How to Engage Your Community to Support Your Dollars for Scholars Program

People have always been attracted to giving back and getting involved in their local community or supporting a cause that's near to them.  With the hours in a day stretched to the max for most people, volunteerism becomes a harder thing to foster, especially in much smaller communities where oftentimes the same few individuals are involved in the same activities. So how does your organization gather more support for your cause? Below are a few tips to help create more excitement for your cause and encourage participation from people right in your own community.

• Creating Excitement For Your Mission - Education is a popular cause, but it's always on people's radars these days and usually in a negative way - schools are closing because of budget cuts, teachers don't get paid enough to do all the work that's required of them, students are scoring poorly on mandatory tests.  Dollars for Scholars has a 46 year history of creating positive stories from ordinary people doing extraordinary things for students they may never even get the chance to meet.  How you sell your cause to people has a direct influence on whether they decide to make time to become involved in your organization.  Invite them to an event you have, preferably a non-fundraising one, that demonstrates what you do that's unique to your organization.  People, especially those with very little time, like to be quickly engaged in results.  How can you show that your Dollars for Scholars program has made a difference?  Do you have stories of past scholarship recipients who are now successful and giving back to the community?


• Make Volunteering Easy - More people would volunteer if they were given a specific duty to perform or a one-time task they knew they could look forward to helping you with each year.  Some volunteers like projects with a completion date (bulk mailing, creating centerpieces for a dinner event).  Other volunteers really enjoy rolling up their sleeves and getting in where all the action is (coordinating your annual fundraiser, managing your scholarship selection process).  It's your job to court the right individuals for the job.  But don't just think about people who always volunteer for these types of opportunities.  Open yourselves up to the community at large, other organizations (church groups, service clubs, senior centers, high school or college student groups).  If you're constantly getting the same people to volunteer, find new ways to approach the community and connect with groups you may not have considered recruiting volunteers from.  Make a list of all the places you and your fellow member frequent and find out if there's opportunity there to educate people to your cause.



• Cover Your Bases - A successful Dollars for Scholars organization has enough board members and seasonal volunteers to cover all aspects of the goals they set out to accomplish each year.  If all you're ever doing is fundraising, make sure you have a strong fundraising chair and committee to make it happen.  If your chapter has an endowment and is more concerned about streamlining your scholarship selection process, make sure you've got your detail people.  A person should never be elected to a position that they're not qualified for or feel uncomfortable taking on.  This spells disaster for your chapter and for the students who ultimately are the ones to suffer from any lack of interest or inability of this person to carry out their responsibility.  Longevity of members is a good thing, but introducing new players every 6 months or so is essential to keep your chapter active and constantly in the forefront of the community.  No successful chapter ever got to the top of the "community care list" by sitting back and letting things happen to it.  Any strong chapter will tell you, there's constant friendship building and an active presence in their community to demonstrate what valuable contributions they are making on behalf of students each year.



• Constantly Recruit - Most people would assume that the number one reason why scholarship foundations cease to exist is because they just ran out of money.  Not true.  Most scholarship foundations fail because they've never put the effort into bringing new members to their organization.  Think about a job you've ever had, one where you left by your own decision.  What were dome of the reasons you left?  No longer felt connected or believed in what you were doing.  Didn't feel appreciated for what you contributed.  Got to be more than you could physically and emotionally handle.  Volunteers experience the same thing.  How you treat the ones you already have and what you do to engage new ones is going to either create your legacy or seal your fate.  A scholarship foundation should be created with the future in mind.  Your own life may change and no one expects you to serve forever.  What can you do and encourage others to do to see that the foundation you set up stays around for a good long time?  It's easy to say yes to an opportunity to serve, but don't lose sight of the long haul even if you don't have intentions of staying around to see it.



• Appreciation -  Most volunteers are very modest when it comes to receiving recognition.  They say they belong and do what they do because it's a worthwhile cause or because it's one way they can contribute their time or talents to an organization that needs the help.  But just because they don't make a fuss, doesn't mean you should forget to.  All volunteers, no matter how small a role they play, are an integral part to making your organization exist each year.  A thank you card, a gift certificate for a cup of coffee, an end of the year barbeque are very simple ways to say thank you.  Make the time in your annual activity calendar to do something so that your volunteers keep coming back and giving of themselves, so that they too spread some of that appreciation back to others who might later take their places when it's time for them to move on.

Sometimes you'll only see your members a few times a year, so make each opportunity a fun one and don't lose sight of your greater mission, which is to encourage more students to go on to college and hopefully come back and be contributors to your community.  Let you chapter and its members be the example these students remember and strive to emulate in the future.