A SIGNATURE POINTS OF LIGHT DAY OF SERVICE

PROJECT MANAGERS’

RESOURCE GUIDE

FORFOR

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Family Volunteer Day, a Points of Light signature day of service, demonstrates and celebrates the power of families who volunteer together, supporting their neighborhoods, communities and the world. For 22 years, Family Volunteer Day has been held on the Saturday before Thanksgiving to “kick-off” the holiday season with giving and service. This year Family Volunteer Day takes place on Nov. 17 and is being powered by generationOn and sponsored by Disney Friends For Change, a global initiative that inspires kids and families to take action to help people, communities and the planet.

generationOn, a Points of Light enterprise, is pleased to offer this adaptable toolkit, full of helpful ideas and marketing strategies to actively support your involvement in Family Volunteer Day. Within this toolkit, you’ll find project management resources specific to family and youth volunteering as well as marketing and media resources to promote your Family Volunteer Day projects.

This is the perfect opportunity for your organization to advance your work and lead family volunteering in your community.

Table of Contents

About Family Volunteer Day

•About Family Volunteering• Service Learning•Project Development, Ideas and Tips

Marketing and Media Resources

• Executive Overview• Sample Media Alert•PR Tips• Social Media Tips and Sample Messages• Logo Usage and Brand Assets

About Family Volunteer Day

About generationOn

generationOn is the global youth service movement igniting the power of all kids to make their mark on the world. As Points of Light’s youth division, generationOn inspires, equips and mobilizes youth to take action through generationOn service clubs, schools, youth organizations, campaigns and youth leadership initiatives. It also provides tools and resources to youth, families and educators to help kids change the world and themselves through service. To learn more about how to get involved, visit www.generationon.org.

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Family Volunteer Day is a day of service that demonstrates and celebrates the power of families who volunteer together, supporting their neighborhoods, communities and the world.

Points of Light created the day 22 years ago to showcase the benefits of family volunteering and provide opportunities for families to help communities create supportive environments for their children and each other.

Family volunteering encourages the members of a family to volunteer as a unit. It can be done by the whole family together, by one parent and one child or teen, or with extended family such as grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. It can be as simple as creating cards for children in the hospital or as complex as bonding hundreds of families together in a day of service at a community park. However families choose to do it, families engaged in service can help mobilize thousands of new volunteers and instill in the next generation a lifelong commitment to volunteering.

The Importance of Family ServiceResearch suggests that engaging parents and their children in service together has important positive outcomes for everyone involved. It benefits:• Children and youth by cultivating positive values, such as caring and empathy, and by

developing a commitment to service both now and in the future.• Parents by giving them more quality time with their children and all the other benefits of

volunteering including increased interpersonal skills and improved health.• Families by increasing their sense of cohesion, well-being, and connections to the broader

community.• Sponsoring organizations and civic life by attracting more volunteers, increasing volunteer

commitments, and bringing new energy to traditional volunteer opportunities.

Challenges to Family Volunteering Along with the benefits of family volunteering, organizations can encounter a variety of real and perceived difficulties when looking to engage families in service and service-learning:• Families are busy.• Parents, especially low-income parents, do not know about available opportunities for

family service.• Programming is age-segregated and families often have difficulty finding appropriate

opportunities.• Tweens and teens may not want to volunteer with their parents.• Organizations are just expanding into family-friendly opportunities and have a lack of

experience in engaging families in service and service-learning.

This toolkit will help organizations address several of these issues by providing project ideas, step-by-step instructions and tools to supplement service learning and reflection.

About Family Volunteering

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Service Learning

Family volunteering can provide valuable learning experiences for kids and their parents. While these experiences are very different from sitting in a classroom, they are still learning—service-learning.

The core principles of effective service-learning have potential to enrich family service through more intentional family engagement in planning and reflecting on their service experience. In addition, it provides a structured focus on learning and development goals that increase the likelihood that the service engagement will have a lasting impact on both those providing service and those being served.

Service-learning offers powerful lifelong benefits. Participants learn responsibility, leadership, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Using Service and Service-Learning to Strengthen Family Engagement Organizations have found that engaging families in service can increase current and future youth participation. Service-learning can be adapted and applied to strengthen how organizations engage families in service. Here are some starting points:• Inspire families about the benefits of service and civic engagement. When families

understand the power of family service and that family service can enhance family life, they become inspired to spend time serving others.

• Build interest through short-term, “in-house” projects.• Consider projects that families can do off-site to assist you.• Start by making existing service opportunities more family friendly. Offer flexible and

short-term assignments to fit families’ schedules.• Engage interested families in planning the program and determining priorities.• Set goals for service and learning.• Establish partnerships with local organizations to provide ongoing service-learning

opportunities.• Take time to prepare with families for both service and learning as well as the follow-up

reflection, celebration and demonstration of learning and impact.• Make time for reflection. The reflection component encourages conversation among

family members about values, family dynamics and other learning goals.• Demonstrate and celebrate learning and impact. Create a forum for families to be rec-

ognized for their efforts and talk with one another about what they have accomplished.

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Service Learning(cont’d)

Introducing Service-Learning in your Project

Educational resources help participants understand the issues that they are working to ad-dress, and they help to develop compassion for those being served. You can find the follow-ing tools and resources in the Family Volunteering tab on the Parent section of the generationOn website at www.generationOn.org.• Project ideas by issue area• Fact Sheets for Kids• Compassion Education stories• Book Talk

generationOn recommends using Fact Sheets for Kids, Compassion Education stories, Book Talk, and reflection to make family service projects into well-rounded learning experiences.

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Project Development, Ideas and Tips

Family Volunteer Day Project Development

Project ideas can come from many places: HandsOn Action Centers, local agencies, business-es, faith-based organizations, neighborhood associations or from previous Family Volunteer Day projects. As you engage your partners in identifying your project, consider the following:

• Does the project serve a real need in the community? • Can we accomplish this volunteer project in one day? If not, how many days are needed? • Will the project be meaningful to volunteers?• Does the activity support participation by a variety of age groups?• Does the activity have strong media appeal with visual opportunities? • Will inclement weather impact your project, or can it be brought inside?

Examples of Family Friendly Project Ideas

The following are real examples of Family Volunteer Day projects.

• Boston Cares is focusing on the idea of “for kids, by kids.” Youth and family volunteers will be crafting teddy bears from yarn and writing letters and stories about the teddy bears to other kids in need. The teddy bears will be packed, along with the letters and stories, in decorated boxes and sent to shelters around greater Boston, where they can be distrib-uted to homeless children as a comfort item.

• In Cleveland, at HandsOn Northeast Ohio, kids aged four to ten (and their families) will complete hands-on projects that will be donated to local nonprofit agencies. Projects include crib blankets for moms and children at Nubian Link, picture frames for seniors at Eliza Bryant, Cocoa Cards benefitting All Faiths Pantry and Holiday Mail for Heroes.

• New York City Parks is gathering families with kids as young as four years old to work to-gether to help preserve and beautify Central Park.

• Metro Volunteers in Denver is holding an event that will feature four to six on-site projects for families to complete together as well as 10-15 information booths staffed by nonprofits in their community that accept family volunteers on a year-round basis.

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Other Project Ideas

Opening Your Heart and Home Organize a fundraiser (e.g., run, walk, etc.) to send a child to summer camp .• Drive homebound residents to doctors’ appointments, the grocery store or to visit friends. • Help build a home or shelter in your community.• Build walking-path bridges, BBQ pits, picnic tables or trails at local parks.• Be a surrogate family for developmentally disabled adults and include them in your family

activities.• Become a foster family and take care of a child in your community who needs help.• Coordinate a food drive for people in your community.• Design a fundraising event to host a child/young adult for a portion of the summer. • Organize a community “closet cleaning” day and donate old clothes, furniture and other

items to a homeless shelter or other organization. • Help newly arrived immigrant families celebrate their Thanksgiving by collecting food,

kitchen supplies, toiletries, clothing, school supplies and toys.

Helping Hands Sprucing Up the Community• Partner with another family to repair or paint the home of an elderly couple or a family in

need.• Organize a community “closet cleaning” day/week and donate the items to a homeless

shelter or other organization. • Plant and tend a garden for your neighbors. • Spruce up baseball diamonds by painting the dugout and fence and pulling weeds.

Seniors• Visit a nursing home.• Maintain yards or shovel the walks of older adults.• Take a homebound elderly friend to lunch or dinner.• Create an intergenerational wisdom quilt (ask adults or seniors for quotes or advice to

youth, write them on pieces of paper and tape to the wall).

Working with Animals• Walk dogs at the animal shelter.• Conduct a puppy wash at the local animal shelter.• Volunteer at a zoo working with the animals.• Care for the pet of a sick person.

Project Development Ideas and Tips(cont’d)

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Project Development, Ideas and Tips(cont’d)

Other Project Ideas

Literacy/Reading • Write or read letters to visually impaired individuals.• Create a family story hour and read to children in your neighborhood or to residents of a

senior home.• Volunteer with a local literacy group to teach people to read.• Set up in a local mall or shopping center and invite families to make cards or write letters

to military personnel or hospital patients.

Music/ Entertainment/ Crafts• Perform a puppet show at a local library or senior citizen home.• Organize a musical instrument drive and give donations to a local school or community

center, or offer free music lessons.• Ask a hospice what entertainment they would like to receive and work with a family to

organize the event.• Teach craft projects at a local homeless shelter or adult daycare.• Make placemats, bake cookies and serve tea at a senior citizen’s home or for a homebound

neighbor.• Organize a bingo party or other theme party such as a Hawaiian luau at a senior citizen

home.

Environment • In towns where no collections are in place, collect recyclable materials (e.g., paper, cans,

glass, plastics and batteries) and bring them to a nearby recycling center or start a recy-cling program in your own community.

• Participate in a brush-clearing hiking trip to help keep national and state park trails in good condition.

• Organize a community garden to beautify an unused plot of land.

For more project ideas, please visit www.generationOn.org, where you will find resources for families who want to volunteer together and organizations that are looking for resources for family volunteering.

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1. Evaluate your ability to provide safe, appropriate activities for kids.• Ensure risk management procedures are in place all around.• Nonprofit Risk Management Center (nonprofitrisk.org) is a great resource.

2. Match age, interests and energy:• Make sure that you have age-appropriate volunteer activities.• Develop a way to match interests with organizations and issues.• Be realistic about duration: tired, cranky volunteers aren’t impactful volunteers and young

children have a short attention span.• Develop talking points on how to discuss certain social issues based on age of volunteers.• Develop age-appropriate instructions and age-appropriate feedback and reflection (more

for Volunteer Leaders). • Understand: I Do | We Do | You Do

3. Encourage teamwork One of the benefits of family volunteering is that it strengthens family bonds. Your activity should be set up so that family members are assigned different roles and that the parents /guardians/ volunteer leaders/ partners are supportive in setting up the youth for success.

4. Keep activity duration short for children.Depending on their age, children don’t have the attention span to participate in a volunteer project that lasts several hours. It is a good idea to shorten shifts for children and to make sure that there is not a lot of down time.

5. Consider and plan for scheduling problems.Families are very busy and it can be difficult to plan time together. Beginning an activity during a day of service such as Family Volunteer Day or during a holiday period when families have free time is a good way to introduce families to volunteering.

Family Volunteering Tips

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Family Volunteering Tips(cont’d)

6. Try a “pre-flection” activity.Volunteer training is important to the success of a project. It is important for the family members to know what to expect. Volunteers deserve the best training you can give them and families are no exception. With training, family members will know what to expect and how to proceed, leading to a quality and meaningful experience. Use short videos and special books for younger children that teach them about the social issue and the people they are helping.

7. Think outside of the box when considering family volunteer opportunities.Families can work with animals, visit the elderly in nursing homes or senior residences, participate in fun walks, collect food or books for needy families, clear trails, pick up litter, write cards for veterans and troops and more.

8. Make sure to include a reflection activity• A structured time where a volunteer manager and volunteers, together, look back on the

impact made: why, how, who, etc.• This activity is significantly more important for youth volunteers than adults, and must be

age-appropriate and authentic.• Takes many forms: discussions, writing, song, art, photographs.• An ideal role for a volunteer leader: plan and lead reflection.

9. Include Recognition as a component of your family volunteer activity. • Recognition acknowledges a job well done, and in case of volunteerism, it solidifies that

someone’s actions made a difference. • For youth, make it age-appropriate, make it match achievement, make it authentic and use

it as a tool for retention.• Focuses equally on the achievement and/or impact as it does the person.• Give it in a timely manner.• Extensive resources for developing age-appropriate and effective recognition are available

at http://www.generationon.org/sites/default/files/resources/readysetgo_celebrating_vol-unteers_success.pdf

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Marketing and Media Resources

The following marketing resources and Family Volunteer Day brand attributes have been created to help you generate awareness for your Family Volunteer Day projects, as well as to assist you in strategically aligning your efforts and organizations with the nationally recognized brand.

Executive OverviewMedia Outreach Tips, Public Relations Pointers and Conducting InterviewsSample Media AlertSocial Media Tips and Sample MessagesBlog Tips and Sample PostLogo Usage and Brand Assets

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Executive Overview

The following information provides a quick snapshot of Family Volunteer Day 2012. You can use it with your board, executive directors and community partners to help you promote the day and gain buy-in.

OverviewFamily Volunteer Day is a day of service that demonstrates and celebrates the power of families who volunteer together, supporting their neighborhoods, communities and the world.

Points of Light created the day 22 years ago to showcase the benefits of family volunteering and provide opportunities for families to help communities create supportive environments for their children and each other. Family Volunteer Day is held on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and signals the start of National Family Week, sponsored by the Alliance for Children and Families and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Dates for the next four years: Nov. 17, 2012 Nov. 22, 2014 Nov. 23, 2013 Nov. 21, 2015

BoilerplateFamily Volunteer Day, a Points of Light signature day of service, demonstrates and celebrates the power of families who volunteer together, supporting their neighborhoods, communities and the world. For 22 years, Family Volunteer Day has been held on the Saturday before Thanksgiving to “kick-off” the holiday season with giving and service. This year Family Volunteer Day takes place on Nov. 17 and is being powered by generationOn and sponsored by Disney Friends For Change, a global initiative that inspires kids and families to take action to help people, communities and the planet.

Why Family Volunteering Matters Families that volunteer together not only address community social problems, but also strengthen themselves. Volunteering together as a family provides quality time, strengthens family communication and provides opportunities for family members to be role models.

Our Vision for Family Volunteer Day 2012: Refresh … renew … and re-energize …• Families are inspired to get involved, have fun and make a difference• Nonprofit partners are equipped and actively engaged in creating more opportunities for

families to volunteer.• Families, communities and companies join others and take action on Nov. 17, 2012.

Partners• Disney Friends for Change – Presenting Sponsor• generationOn – Program Partner• HandsOn Network affiliates – Activation Partners• Target and Allstate – Market Partners 11

A SIGNATURE POINTS OF LIGHT DAY OF SERVICE

Outlined below are tips for approaching your local media outlets to help you secure coverage for your Family Volunteer Day event. Be sure to have information on hand to provide reporters more context and information about your organization, project and Family Volunteer Day.

Media Outreach Tips

Organizations with marketing managers and/or local PR agencies or consultancies are encouraged to contact local broadcast (TV and radio), print (newspapers, weeklies and magazines) and online outlets (blogs, websites).

Research the relevant outlets and reporters/editors in your market who have covered your organization or similar charities and nonprofits in the past and who might be interested in your Family Volunteer Day programming in order to compile an up-to-date media list. You’ll find that Google News is a great tool for this.

If you think your FVD program would fit nicely in a certain column or correspond to a recent article you read, suggest that to the reporter, showing you have done your homework. If you call the front desk of any outlet, they will be able to provide you with the phone numbers and email addresses of the journalist you’re looking for. You can also ask, “Who covers philanthropy and nonprofit organizations?” and they will direct your call. Ask how you might be included in their coverage. For example, maybe they are open to having an organizational representative on their show to discuss local nonprofits’ impact on communities.

Public Relations Pointers

Take advantage of current news or trends, if appropriate or helpful. You can pitch your activities to a reporter in the context of a larger news trend you are seeing in your local market, you will increase your chances of coverage by making the pitch seem less commercial.

To enhance your relationship with a reporter, you can offer to provide them with access to your organization and the people you serve. This will allow them to cover your work from the perspective of a participant rather than a separate third party.

Media

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Conducting Interviews

Some journalists might be looking for an interview. Designate your representative ahead of time who will speak with the media. If you have interest from a local reporter, make sure to put them in touch with your local representative in a timely fashion (media often are working under tight deadlines).

Ensure your appointed spokesperson has reviewed the key messages and press release and is comfortable delivering this information. If possible, also identify a volunteer or service re-cipient who would be willing to share their story with the media, either the reason why they volunteer on Family Volunteer Day or how the service project will benefit them, their family or their community.

A call to action is crucial, and can be as simple as “people can visit our website for more information about how to get involved.” Try to get a message tailored to your organization in any and all interviews.

Media(cont’d)

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** MEDIA ALERT **

VOLUNTEERS TO [CUSTOMIZE DESCRIPTON: I.E., REVITALIZE SAGAMORE HILLS ELEMENTARY] ON FAMILY VOLUNTEER DAY

What: [Insert description of what the project is, who will be participating, impact on the com-munity]

Example: Approximately 125 volunteers including students, teachers, parents and neighbors will work together to revitalize Sagamore Hills Elementary in Atlanta on Family Volunteer Day. Projects include building a vegetable garden for nutrition education and fresh vegetables for the cafeteria, creation of interactive play spaces for disabled students and improvements to

the school’s library, including new areas for tutoring.

Why: Family Volunteer Day, a Points of Light signature day of service, demonstrates and celebrates the power of families who volunteer together, supporting their neighborhoods, communities and the world. For more than two decades, Family Volunteer Day has been held on the Saturday before Thanksgiving to “kick off” the holiday season with giving and service. This year Family Volunteer Day takes place on Nov. 17 and is being powered by generationOn and sponsored by Disney Friends For Change, a global initiative that inspires kids and families to take action to help people, communities and the planet.

When: [Insert date and time of project]

Where: [Insert place and full address of project site]

Who: Volunteers from the community will be joined by:• [Insertname,title,organizationofanyVIPsattendingevent]

For more information, please visit [Insert website URL].

For information on covering the service project, contact [Insert name, phone number and email address of organization contact].

Sample Media Alert

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Tips and Sample Messages

Social media is an important part of your overall communication plan. It gives your organization the opportunity to develop a unique brand voice and interact with stakeholders, volunteers and others that are interested in your organization.

Here are a few ways you can recognize your projects and share your stories across your socialnetworks in support of Family Volunteer Day. Be sure to add links to your website for more infor-mation. In the messages below, [[bit.ly.shortlink]] is a placeholder. Please replace it with a link to your Family Volunteer Day events.

FacebookVolunteering as a family is a great way to make memories together and helps teach children the importance of giving back. Join us on Nov. 17 for our Family Volunteer Day projects, with proj-ects tailor made for families volunteering together. Find a project today at [[bit.ly/shortlink]]

Volunteering as a family helps children learn values like kindness, respect and friendliness. Come volunteer as a family on Nov. 17 for Family Volunteer Day! You can find a project for the whole family at [[bit.ly/shortlink]]

Looking for something to do as a family? Have you thought about volunteering? Family Volunteer Day is Nov. 17, and we have projects that everyone in the family can participate in! Find a project the whole family will love at [[bit.ly/shortlink]]

TIP: Have you hosted family volunteer projects before? If you have pictures from the event, include them in the post about your Family Volunteer Day events. Posts with pictures are more likely to be seen than plain text posts and posts with video.

Twitter Family Volunteer Day is Nov. 17! Are you looking for a volunteer project for your family? [[bit.ly/shortlink]]

Looking for a fun way to spend quality time as a family? Volunteer together on 11/17 for Family Volunteer Day [[bit.ly/shortlink]]

Are you looking for volunteer opportunities for your family? Family Volunteer Day is 11/17! Find a project at [[bit.ly/shortlink]]

Volunteer with your family on 11/17 for Family Volunteer Day! Find a project for everyone at [[bit.ly/shortlink]]

Social Media

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Write a post about why Family Volunteer Day is important to you and your volunteers. Con-sider having a guest post to your blog and include a profile of the person who authors the post for your readers.•Howdidtheirservicechangethecommunity?•Whoinspiredthemtobeavolunteer?•WhyisFamilyVolunteerDayimportanttoyourorganization?•Whatdoesvolunteeringasafamilymeantoyou?•WhatareyourtipsfororganizingFamilyVolunteerDayprojects?

Send a link to your blog post about Family Volunteer Day in your community to Michael Nealis at mnealis@pointsoflight.org and we’ll link to it from the Points of Light blog. If you’ve never written a blog post before and want a bit of help writing one, send an email to Michael Nealis at mnealis@pointsoflight.org and he’ll help you write a post.

Sample Blog Post

14 Benefits of Family Volunteering1. Volunteering as a family provides a fun way for families to make memories together

while making significant contributions to their communities. 2. It teaches children the values of kindness and giving back, ideas which complement the

holiday season of giving.3. Family members use their talents to work on an issue they feel passionate about. 4. Serving together builds problem solving skills and strengthens communication within the

whole family.5. Volunteering together strengthens the family by promoting positive values, creating new

opportunities to communicate and focusing on the importance of teamwork.6. Volunteering as a family strengthens the community by encouraging people to get

involved, and improving the community’s overall environment—attracting new people, new commitments and new ideas.

7. Family volunteering strengthens nonprofit organizations by increasing community awareness of important social needs and expanding the volunteer base.

8. Volunteering together makes family time valuable to both families and communities.9. Family volunteering can help to improve family communication.10. Volunteering as a family teaches children values like kindness, empathy, respect,

friendliness and tolerance.

Blog Tips and Sample Post

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11. Making family volunteer opportunities available provides opportunities for recruiting new populations, therefore increasing the pool of available volunteers.12. Recruiting families to volunteer acts as a natural multiplier of volunteers. Recruitment of any one family member often acts as a catalyst for enlisting other family members.13. Family volunteering garners media attention. Families involved in group projects are a media magnet.14. Families that volunteer together have a built-in opportunity to reflect on what they did when they volunteered together!

The virtues of family volunteeringFamily volunteering offers numerous advantages to the community through the unique way in which it provides services.1. Family volunteering enables populations whose volunteering has been restrained by

family care-giving obligations (either responsibilities to children or seniors) to become involved. As a “two for one” activity, family volunteering greatly increases the ability of time-depleted working families to engage in service. It is a true “minimum time, maximum benefit” system.

2. Family volunteering acts as a natural multiplier of volunteers, since recruitment of any one family member acts as a catalyst for enlisting other family members.

3. Involving families in projects is highly attractive to communities with relatively low rates of involvement in structure volunteer settings.

4. Family volunteering offers the opportunity for volunteers to take responsibility for identifying and addressing the needs of their community. Empowered family volunteers can directly work to solve their own needs and the needs of those around them.

5. Family volunteering may, in settings where establishing a personal relationship is an integral part of the helping function, provide a plus factor due to the unique nature of families.

Does your nonprofit offer opportunities for families to volunteer together? Do you volunteer with your family? Tell us about it in the comments!

Sample Blog Post(cont’d)

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Points of Light seeks to maintain consistent branding regarding Family Volunteer Day. Your cooperation will translate into more effective, consistent branding and messaging for your own organization, as well as allowing exposure, increased opportunities for partnerships and boosting general public involvement and awareness of Family Volunteer Day.

Provided for you in the attached zipped folder are Photoshop and .jpeg files to promote your Family Volunteer Day activities. Samples of the provided files includes:

Logo

Web Graphics

Logo Usage and Brand Assets

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A SIGNATURE POINTS OF LIGHT DAY OF SERVICE

400 x 400 (generic, scalable )

439 x 212 (for HandsOn Connect users)

200 x 200 (generic, scalable )