Blog

Over the past year, Bread for the City has had the pleasure of working with a team of pro bono human resource consultants in partnership with the Taproot Foundation. The goal of this partnership was to improve our volunteer program. Since our founding, service has been a pillar of our work at Bread for the City. Volunteers assist in all of our core service areas providing both direct and indirect services to help us accomplish our mission.

Several years ago, Bread for the City’s leadership recognized a need for greater support for the volunteer program and re-vamped the program’s staff structure. With this change, the ground was laid for the program to grow and develop, which is why we jumped at the opportunity to partner with the Taproot Foundation. After a competitive grant application and interview process, Bread for the City was awarded a service grant and officially kicked off the project with our pro bono consultant team.

During our year-long collaboration, our pro bono team holistically assessed our volunteer program by meeting with volunteers and key staff, developed short- and long-term recommendations for improvement, and created action plans to implement changes in two focus areas: orientation/training and volunteer role development.

Resulting from this good work, Bread for the City will be introducing a new volunteer orientation and training process, which will help our volunteers start their service with a more thorough understanding of our philosophy, including our racial equity work, and the issues we address. We will also be creating several new volunteer positions to build capacity within the volunteer program itself. These changes will help to enhance the quality of our program to better serve our volunteers, staff, and clients.

We are extremely grateful for the time, energy, and ideas contributed by our pro bono Taproot consultants and are looking forward to continuing to improve our volunteer program in the long term.