The purpose of this strategic plan is to outline an action plan for the Volunteer Exchange for years 2003-2008 to develop new volunteer opportunities to best assist the Orange County constituency we currently serve and to bring about greater opportunities to those agencies and persons in need. We hope to broaden the avenues of service we provide to mentoring adults, taking a serious look at how we strive to serve our juvenile probation population, work to greater enhance our existing program in transporting the elderly and frail to non-emergency medical appointments and to further assist our county in providing low income housing assistance and counseling to those participating ion the Welfare-to-Work Program.
The restated mission of the Volunteer Exchange is to:
“Mobilize People and Resources to Deliver Creative Responses to Community Needs.”
The need for more volunteers in assisting the aging population in getting to and from to medical appointments is ever increasing. Our sources and direction are being dictated by:
The need for proving mentoring services to our low income and at-risk population is an ever-increasing need.
The Volunteer Exchange was incorporated in 1966 with the original mission “to mobilize people and resources to deliver creative responses to community needs.” Our goal has grown to dedicating its resources to making our community a better place to live, the Exchange has mobilized and continues to mobilize concerned individuals and local businesses to get involved in solving today’s complex problems.
For over thirty years the Volunteer Exchange has been recruiting, interviewing and making referrals f volunteers of all ages and walks of life to over 600 nonprofit agencies throughout Orange County who have registered some sort of need with our office. The individuals skills, interests, and talents are then matched with those of the agency.
Organized in 1966, the Volunteer Exchange seeks to call all residents to get involved in solving the serious social problems facing our community. One such element that needs to be addressed is juvenile crime. The new program to assist our juvenile population will be called Project Impact with a mission of utilizing trained mentors to help our at-risk population meet their everyday youthful challenges in a positive manner.
In an effort to address the needs of the community, the Volunteer Exchange has developed and implemented programs such as Misty’s Closet (low income clothing), Disaster Response (educating the community in disaster response and preparedness) SMART (working with the area office on aging in providing transportation to seniors for non-emergency medical appointments, Court Referral (assigning community service to traffic and misdemeanor offenders) Housing Assistance and Counseling (working with eh Social Services Agency in counseling and disbursing emergency rental assistance to low income Welfare-to-Work participants) and soon the Volunteer Exchange will be engaged in training Orange County voters on how to use the new voting machines adopted by the county.
Strengths of the organization include:
Weaknesses of the organization include:
Opportunities for the organization include:
Threats to the organization include:
The current Volunteer Exchange projects are:
As a direct court order or an alternative to court-ordered fines and or incarceration for misdemeanor offenses, the Court assigns clients to give a number of supervised hours of community service. The program provides millions of dollars worth of work to agencies, the state, the county and local governments, saving taxpayer dollars. This can be a positive experience for the individual, through the opportunity to help others; and the nonprofit organization, by receiving the services of a much need volunteer.
The Program created to provide low-income women and men with interview clothing. Women and men are referred to the program by local non-profit agencies, social services, CalWork’s, and governmental member/referring agencies throughout Orange County. The objective of the program is to assist low-income men and women re-entering the job market with professional business attire. This is done in an effort to help them secure employment, and ultimately empowering them to help themselves and their families. Recently, Misty’s Closet was able to provide both back-packs and school uniforms to low-income families so their children would be able to assimilate more readily. One primary goal is to open retail outlets so the public can purchase recycled clothing at reasonable and affordable prices.
The Volunteer Exchange is committed to helping corporations and smaller businesses design and coordinate in-house employee volunteer participation. For the past fifteen years, the Volunteer Exchange has provided an avenue for employees to volunteer their time and talents. Helping non-profit agencies in Orange County, on a one-on-one basis or as a group is a primary function of our agency.
A formal recognition of volunteer efforts is an important part of the Volunteer Exchange activities. This has been accomplished through events such as “The Silver Bowl Awards.” Upon request the Volunteer Exchange also awards Certificates of Achievements to hospital auxiliaries, high school students, and other groups top encourage both current and new volunteers.
The Exchange performs a referral function for directing resources to the appropriate agency, individual or organization. For example, the center coordinates the distribution of excess material goods, equipment and furniture from local businesses to local nonprofit agencies or will help find an individual the needed resource.
The Volunteer Exchange is partnership with the Area Office on Ageing and MAXIMUS is providing volunteer drivers to disabled and frail seniors in the Orange County community in providing non-emergency medical appointment transportation. The goal is to provide 282 participants an average of 200 miles per month utilizing over 100 different volunteers.
Over the pat three years the Volunteer Exchange has provided forty-five low-income families with transitional housing, assisted over four hundred families in avoiding eviction by providing rental assistance, has assisted over two hundred families with first time rental assistance so that they may qualify to rent a unit, and has negotiated and counseled both landlord and tenant with over two-hundred persons in the interest of salvaging damaging landlord tenant relationships. Their successful mediation with landlords by its diverse staff has gained them a county wide award of over 1.8 million dollars.
The Volunteer Exchange facilitates and administers a program to promote localized, self empowerment in social problem solving situations. The Collaborative now in its fourth year, is comprised of organizations such as the Westminster School District, The City of Westminster, local churches and synagogues, County social service agencies, a long with a myriad of non-profit organizations working together to asses and fulfill the needs of the community. Instrumental in the 1996 “All America City” award to the City of Westminster. The Volunteer Exchange has coordinated the development and implementation of the Family Resource Center for this project.
It is human nature to help during a disaster. The Volunteer Exchange recognizes the need to organize and mobilize volunteers not formally involved in disaster response well in advance of the predicted major earthquake for Southern California. Volunteer Exchange has developed and implemented a basic program designed to solicit, pre-register, handle the emergent volunteers, classify, and dispatch these individuals by skills and backgrounds in anticipation of certain community needs. Knowing that skilled volunteers and other resources will be needed immediately following a disaster and throughout the recovery period, this program is designed to mitigate the affects by providing efficient access to community volunteers and private sector resources.
There are currently fifteen members of the Board of Directors Officers include: President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary. A plan to increase the number of members should include an evaluation of current members’ areas of expertise and plan to recruit board members that will help fill needs of the organization.
The Volunteer Exchange has appropriate staff to meet its current plan.
Partnerships have been or are being investigated and established with the following groups: community groups and other nonprofit organizations, the City of Westminster, and other cities, county organizations (i.e. the Area Agency on Aging and the Social Services Agency of Orange County), and private contractors and developers such as MAXIMUS, and ACS.
The following goals have been established by the Volunteer Exchange Staff and Board of Directors:
The following has been determined to be of priority nature:
THE VOLUNTEER EXCHANGE HAS THE PRSENT STAFF, RESOURCES AND DIRECTION TO MOVE FORWARD AND COMPLETE ITS PRIORITY PROGRAM OUTLINE. THE KEY TO SUCCESS AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY AS AN ORGANIZATION IS THE CONTINUED SUPPORT OF ITS BOARD AND THE COMMUNITY DURING TIMES WHEN ECONOMICS DICTATE TO BECOME MORE CONSERVATIVE IN SPENDING. THIS IS THE TIME THAT THE VOLUNTEER EXCHANGE WITH SUPPORT AND COMMITMENT CAN BEST GROW.