Volunteering Without Barriers

A transformational leader, Lauren is passionate about elevating young people. In 2013, she was recruiting for roles within the charity sector across the South of England. That same year, Super Typhoon Haiyan tore through the Philippines. In awe of the resilience shown by those who had been impacted, she searched for a way to help. She found All Hands and Hearts, left her job, her apartment and traveled to the Philippines to assist with the disaster relief efforts.

After a year volunteering, Lauren recognized an opportunity to create a fundraising strategy to improve All Hands and Hearts’ sustainability through the connection AHAH has with its volunteers. She became the first-ever Volunteer Engagement Coordinator, pioneering a program that inspires volunteers to advocate for AHAH through peer-to-peer fundraising. Now as Chief of Volunteer Experience, she spearheads the Volunteer and Alumni Relations department, leading efforts around volunteer recruitment, coordination, fundraising and alumni relations.

Volunteering is proven to increase self-confidence. It also gives a sense of accomplishment and belonging, things that are critical to self-development and positive mental health. Our volunteers consistently tell us that serving as an AHAH volunteer is a life-changing experience; that working as a team to help others restores their faith in humanity. 

 AHAH strives to offer an open door to volunteers from all walks of life and backgrounds, but we know this experience is not equally accessible to everyone who might benefit. Through this project, we will identify and overcome barriers to volunteering with AHAH by providing the necessary support.

Ensuring our volunteer community includes a more diverse set of perspectives will elevate the volunteer experience further, as it elevates the lives of disaster survivors by more broadly reflecting humanity.

Volunteers are critical for relief efforts after natural disasters, particularly in working alongside vulnerable communities, when local governments are overwhelmed by the scale of the damage and suffering. However, we have found, in more than 15 years of anecdotal evidence and volunteer feedback surveys, that two major factors make leaving home to volunteer on our disaster programs challenging: 1) lack of means to travel to distant programs, and 2) lack of time - (the opportunity cost of leaving jobs or school, or inability to leave family commitments such as childcare). Clearly, other barriers may exist and should be explored and identified.

 As such, the benefits of a powerful experience that opens the door to life-long opportunities and personal fulfilment is missed by individuals who already face challenges accessing the education, networks and training that are the building blocks for a better future. Furthermore, with the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters, expanding access to a wider volunteer pool has become critically important for keeping up with disaster-caused needs, and, we believe, expanding diversity within our volunteer pool will have a positive impact on the quality of the relief efforts and on the volunteer experience for all volunteers.

To enable wider access to volunteering, for those who are traditionally left behind, this project will identify barriers and deploy strategies to overcome them, using input from a diverse group of subject-matter experts.

1. Economic barriers: Design a mechanism, such as a need-based scholarship package, to help individuals who can’t afford to pay for travel to program and/or to lose income by leaving jobs. (Although AHAH has always provided room and board, volunteers still have to pay for their travel, food on days off and time off program for a required mental health break every month); 

2. Communication barriers: Establish partnerships with businesses, colleges and other entities connected within target communities for input and help disseminating information about the important role of volunteers, benefits of volunteering and the scholarship opportunity.

3. Inclusivity barriers: Ensure a positive experience for scholarship recipients. Establish a support framework so scholarship recipients stay as long as possible, gain new skills that can be leveraged for employment opportunities, are inclined to return to volunteer and will encourage their network to volunteer (e.g., assign mentors from similar backgrounds who, in addition to offering empathetic support, can explain AHAH resources such as job opportunities, skills training, alumni network, etc.)

As an organization, AHAH’s mission drives us to serve two groups of people: 1) people in communities impacted by disasters — in particular, vulnerable communities or groups who are unable to recover without assistance. In AHAH’s 15 year history, we have assisted  1.2 million+ people. 2) individuals inspired to help others by offering them a free and open door to be part of a team that works to make a tangible difference in the world. To-date, we have mobilized 61,000+ volunteers. 

 Volunteering Without Barriers aims to serve those individuals who otherwise would not know about, understand the benefits of, or be able to afford to volunteer on one of AHAH’s disaster relief programs. These are individuals who may not have had many educational and professional advantages along the way, who would greatly benefit from the following opportunities that come with volunteering with AHAH: 

• Travel to other towns, countries;
• Exposure to other cultures, ways of life; 
• Exposure to construction, non-profit, international development and humanitarian sectors and careers;
• Skills training (construction, leadership, chainsawing, etc., plus a library of online training modules);
• Access to career resources: alumni network, job openings at AHAH

Ninety-eight percent of AHAH’s volunteers say they had a positive experience and would recommend AHAH to a friend or family member. These individuals experience the transformative “lift” that comes from working as part of a team doing the physical work needed in disaster zones and seeing tangible results in the lives of strangers.

 Volunteering Without Barriers aims to open the doors to this experience for those who would not be able to participate due to barriers caused by lack of awareness of the opportunity and what it means, and/or the lack of financial resources to access the opportunity. 

On a personal level, the Volunteering Without Barriers project comes from an innate desire to share the AHAH volunteer experience with those who have also experienced some level of exclusion in their lives. I believe that in volunteerism, people traditionally left behind can thrive in an inclusive community united in purpose, gain awareness of a wider world of people and places, have opportunities for learning new skills, find potential new paths to follow and have access to resources for getting there. Equally important, volunteers realize the veracity of a theme of the Elevate Prize: in the process of helping others, our own humanity is elevated.

AHAH is already planning a “Road to Return” to complete our long-term rebuilding commitments in the US, Mexico, The Bahamas, Nepal and elsewhere. We’re also mindful that this fall’s hurricane season is expected to be unusually severe. This all means we’ll need volunteers across multiple fronts, which is a challenge during a time of restricted travel and social distancing. We are dedicated to working deliberately and with clear intent to ensure we are empowering a diverse community of volunteers — and the Volunteering Without Barriers project will undoubtedly advance this effort.

 Six years ago I found myself volunteering in the Philippines with inspiring people, working together to make a tangible difference in a community impacted by disaster. I didn’t realize at the time, but this would be a crucible moment in my life. The idea that I would graduate from university, travel the world and work for an international disaster relief non-profit was unfathomable to me as a young person. I grew up in social housing in the South of England. The expectation was I would make it through secondary school with enough qualifications to get a job. With little opportunity for upward mobility, generations of the same family remained in the same supported housing. I was the first in my family to go to university and one of very few from my school. Immediately, I realized the subtle gulf in opportunities, support and ultimately self confidence.

Volunteering completely changed my perspective; it broadened my horizons, helping me dream bigger and nurtured a capacity for compassion and leadership. I’m certain the strength of character born out of volunteering has been essential to my success. I’m passionate about supporting other young people, who like me faced barriers in the pursuit of success.

Over the last five years, as climate change, unbridled urban development and population growth have led to increasing disaster damage levels, AHAH has experienced dramatic growth. In practical terms, this means we have had to work hard to keep up with the demand for disaster relief volunteers. In 2016, AHAH mobilzed a total of 3,775 people, a 30% increase from 2015. Since then, we’ve engaged an additional 25,000 volunteers, across 39 programs in 11 countries, even with the pandemic forcing us to suspend operations for the last six months. This growth is due to our ever-more creative recruitment and retention strategies. Beginning with my recognition of the potential for volunteer peer-to-peer fundraising, I’ve continued to generate new dimensions for my department, launching an Alumni Network to keep volunteers connected with each other and AHAH resources for the long-term, and kick-starting the first affinity group within AHAH focused on female leadership.

I believe my experience within the organization, particularly as a volunteer and emerging leader, will allow me to successfully lead this effort. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, my previous experience in the workplace has at times left me feeling silenced and othered, particularly in a more corporate environment. This experience has helped me develop into a leader who leads with determination and empathy. I’m dedicated to creating safe and inclusive spaces for individuals to learn, share and create. The resources offered by the Elevate Prize offer the chance for me to realize my vision.

With AHAH’s commitment to arrive early to respond to disasters and stay late to rebuild, we find that once the cameras leave and public interest fades, so does volunteer and donor interest. Usually there is significant work still to be done many months or years post-disaster. This was particularly true in Texas, a year after Hurricane Harvey. I’m ultimately accountable for meeting AHAH’s volunteer needs. I couldn’t help but feel personally responsible for the challenging conditions our teams were experiencing: too much work and not enough volunteers. Overcoming this challenge was not measured in days or even weeks; it took months of determination and creativity. It could have been overwhelming, but I rallied together innovators from across the organization, listened a lot and took risks. Ultimately, we were able to transform this obstacle into an opportunity, rolling out a set of micro-solutions that worked. We targeted colleges, universities, churches and created a training apprenticeship in partnership with City Square and AmeriCorps as well as SER Jobs to bring in volunteers who were able to make longer time commitments. We went from only meeting 30% of our volunteer request to having a full program of volunteers.

I flew to Texas a few days after Hurricane Harvey poured 60 inches of rain on Houston, when AHAH was tasked with meeting a massive need by deploying volunteers to help. I was out of my comfort zone: used to remotely managing through my team, I found myself on the front lines, problem-solving and leading a new team.

I had to adopt a more emotionally-attuned leadership style to support a variety of personalities. This required building a sense of belonging and trust under stressful, constantly changing conditions, where sleep was minimal and people were collaborating together for the first time. Ultimately, we were able to build a long-term vision of what turned out to be a 2+year effort to rebuild Texas communities. 

I learned a leader does not have to be an expert in every area, but an expert in bringing people together as a catalyst for change. It helped me recognize and appreciate the value and diversity in every individual, realize trust has to be earned and transparency inspires loyalty. The saying -- "If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together" --  distills my approach to leadership.

Over the last five years, I have come to appreciate the importance of asking questions and being ready to be surprised. I hope that listening isn’t innovative but my experience has taught me that unfortunately, it can be. Embedded in the operation of my department are a number of feedback loops, such as feedback sessions and exit surveys. Likewise, this project will have even more avenues for meaningful feedback to ensure we are able to adjust with agility. 

The best example of how my work has already added an innovative dimension to AHAH began with my asking a question while still a volunteer in the Philippines, as I observed the passion my peers felt for their work: would AHAH’s volunteers also make good advocates and fundraisers for the organization? I guessed that personal networking on social media could hold potential for a wider base of support for the organization, especially when inspired by the stories of people fully immersed in the act of helping others. In the end, after I was hired to find out the answer to my question, AHAH went from near zero in peer-to-peer fundraising to more than a million dollars annually. In 2020, we’ve had approximately 5,000 volunteers create and share personal fundraising pages on behalf of the work AHAH is doing in disaster-stricken communities, and volunteer fundraising has become a staple of our business model.

Project Theory of Change:

Oganizational Theory of Change:

Up until the COVID-caused program suspension, AHAH had 400 volunteers per day in the field in nine programs around the world. In FY 2019 - an uninterrupted single year of operation - AHAH mobilized 5,263 volunteers.

AHAH does not currently track demographic or economic data for our volunteers other than gender, age and nationality. With the launch of Volunteering Without Barriers we will begin more robust tracking to better understand who our volunteers are and evaluate the results of this project. This is important because while the project directly serves the scholarship recipients, we believe it indirectly affects our overall volunteer ranks by enriching their experience. By the end of 2021, we hope to have offered the scholarships to 25 people, indirectly elevating the volunteer experience for the roughly 6,000 people who will volunteer with us in the same period.

If we increase scholarships by about 40% annually, in the fifth year we will have almost 100 scholarship recipients, for a cumulative total of 280. In the same period, if AHAH continues to scale as we have been in the past five years, we expect to have had an additional 40,000 people participate as volunteers in our programs.

Volunteering Without Barriers is a “micro solution to the macro problem” of breaking barriers to opportunity in all human endeavors; it concerns one organization in one sector, albeit an organization with global reach. However, using the Elevate Prize as a platform, there is potential for larger scale.

In the first year, the goal of Volunteering Without Barriers is to increase the diversity of the individuals who make up our volunteer population, specifically individuals with low income, non-US-born individuals of any immigration status and those with educational attainment of high school and below. Careful tracking of the project’s demographics for both scholarship recipients and all AHAH volunteers, in addition to information collected on scholarship recipients’ post-AHAH paths, will demonstrate the success we need to accomplish additional goals by year five:

1. To share strategies and lessons learned, using the Elevate Prize platform and networks to catalyze similar projects in other volunteer, internship or similar programs. This way, the scale of the project is not limited to the operational and funding capacity of a single non-profit organization.

2. To use the same Elevate Prize exposure to attract other financial partners to help us internally scale the project and make it sustainable for five years and beyond.

1. The main barrier for this project goal shares a common denominator with what often prevents people traditionally left behind from volunteering: funding. Most of our funding is inspired by media coverage of specific disasters and designated for use as such. Developing initiatives to improve our operating model, like this project, are usually funded from scarce undesignated funding, which also is how we cover the cost of running programs in response to disasters that have received low-levels of media attention and now, to cover the high additional cost of operating safely during a pandemic. As such, plans to make volunteering more accessible will require a new type of funding base focused on equity, diversity and inclusion issues. 

2. An immediate, although hopefully short-lived barrier, will be the reluctance of some people to live on a residential base in a disaster zone during a pandemic. 

3. Another less tangible challenge I foresee is how we ambitiously and ethically design and plan for scale without losing the value and significance of the individual. We want to find the balance between scaling our project to support as many people as possible while also focusing on the meaningful interactions and transformations of individuals.

1. The Elevate Prize abundantly overcomes this particular barrier for at least two years. It also gives AHAH the chance to demonstrate that Volunteering Without Barriers works and connects the organization with potential new partners.

2. AHAH has already developed operating protocols to mitigate contagion risk but, until a cure or vaccine is found, the medical context may be a deal-breaker for some.

3. We will invest time, effort and expertise to design and implement a monitoring and evaluation framework that captures both the global impact of Volunteering Without Barriers and the impact on each individual. Some of these measures should be more long term to attempt to measure our theory of change model around life-long elevation. Access to partners to help us thoughtfully and transparently design this framework will be incredibly valuable. 

• AmeriCorps NCCC: For at over a decade, all over the US our programs have engaged members from regional NCCC stations
• CitySquare: AHAH served as placement site for City Square’s State of Texas AmeriCorps members. Over 18 months, a total of 30 AmeriCorps members joined our teams across our two Texas program locations.
• SUNY/CUNY University: Volunteer partnership
• SER Jobs Houston: Volunteer partnership
• Telefonica - Mexico: Educational technology partner
• Good 360: Implementing NGO partner for donated goods; co-founders of Resilient Response Coalition
• Medtronic & Blackrock: Funding and corporate volunteers
• Home Depot: Funding, gifts in kind and corporate volunteers
• Stihl, Airbnb, Southwest Airlines - gifts in kind
• ADPP (Aid for the Development of People for People): In-country partner, Mozambique
• PRRM (Phil Rural Reconstruction Movement): In-country partner, Philippines
• YESI: in-country partner, Bahamas
• Relief Nepal: In-country partner, Nepal
• OLE (Open Learning Exchange): Educational technology partner, Nepal
• National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (NVOAD) members: “Member of the Year” award recipient twice since 2014 - US
• American Red Cross: Funding in Brooklyn, South Carolina, Texas, and Florida
• Hands of Hope:  Local implementing partner, Coastal Ben, Texas
• Coastal Bend Disaster Recovery Group: Local “Long Term Recovery Group” 
• North Florida Inland Recovery: Local Long Term Recovery Group 
• United Methodist Committee on Relief: Frequent implementing partner

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, we rely solely on donations to undertake our mission: helping those affected by natural disasters. Our donations come from a variety of sources: individual donors accounted for 25%, corporations comprised 38%, and foundations, nonprofits and other partners made up the remaining 37% (all numbers are from FY19). As discussed above, one characteristic of our funding model we’re particularly proud of is our volunteers and their fundraising efforts account for a full 21% of our individual fundraising, or $793,000 in FY19. At the same time, the nature of our mission requires us to quickly deploy to a location where we often have zero infrastructure and immediately provide relief services. This makes for an audacious business model – we do not always know if we will secure funding for our projects before we can commit to them, and so undesignated funding must cover program funding gaps as well as ensure we’re sustainable and ready to respond to new disasters.

The fundraising cycle for disaster relief tends towards peaks and valleys; the vast majority of all funds in response to, e.g. Hurricane Dorian, were raised in the first month following the storm. In order to address this, we created an Impact Fund in 2013 to flatten the slope of these peaks and valleys. This modest fund of last resort is designed to enable us to survive through periods where natural disaster relief is far from everyone’s mind; for example in the time of a pandemic. As AHAH has matured as an organization, we have also been fortunate to develop partnerships with several corporations who give unrestricted funding or gifts in kind as part of their CSR efforts; which has also helped stabilize our revenue stream. Lastly, a key component of our path to financial stability has been and will always be responsible stewardship of funds. We have earned a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator for six years in a row. In 2019 we got a “Perfect 100” - a perfect score for our financial health and accountability & transparency. Charity Navigator says organizations such as All Hands “execute their missions in a fiscally responsible way while adhering to good governance and other best practices that minimize the chance of unethical activities.” Less than 1% of rated nonprofits have received the distinction of a perfect score for financial and operational efficiency from Charity Navigator.

We have not yet raised funds for the Volunteering without Barriers project. Funding is the major barrier to implementing and scaling Volunteering without Barriers, as noted in barrier #1. As an organization, we use our undesignated funding to make strategic investments and cover shortfalls in coverage for our direct relief programs.  Currently, we are planning to use undesignated funding to invest in incremental steps to make volunteering more accessible. Truly effective, robust implementation across all AHAH programs will require us to find new funding streams - from sources that have been harder for us to tap into as a disaster-focused nonprofit. With the help of the Elevate Prize, the solution offered by Volunteering Without Barriers will not only receive funding for full implementation for two years, but also critical guidance - especially in demonstrating impact -- and exposure that can lead us to new potential funding sources.

Total projected organizational expenses for FY20 (Sep 2019 - Aug 2020) are $14.4M. 94.5% ($13.6M) is direct program spend. This budget does not include any funding that would fund the expense of scholarship packages that would reduce barriers to volunteering. In fact, we are now projecting that the programmatic adjustments we will be putting into place to mitigate COVID contagion risk on programs are likely to raise base operating costs by between 20% to 30%. 

While at this point we do not have a comprehensive budget for Volunteering Without Barriers, we can estimate that the cost of air travel, local travel, stipend to cover expenses during mandatory monthly two-day R&R breaks, and the salary for a person to facilitate the coordination of the project would come to a per-recipient budget of roughly $5,000.

A few weeks ago one of AHAH’s founders, David Campbell, reached out to me to say he’d heard about a prize for global heroes who elevate humanity and wanted me to apply. After getting over my astonishment at the use of the term “global hero” in the same sentence with my name, I took a look at the Prize website. With a better understanding of what the Elevate Prize is seeking to achieve, I considered the prize in light of my history and my role at this amazing international NGO. Although the importance of increasing opportunities for everyone, particularly those who experience exclusion, is not a new concept, this moment in time is a true tipping point in my organization’s maturity, my professional evolution and, equally importantly, for a world facing disasters of many descriptions. The funding and access to experts and networking support which the prize offers are just the right tools to take AHAH and me to the next level in terms of removing barriers to volunteering, while broadening our base of volunteers to meet growing disaster relief needs. I am excited at the potential, because I know first hand the power of the AHAH volunteer experience to elevate humanity. Not only through the tangible recovery efforts for communities in need, but the hope that’s instilled when people from around the world show up to help.

Funding and Revenue Model: Funding to support the scholarship initiative as noted in #1 of the barriers section.

Talent Recruitment: Support in hiring a small team to effectively implement the scholarship program.

Mentorship and/or Coaching: Mentorship and coaching on the project plan and execution and how we deliver a scholarship that ensures recipients experience an inclusive environment.

Monitoring and Evaluation: Monitoring and evaluation support to measure the success of our initiative as noted in #3 of the barriers section.

Marketing, Media and Exposure: Marketing and exposure to help amplify this opportunity to those who would not ordinarily know about volunteering with AHAH.

I would look to support from the Elevate Prize resources to guide me on identifying partners. Ideally we would partner with someone who has a track record with successful project management to help provide advice and guidance on planning through to execution. It would also be helpful to partner with an organization with expertise in data collection to guide us in how we measure success when removing barriers for volunteers.