Volunteering is the lifeblood of any nonprofit. And I will say that we are blessed to live in a community where the spirit of volunteerism is alive and well. In fact, just at United Way we have hundreds of active volunteers logging thousands of hours in service to our community. They do everything from tutoring young students to distributing produce, helping around the office to participating in food, feminine hygiene, and school supply drives, and helping to organize and run some of our fundraising activities and community events. We even have a volunteer who helps out with our building maintenance, and others who periodically help with card writing campaigns. And much more! It is not unusual for nonprofits to have this type of activity, and we are very grateful and luck to have these supporters giving their time and energy. Quite frankly, we could not do what we do without them! You might be interested to know that the IRS actually gives an estimated value per hour in the US for volunteers at $29.95/hour. Recently I went through our various projects in 2022 and calculated that we logged in excess of $500,000 worth of volunteering in that one year alone. This represents a significant uplift for our community, and you can just imagine how big those numbers are when you take into account all of the other nonprofits in Greater Nashua.

The challenge, of course, is how does an individual or group find out where the opportunities are to volunteer? And equally vexing is how do individual nonprofits find good, qualified volunteers to help them out? There are many postings on social media and perhaps the word gets spread via email or in the newspaper. A few ways we’ve found to support these efforts include our weekly radio show on WSMN which airs every Monday at 9 am on 1590 AM and 95.3 FM, and also streams on WSMN.live. During this one hour show, each week I interview two different organizations and we always talk about volunteer opportunities, how to get connected, and what difference they are making in the community. The show — which is sponsored by Franklin Savings Bank, Etchstone Properties, Cross Net Inc. IT Services, and Fully Promoted / EmbroidMe of Southern NH – has proven to be a valuable tool for the community and our great organizations for volunteer recruitment. Another way in which we support this effort is through a Facebook page we launched a few years ago called “Greater Nashua Community Connections.” It’s a place purely for nonprofits to post about events and opportunities, and it has attracted over 2,000 followers from Greater Nashua. In addition to our radio show and the Community Connections FB page, we also launched a dedicated web portal called Volunteer Greater Nashua for just the purpose of engaging organizations and volunteers.

VolunteerGreaterNashua.org is the website we host and manage which supports this effort. Sponsored by the Nashua Telegraph and St. Joseph Hospital, here’s how it works. Any nonprofit from our community can go to the site and create a free profile account for themselves. In that profile they will describe the work they do and the types of volunteering they look for. There are currently almost 100 agencies on the site with a profile. When you go to the site and click into one of the agencies you will find a number of items, including the organization’s contact information as well a list of some of their current or recent “needs” or volunteer opportunities. This is very useful, as you can easily see the organizations looking for volunteers as well as the type of work they do. Just one example… the Youth Council, which is a long-standing partner of United Way, has postings for volunteers for their Board of Directors as well as for their Court Diversion Program. If you click on these needs your information will automatically go the Youth Council and you can begin your volunteer journey with them! An important aspect of Volunteer Greater Nashua is that the Telegraph actually has a button right on their home page, which receives many thousands of views each month. By placing the button on their home page, the Telegraph helps to drive many volunteers to the site. Once on the site, a volunteer can create their own profile, including the types of causes they are passionate about, and then automatically receive email notifications when an opportunity comes up which fits their criteria. Truly, how amazing is that? If you say that you are passionate about housing or food insecurity or animal issues, when an organization creates a volunteer need for one of those areas, a notification will come to you to sign right up.

If you’re reading this and you are involved with a local nonprofit looking for volunteers, you can easily go the site and get started. If you have any difficulties, then please reach out to my colleague Sara at Untied Way by emailing us at info@unitedwaynashua.org If you are an individual or group interested in finding volunteer opportunities, then just go to the site and check it out. And, by the way, Sara told me that I needed to mention that we at United Way are always looking for volunteer tutors and volunteers for our food drives, so please let us know if that interests you.

I will end with these few thoughts. As stated, volunteering is the lifeblood of our local nonprofit sector. Beyond that, volunteering has been shown to have positive health outcomes! People who volunteer live happier, healthier, more connected lives. Volunteers live longer! What’s better than that? The feeling of doing something good for your community while doing something good for yourself! In a word, that’s what we mean when we say that GREAT THINGS HAPPEN WHEN WE LIVE UNITED!

Mike Apfelberg is president of United Way of Greater Nashua.

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