When one thinks of volunteering at Second Harvest Heartland, one pictures images of enthusiastic workers sorting and packing fresh produce, dry goods, and other food donations at our Brooklyn Park warehouse. While these sorting and packing shifts are integral to our food bank's operations, Second Harvest Heartland has several pro bono volunteers who use their unique skillsets to help our programs run more effectively and efficiently.
"Our pro bono work is highly customized. There are specific equations that make the magic," says Kelly Mortvedt, Second Harvest Heartland's Volunteer Resource Manager. "We almost act like consultants to help to keep our Volunteer Program in alignment with our values and priorities, and then we play a little bit of matchmaker by connecting a volunteer with an internal need."
Many of Second Harvest Heartland's pro bono volunteers get their start as episodic volunteers-the two-hour sorting and packing shifts that many associate with volunteerism. "A pro bono volunteer is a great opportunity to move from the impactful two-hour shift to a deeper investment in a specific team on a short-term project," says Kelly. "I often receive contact information for a potential volunteer through an e-mail on the Volunteer website, or through conversations with our Volunteer Center Team."
One such volunteer is Myrtle Turnquist, a writer who covers volunteer stories. "Myrtle's position really came out of being familiar with our mission through working in the Volunteer Center. But she also has this whole skillset of being a great writer and communicator, and she wanted to offer those services to us. We had a desire to elevate our volunteers more internally within our organization to get more staff buy-in for working with volunteers, and externally through our newsletters and emails. We didn't have that knowledge skillset in the Volunteer Center, but Myrtle did. So we asked, 'What if we create this new volunteer position for Myrtle where she writes stories from an as-needed basis, where she is able to conduct the whole process from beginning to end: interviewing the subject, putting a story together, and passing it along to our team for them to use?' It's been a huge way for us to increase our impact."
Typically, Kelly and her team conduct an introductory conversation with a potential pro bono volunteer, getting to know interests, skills, and their availability. "I kind of put together a profile of that person, and then I use that profile to reverse recruit in our teams. I can go to a team and say 'hey, I just met this person, and they have this skill set and interest, and they want to help. Does this spark your imagination for anything? Is there anything on your wish list, but you're finding a skill gap?' A lot of teams have big priorities, but day-to-day tasks tend to push that priority further down the list. Maybe one of our pro bono volunteers can come in and help elevate that issue."
Second Harvest Heartland also gets pro bono volunteers from our corporate partners who are looking for ways to contribute to helping the fight against hunger. Many corporations have structured pro bono programs where employees will be able to volunteer as a part of their 40-hour work week. Employees at Xcel Energy recently completed an eight-week project where they provided strategic professional support to Second Harvest Heartland's IT team.
Pro bono volunteering can take the form of a strategic advisor meeting where someone is offering their professional expertise, to a one-time short-term project: "sometimes we're really looking for that outside source to discuss things at a high level-someone who sees things from afar that we don't necessarily see." Kelly highlighted a recent project where a pro bono volunteer created an inventory system for our SNAP Neighbor Services team. "We just didn't have the skills to come up with a brand-new operations system to keep track of outreach and materials, and so we had a volunteer come in, meet the team, establish the goals, priorities, and deliverables. On exiting, they trained the team on how to use the system. This took about four weeks at about five hours per week." Second Harvest Heartland puts these calls for pro bono volunteer projects on our Volunteer Center Website.
As Second Harvest Heartland takes bold action toward our goal of ending hunger, pro bono volunteerism is a way to really expand the impact of volunteering in the hunger-relief space. Kelly is excited about the future of Second Harvest Heartland's volunteer efforts and how pro bono volunteers can make a big push forward in the hunger relief system. "The beauty of pro bono volunteerism is that the volunteer is the one bringing their expertise and so it often builds our imagination of what is even possible."
