Last week, Building Impact sent Community Connectors Alison Spindler and Sarah Gudernatch to the Big Apple to hear national political, business, and non-profit leaders speak at the National Conference on Volunteerism and Service. This week-long conference featured key-note speakers Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and JP Morgan Chase Foundation Managing Director Kim Davis. The overall theme of the conference was civic engagement in businesses who are now integrating a desire to do good into their bottom line.
One session explored a shift in the desire of companies to do skills-based volunteering (e.g. pro-bono services) and the concern of under-staffed non-profits attempting to manage these kinds of volunteers. Alison proudly voiced Building Impact's unique solution as a capacity building program serving non-profits and businesses in Greater Boston.
The conference also reinforced our commitment to measurement & evaluation, and pointed out that evidence of a non-profit's impact is more important than ever. Non-profits should check out www.bethechange.org and www.reimaginignservice.org for great ideas on how to capture this measurement while becoming more efficient.
The conference was inspiring, educational, and also quite fun! In addition to back-to-back sessions from 7AM to 6PM, we had a little time to celebrate our hard work. The amazing people at Target sponsored the Target Party for Good and invited all 5,000 conference attendees to a warehouse on the Lower East Side to eat, drink, and pack over 150,000 meals for local New Yorkers in need. American Idol winner Katherine McPhee showed up to sing to the crowd, and local NY celebrities were all around.
Thank you to the NCVS and NYC for inspiring do-gooders to unite!
