Cheers to  Episcopal Community Services

Please tell us about your organization and your signup needs:
Episcopal Community Services operates a variety of food programs all over the Kansas City metropolitan area. We oversee a network of pantries and meal programs,mainly operated through Episcopal parishes, and run Culinary Cornerstones Training Program, focused on training people who have been chronically unemployed or under employed how to get and keep a job in the culinary industry. It’s a 30 week, 800 hour program focused on life skills, personal coaching and counseling as well as culinary skills. Students not only get time in the classroom with professionals, but also get 15-20 hours a week working in our kitchen to reinforce the skills learned.

We use volunteers at two different locations on a regular basis - once a month we serve a breakfast on Saturday morning in one of our parishes, using about 40 volunteers, and every weekday we serve a restaurant-style lunch at our community kitchen, using about 25 volunteers each day. Those serving at our community kitchen become our “restaurant’s” front of house staff, acting as waiters, hosts, bussers and more. We call the concept“Dining with Dignity” and love not only getting more volunteers involved with what we do but offering a fresh, nutritious meal in a way where our guests are offered choices and an opportunity to tell us what they think about what we’redoing. Our tag line is “feeding the hungry, changing lives” and that goes for our volunteers as much as, if not even more than, our guests and culinary students.

See our viral video here: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/videos/1011360202287437/

Explain how you use SignUp.com to coordinate these volunteers.
We use SignUp.com to do online calendars (one for each location) so that all of our potential volunteers as well as all of our staff can always look and see where things stand in real time. As a volunteer manager, I especially like the ability to post job descriptions of the particular positions that we’re asking volunteers to fill and letting them choose which jobs they’d like to do. It makes it so nice when a large group of people walk in and don’t have to ask“What should I do?” because they already know what role they’ll be filling.They just need to overview of how each position fits with the others and where to go.

Why did you decide to use SignUp.com?
When I first started in this position, it was just before the holidays and we were doing a large holiday meal along with a big winter clothing give away. It was a huge collaboration between several organizations and churches and we were trying to coordinate about 100+ volunteers so I quickly searched on line for volunteer scheduling or management tools and found SignUp.com (then known as VolunteerSpot). I figured for free, it would let me try it out to see how it worked and see what volunteers thought of it. I was surprised to learn than many of our volunteers already knew about it because their kids’ schools used it, but for what we were trying to do, it was great. Volunteers appreciated knowing exactly what they’d do and what times they were asked to attend. I appreciated how much information I could share in one spot. I also liked that it was free (budget is vital in the nonprofit world)!

What is one piece of advice you have for other coordinators out there?
Be positive and share as much information as possible. Most people won’t read everything that you put out in front of them, but some will and appreciate knowing as much as possible ahead of time. It helps their anxiety and align their expectations before they walk in the door. If you can make it fun, or funny, or more engaging, it’s that much better.

What else would you like our readers to know about your organization?
We had a video by NowThis Media go viral on social media in the spring and were inundated with people from all over the country and world wanting to know how we do what we do. It was amazing and exhausting to keep up with it all, but one way we figured we could address many people at once was to host a webinar (in late March). We had about 190 people from 38 states and 9 countries sign up for it and when it came to managing volunteers, we plugged your website big time. I’ve been doing volunteer management for several years, but most programs aren’t as big and complex as this one and I don’t know that I would have any sanity left without this tool. THANK YOU!

We salute the Episcopal Community Services  and all the other volunteers making a difference in their communities. Check out how SignUp.com's online coordination solutions and volunteer calendars can keep all your volunteers organized!