Maren Symonds – Boomers & Babies

About 40% of Oregon’s young children have risk factors that may affect kindergarten readiness, so there’s ample room for caring adults to give back. Encore Fellow Maren Symonds is hopeful that a program called Boomers & Babies, managed by the Oregon Community Foundation, will tip the scale in favor of increased community engagement.

The promotion of civic engagement by older adults is a key element of outreach by The Atlantic Philanthropies. Eager to develop programs and policies to provide greater opportunities to work, learn and volunteer after age 60, in 2008 Atlantic asked the Oregon Community Foundation (OCF) to develop a project focused on engaging baby boomers in social sector work. OCF decided to concentrate on early childhood education and called their initiative Boomers & Babies.*

After a pilot project that focused on increasing boomer volunteers at three Oregon nonprofits, OCF concluded that agencies need a volunteer management infrastructure to recruit, screen, place and monitor volunteers and integrate them successfully into early childhood environments.

OCF formed a Learning Community of 16 agencies to complete volunteer management audits and meet as a group for training, coaching, and collaboration. Six agencies received two-year funding grants to implement their volunteer management plans and continue participation in the Learning Community.Maren joined OCF’s effort as an Encore Fellow in July 2012. At that point, the six agencies had one more year of their implementation phase to go and plans were afoot to fund audits at 18 more Oregon agencies. Maren’s assignment was to help the six agencies market themselves to potential boomer volunteers and to assist in convenings for the six funded agencies and the next 18, and then a convening for the entire group.

Maren also agreed to build a comprehensive resource website that could accelerate implementation of volunteer management programs based on best practices.

One goal is to produce highly competent volunteer managers, she said. “Volunteer managers need to be able to say, ‘I’m very serious and intentional about who I bring in here. I only bring in people who can contribute to the mission. I screen people to ensure the best match with their skills and interests, and I show them that I value their time’.”

Most potential volunteers who encounter a structured process welcome it, Maren said. “People actually compete for high-level, skilled volunteer positions. It makes them feel like the organization takes their contribution seriously. When they are told exactly what they are going to do and why their contribution matters, they like that.”

With the resource website, Ready4Volunteers, now up and running, an effort is underway to spread the word about it and get agencies committed to structured, well-managed volunteer programs.

“You have to have buy-in from the top of the organization all the way down to the bottom,” Maren said. “You have to have a solid infrastructure to support the program. And you have to have a volunteer coordination function.”

The OCF is effusive in its praise of Maren’s work. “At the outset of the project, we hoped that Maren would be able to create some polished and standardized marketing materials for early childhood organizations that were ready to recruit Boomer-age volunteers,” said Abby Bush, Early Childhood Administrative Officer at OCF. “However, she accomplished so much more.”

“While creating personalized marketing materials for each project site, she also had the vision to broaden the scope of her work,” Bush added. “The resulting presentation and written materials created a strong and compelling case study for involving the community in early childhood programs – especially those that serve children who are at-risk for not being ready for school. This case study will have significant long-term impact on the early childhood field.”

*Boomers and Babies is a project of The Oregon Community Foundation (OCF). Additional funding for the project comes from The Atlantic Philanthropies, with additional support from the PGE Foundation, Knowledge Universe, the Juan Young Trust, the United Way of the Columbia-Willamette, and several OCF Donor Advised Funds.