing for Change and official hotel sponsor, Hilton Worldwide.

The national call for applications will build a class of 12-15 innovative, scalable ventures that focus on creating greater access to financial and digital tools, technologies and services. The founders of the selected ventures will convene for three weeklong sessions from April to June in Atlanta, San Francisco and Washington D.C., to participate in the Civic Accelerator’s rigorous curriculum founded upon rapid innovation and lean startup methodologies.

Through the Civic Accelerator and its partners, the participating entrepreneurs will connect with impact investors, expert advisers and mentors, and successful entrepreneurs in the financial technology and social enterprise space.

During the program and in between sessions, teams will work in peer groups and with mentors to test and validate customer segments, achieve important seed-stage milestones and apply skills and tools learned in the accelerator to their respective ventures. At the end of the program, the two most promising teams (one for-profit and one nonprofit) will each receive a $50,000 investment with a twist – the teams themselves ultimately decide who will receive the investments.

Capital One’s support of the Points of Light Civic Accelerator is part of its $150 million Future Edge initiative, a five-year effort designed to help more Americans to get the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century. Visit www.capitalone.com/investingforgood to learn more or join the discussion on Twitter at @YourFutureEdge.

“We are thrilled to work with our corporate partners to identify and help accelerate breakthrough solutions to connect lower-income and disconnected individuals and communities with financial and digital tools and on-ramps to participate in the global economy. The solutions are many, from user-generated and peer-to-peer technologies, equitable access to financial services, to models that influence savings and spending habits,” said Ayesha Khanna, founder of the Civic Accelerator. “As we launch our next class, we will be leveraging a program that has been proven over six previous cohorts to produce truly scalable and innovative approaches to complex social issues.”

Notable Civic Accelerator alumni already addressing this challenge include Moneythink(winter 2012), Neighborly (summer 2013), Library for All (fall 2014), CODE2040 (spring 2014) and CareerVillage (winter 2012).

Applications will be open through February 26, 2016. The final teams participating in the spring 2016 program will be announced on March 28, 2016. To apply or for more information visit cvcx.org.

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About the Points of Light Civic Accelerator

The Points of Light Civic Accelerator is the first accelerator program and investment fund in the country focused on “civic ventures” – for-profit and nonprofit startups that include people as part of the solution to critical social problems. The three month, boot camp-style program convenes 10-15 teams in person and online with the goal of equipping each startup to seek investments and scale their social innovation. The Civic Accelerator was launched in 2012, in partnership with Village Capital, and receives generous support from PwC Charitable Foundation and Starbucks Foundation, both founding partners, and from Capital One, Dentons US LLP, Singing for Change and official hotel sponsor, Hilton Worldwide. Visit cvcx.org for more information or follow the accelerator on Twitter at @civicacceleratr and across social media at #CIVICX.

About Capital One

Capital One Financial Corporation, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, is a Fortune 500 company with branch locations primarily in New York, New Jersey, Texas, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Its subsidiaries, which include Capital One, N.A., and Capital One Bank (USA), N. A., offer a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial clients. We apply the same principles of innovation, collaboration and empowerment in our commitment to our communities across the country that we do in our business. We recognize that helping to build strong and healthy communities – good places to work, good places to do business and good places to raise families – benefits us all and we are proud to support this and other community initiatives. To learn more, visit www.capitaloneinvestingforgood.com.

Points of Light, GE Volunteers and the Corporation for National and Community Service Bring Communities Together to Honor the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Through Volunteer Service

Points of Light, with support from GE Volunteers and the Corporation for National and Community Service; and in partnership with nonprofits and hundreds of local volunteer action centers, will mark the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, Jan. 18, by mobilizing more than 200,000 volunteers across the country in service projects and discussions of critical community issues.

“Volunteerism and conversations, like those encouraged through Sunday Suppers, have the power to bring people together across all that divides us and to create lasting change – something we need now more than ever.” — Tracy Hoover, CEO of Points of Light

Businesses, community leaders, parents, youth, educators and everyday citizens can connect to meaningful service opportunities through AllforGood.org, Points of Light’s digital hub for volunteerism and community service, where more than 700 nonprofit organizations have posted 80,000 volunteer slots.

Volunteers may also access a free Cooking and Conversations Guide to help spark face-to-face conversations through America’s Sunday Supper community events. America’s Sunday Suppers – inspired by Dr. King’s vision of people from diverse backgrounds interacting on personal levels – encourage people to share a meal and discuss issues that affect their communities such as race and diversity, community health and resilience and access to education and jobs resources.

In Philadelphia, Global Citizen is leading a record-breaking, tri-state volunteer initiative that includes 1,800 service projects spanning across three states: New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. In Atlanta, Hands On Atlanta is hosting an America’s Sunday Supper and is training volunteers to help Atlanta public school students build literacy skills through MLK Reading Days.

“As we prepare to celebrate the life and contributions of Dr. King, I can think of no better way to honor his legacy than by serving together to strengthen our communities,” said Tracy Hoover, CEO of Points of Light. “Volunteerism and conversations, like those encouraged through Sunday Suppers, have the power to bring people together across all that divides us and to create lasting change – something we need now more than ever.”

Recognizing Volunteers

Volunteer recognition is an important part of MLK Day celebrations across the nation. Points of Light is honoring Alvin Irby, founder of the New York-based Barbershop Books program, with a Daily Point of Light Award on Jan. 18. Irby’s community-based literacy program creates child-friendly reading spaces in barbershops in New York City for boys ages 4-8.

Points of Light will also team up with the Corporation for National and Community Service to continue the tradition of the MLK Drum Majors for Service award, which provides organizations the opportunity to recognize outstanding volunteers who have performed extraordinary everyday acts of service and individuals who have met the hourly requirements for the President’s Volunteer Service Award.

Volunteers Unite Across the Country

With a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service, Points of Light is supporting MLK Day volunteer activities run by 13 nonprofits, including Global Citizen and Hands On Atlanta (mentioned above), that will engage more than 50,000 volunteers across the country. Here are highlights of those and other projects happening over the weekend and on the holiday:

Volunteer Center of Greensboro in North Carolina will organize a Community Resource Fair with 25 nonprofits providing support services to low-income families as well as sharing financial resources available to them, with nearly 10,000 volunteers in action. Learn more.
New York Cares will host service projects across two locations in New York City, involving educational enrichment and recreation for students, socialization for seniors and the revitalization of public spaces. Learn more.
City Year New York will mobilize 700 volunteers in New York City with a Community Resource Fair, engaging in civic discussions and hands-on service projects, including painting inspirational murals and creating care packages for cancer patients. Learn more.
LA’s Promise will host a two-day MLK Empowerment Summit in Los Angeles, giving community members the ability to learn about local economic opportunities, while also enjoying community activities and dialogue. Learn more.
The Jewish Coalition for Literacy in San Francisco will train volunteers to read with students in an effort to develop enthusiasm for reading; meanwhile, parents will learn techniques to foster literacy at home. Learn more.
Boys & Girls of Santa Monica volunteers in California will reflect on Dr. King’s life while painting murals and cleaning up a local residential community. Learn more.
The Service Collaborative of Western New York in Buffalo will engage 400 AmeriCorps members, students and community volunteers in a large-scale community food drive in support of 1,000 local military families. Learn more.
Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz volunteers in California will assist veterans and people recently impacted by the justice system to develop resumes, prepare for job interviews and improve their financial literacy. Learn more.
The Youth Policy Institute will conduct a Professional Development Day in Los Angeles – providing resources to help residents find jobs. An estimated 150 volunteers will support workshops ranging from resume writing to mock interviews. Learn more.
HandsOn Northwest North Carolina will host the annual MLK Read-In – during which children are paired with volunteer “reading buddies” – sharing the importance of reading and building relationships across communities. Learn more.
Be More in Detroit will host the Dr. King Day Summit – Stepping Up to Fulfill the Dream, which includes a brunch creating dialogue among community leaders. Service projects will commence in the weeks following the summit. Learn more.
Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC/DC) in Washington, D.C., which offers occupational skills training and job placement for opportunity youth and disconnected adults, will host a project during which volunteers will pack “job-readiness” kits and improve the OIC/DC facility, located on a boulevard named for Dr. King in the Anacostia neighborhood. Learn more.

Scores of other volunteer action centers will activate volunteers in partnership with Points of Light’s programs and divisions during the King Holiday. Here are some highlights of these events:

generationOn, Points of Light’s youth division, will host a youth summit on Jan. 18 in New York City, bringing together 20 teens from local generationOn Service Clubs to network, learn leadership skills and participate in a group service project hosted by New York Cares. generationOn has also developed resource materials, including project guides, a fact sheet and lesson plans to support youth in service on or around the King holiday.

ServiceWorks (powered by AmeriCorps, the Citi Foundation and Points of Light) will engage nearly 700 young people by debuting a new dimension to this youth development program. Across the country,ServiceWorks partners will be hosting these 16- to 24-year-olds in a Skill Building Bootcamp. This day-long program will use service learning as a way to develop skills critical to helping disconnected youth enhance their opportunity for college and career success.

Led by members of AmeriCorps VISTA and community volunteers, “Service Scholars” will be empowered with new communication, leadership and project management skills. Those skills will then be put to use in real time, as each bootcamp will culminate in a service project honoring the legacy of Dr. King. Find details on ServiceWorks MLK Day Bootcamps and service projects across the U.S. online.

It’s not too late to participate in MLK Day of Service activities. Visit AllforGood.org where you can find a volunteer opportunity or pledge to host a Sunday Supper.

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About Points of Light

About the GE Foundation

The GE Foundation is the philanthropic organization of GE. For over 50 years, it has invested in programs based on a fundamental premise: a quality education ushers in a lifetime of opportunity, which helps build a strong and diverse workforce and citizenry. The need for a quality education has never been more urgent, especially for individuals from under-represented and disadvantaged backgrounds. GE Foundation continues to address this societal and economic imperative by supporting high-impact initiatives that improve the access, equity and quality of public education in GE communities around the world.

About the Corporation for National and Community Service

The Corporation for National and Community Service is a federal agency that engages more than five million Americans in service through Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, the Volunteer Generation Fund, and the Social Innovation Fund, and leads President Obama’s national call to service initiative, United We Serve. CNCS leads the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service and supports grants to mobilize hundreds of thousands of Americans in service on MLK Day. Visit our website at NationalService.gov.