St. Anthony Foundation’s Volunteer Program was featured in this month’s Nonprofit Times. Read a short except below or click here to download a .pdf scan of the article.

“Nonprofits should also think about developing an orientation program to connect with volunteers. Angelina Cahalan, volunteer manager for St. Anthony’s, explained the orientation allows for a piece of education for volunteers, including St. Anthony’s history, how the organization does its work and the community it serves. “We want them to understand the deeper realities for the people who live in this community. What is going to be like working with these folks? We invite them to be a part of the mission. What we do is really important to us and, more importantly, how we do everything we do with dignity and respect,” said Cahalan.

“Life’s most persistent questions is: What are you doing for others?” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Craigslist Foundation Deputy Director Susan Nesbitt will be volunteering at St. Anthony Dining Room on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. She shared here excitement on here upcoming visit today on the Craigslist Foundation Blog. Here’s an excerpt:

Service is a very important aspect to our mission here at Craigslist Foundation. Everyday, we work to connect people and organizations to the resources they need to strengthen communities and neighborhoods.

On January, 18, 2010, I plan to volunteer for the great folks in SF at St. Anthony Foundation.

And There It Went!

Each New Year we make resolutions and renew our commitments. In times of abundance we can make casual resolutions. In times of scarcity however, we look inward and resolve to take better care of those things closest to our hearts.

At St. Anthony’s we are resolving to find new ways to make services more efficient and donations stretch farther. We are streamlining operations and purchasing in bulk.

In your commitment to do more with less there are many ways to kick off the New Year:

• Let St. Anthony’s guests benefit from your spring cleaning or hold a drive and gather clothes for the Free Clothing Program.
• Signing up for a monthly giving plan is an easy way to contribute an amount that doesn’t hurt your budget.
• Volunteering gets you directly involved in the work we do, and you can fiscally support the work and programs that you have taken part in.

You can even make last minute tax-deductible gifts online until 11:59 pm December 31st.

Let’s work together and make this new year a happier one for all San Franciscans.

I received this the other day from one of our Thanksgiving volunteers:

“As a single U.C. retiree, without family, in planning how I would spend my Thanksgiving today, I had three options:

(1) I could hole up in my apartment, watch television all day, eating left-overs, and feeling very, very sorry for myself; or,

(2) I could have a 7-course dinner at inflated prices in some hotel
dining room, turned off by such an over- abundance of food with so much hunger in the Bay Area; or,

(3) I could take Bart over to San Francisco and head for St. Anthony’s Dining Room, helping serve hundreds of homeless, jobless people, who are so thankful for this generous holiday dinner served in a warm, caring and happy atmosphere, where they’re made to feel like a welcome guest.

I’ve been a volunteer at St. Anthony’s Dining Room for several years and feel richly rewarded for my slight contribution to their wonderful program.”

We give thanks for our amazing volunteers!

Volunteers in St. Anthony Dining Room play three major roles: working on the serving line, serving trays to guests and bussing tables. Most people’s favorite tasks are the first giving people food which is much more “glamorous” than cleaning up finished trays and sponging down tables. I on the other hand prefer to bus. It is a little more slow paced and allows this extrovert to chat and visit with the guests. Every once in a while we are short on volunteers and some of us staff get to get away from our desks and spend some time helping in the Dining Room. It’s always fun and many of our guests get a kick out of seeing us out of our usual role and in aprons and hair nets and have fun teasing us.

Last week I had an opportunity to serve in the Dining Room and as usual I jumped into my role as a busser. Volunteers who bus know that quite often guests at the table may ask for the uneaten bread or dessert or fruit on the tray before it is taken away. Over the years I’ve gotten into the habit of offering items to people before I put it into my collection bucket. The usual responses are “No thank you” or “I’ll take it!”. Last week I had a new response when I offered. The woman across from me looked me straight in the eye and said, “Don’t offer us garbage!” I told her that I only offer because so often people ask. She gave me her explanation, “If people ask then give it to them. But that is someone else’s leftovers, so don’t offer us garbage.” I apologized for offending her and returned to my work trying to hide my feelings of sadness and conflict.

This really made me step back and think. When we orient the volunteer groups we put a huge emphasis on dignity and respect. What does this mean, why is it so important at St. Anthony’s and why it is so important for them to act in this manner as volunteers. I felt I was being so kind and respectful in offering people more food and helping ensure that food didn’t get wasted. My offer to this woman was the complete opposite of respectful for her and she had an excellent and valid point. She made me think not just from the perspective of what is dignity and respect from a volunteer/staff perspective, but truly what does that mean from our guest’s perspective.

I’m still grappling over whether I will still offer people the extra food next time I am bussing. In my experience most people have appreciated it; but how many feel the same as this woman and don’t speak up? I am proud of this woman for speaking up for herself and thankful to her for pushing me out of my comfort zone and challenging me to think deeper about these issues that I talk to volunteers about every day.

It was Week of Caring, and Wells Fargo Trade Services was working the Clothing Program. They sorted and hung donated clothes, enough to keep the Clothing Program’s doors open the next day.

The Clothing Program can be quiet work, most of it in the room behind the store. It’s an opportunity to talk to staff and ask questions, a good gig for chatting with co-workers while getting something done. But in spite of the quiet, it’s crucial. We’ve had days with no group help and it meant closing our doors early.

The same day, Chevron Energy Solutions staffed the Dining Room. The environment at St. Anthony Dining Room is almost the opposite of the Clothing Program: fast, furious, and noisy.  The Chevron Energey Solutions group spends their days stretching energy efficiency, and it showed. They served meals and bussed trays and kept up with our demanding rate of 12 trays per minute.

“It was a great opportunity to work with an organization that has such a positive impact and influence within our SF community,” they told us. “All our volunteers had a wonderful time and said they would go back for future events.”

That’s good, because we intend to invite them back. There are several essential tasks that must be done before the holidays hit, and a whole menu of Holiday Projects that make it possible for us to celebrate with our guests.

Corporate work teams are an important part of our clever plot to win the hearts and minds of the entire city. They talk about their experience to the co-workers who couldn’t come. They come back with other teams: colleagues, church groups, families, friends. They come back on their own. They invite us to their workplace giving events and give us chance to tell yet more people why people get poor and what St. Anthony’s is doing about it. They organize co-workers to collect socks and toiletries and all those things we always run out of and always need.

We need the help. We want the friends.

If you want to organize a volunteer team at your company for a holiday project, call me at 415-592-2737 or email atrowbridge@stanthonysf.org.

“Heaven?” No. “Happenin’?” No; try again. “Heart?” Not quite; I’ll tell you—It’s the HOLIDAYS! Yes, that Season of the year from November unto the 1st day of January that is known by many as the “Holidays” is about to occur once again. The etymology of the word goes back to the 14th c. in Europe and comes from the joining of “Holy” and “Day”. What does that realm of meaning look like in the last quarter of 2009, here in San Francisco’s Tenderloin? As many of our regular volunteers know, it is a time of year when the divide between “the haves” and “the have nots” is often felt even more sharply among many of our guests and clients; or when the distance between memories of better times and nowadays can feel even greater. It’s also a time when volunteers can and do make that divide and distance a little easier to bridge, by their encouraging presence.

The Holiday Volunteer Line (415-592-2829) at St. Anthony’s begins taking calls on October 15th from individuals wishing to serve during the Season. The “marquee” days–Thanksgiving and Christmas– are swiftly booked with the needed volunteer support, but just as for the general population, the Holiday Season for our guests and clients includes the calendar weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and into the 1st week of the New Year. Thank goodness for the generosity of folks who are available and willing to help out for those days as well, when a kind and upbeat presence is at least as needed as on the “Holy-days” themselves.

I think that many of us have had the experience that any day of the year can be a holiday in the inner sense of the word. I had that experience just yesterday, when the storm soaked line of guests was pouring into the Dining Room. As I delivered a tray of steaming Hoison Chicken to one of our waiting guests, she said “Oh give it to him first; I’ve already had one tray and he hasn’t eaten yet”. This fellow wasn’t even someone who had come in with her. He had simply taken an open seat at the table. The gentleman and I both looked at her and one at another with wide eyed smiles: “Thank you!” A little bit of Heaven, Happenin’, with Heart: a Holy Day indeed. ‘Tis the Season, day in and day out. May all the Holiday Season, and the entire calendar year, be filled with days such as these!

Why is it that so many people who come to St. Anthony’s to help end up thanking US? The folks from Interaction Associates worked a shift in the Dining Room toward the end of the month (always the most hectic time), thanked us profusely, and are coming back for more.

In many ways, it’s not a mystery. Most people like St. Anthony Foundation once they get in the door. That’s when they discover that all the talk about community at St. Anthony’s isn’t just talk.

And it helps that IA is in the people business. They train leaders in group process, facilitation, and collaborative cultures. Their workshops help companies build teams, grow leaders, navigate change, and increase corporate responsibility.

Three of their values on a list of 7 are “stakeholder voice,” “social responsibility,” and “human dignity.” This sounds familiar.

Interaction people intended to leave early for a team pot luck instead of the usual lunch with our guests, but when the time came, it was hard to get them out of the Dining Room. We had urged a short reflection session on them, very short, to accommodate their schedule, but they just kept, well, interacting.

They want to come back to make gift bags for Dining Room guests. They’ve already collected 200 pairs of new socks and 100 sets of unopened toiletries. We’re talking together about a possible fundraising event.

The email that explained all this to me ended “Once again, THANK YOU…THANK YOU…THANK YOU and we are very excited about helping out in the future.”

I’m not confused. I understand how it feels down there in the Dining Room. But this is my chance to say, “Thank you, friends, and thanks to Interaction Associates for taking the time.”

A few years back, I saw a greeting card that said “ What the world really needs is a good LISTENING to!” I don’t know who coined this evocative turn of a well know phrase, but I haven’t forgotten its message. During our Volunteer Orientations we typically cite the words attributed to Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel often; use words only when necessary”. The relationship between these quotations is one that I see and treasure daily here at St. Anthony’s. A volunteer, delivering a lunch tray with a smile to a waiting and hungry guest in the Dining Room is a core example of this relationship. Conversely, many of our volunteers say that it is our guests who initiate smiles and kindly jokes…lifting the spirits of the volunteers and the staff!

Looking a little deeper into the notions of “actions speaking” and “attentive listening”, it’s clear that much of the healing that goes on here at St. Anthony’s is rooted in these ways serving one another. Recently, in the reflection period following the Dining Room experience, one of our young volunteers shared that he hadn’t really “connected” with the fellow he sat next to on his break, because the man hadn’t wanted to talk. But we talked about that, about the willingness to simply be present, to sit there and not force conversation on someone, of accepting a person for who they are in that moment, of making room for a person to feel accepted.

On the other hand, words can be healing too! I was serving in the Dining Room one day last week, when I noticed one of our guests wearing a button. I voiced the words “I am loved”; “Yeah!” he grinned. “I found it on the street and I put it on right away!” His smile & joy were wonderfully contagious, and I caught a good case of it from him.

With the sad news of Senator Ted Kennedy’s death, and the extensive media coverage of his legacy, I’m struck by how much of his dedication to service, of a family commitment to “giving back” is very, very resonant with the ways of the St. Anthony Foundation family. I got a call recently from one of the Seniors who eats regularly in the Dining Room. “Can I volunteer? I want to give something back.” And now, this person is volunteering as well. Does that mean everyone should? No, not at all– there are myriad ways that we can support one another’s well being. Our volunteers are always voicing how they feel so appreciated by guests and by staff. It’s not so much a back & forth as it is a circle of giving and receiving; of actions and of listening. And in these times of so much uncertainty and struggle, thank goodness we can count on the basic generosity of caring for one another. If I ever get discouraged, and I do, all I need to do is to watch and listen to our guests and volunteers for a moment or two, to revive my faith in “our better angels”.

Earlier this month, Silicon Valley’s very own Google came by to volunteer during a day of computer repairs and training at St. Anthony’s Tenderloin Tech Lab.

St. Anthony Foundation has had the privilege of partnering with members of the corporate community for many years. We have worked with a variety of corporate service projects from company wide service days to individual volunteers offering time and professional skills through their company. Corporate volunteers have served meals in our Dining Room, planted gardens in our residential programs, conducted mock interviews in our Employment Program and hosted bingo games at our senior center.

To inquire about your company partnering with St. Anthony Foundation contact the Justice Education/Volunteer Advocacy Manager, Angelina Cahalan, at abcahalan@stanthonysf.org or (415) 592-2727.