Volunteer Programs

The Ball Foundation believes that parental and community involvement positively affect student achievement, and that effective volunteer programs can therefore be an important component of school improvement.

In 1999, the Ball Foundation collaborated with the Points of Light Foundation to examine how volunteering was occuring in six Ball partnership schools and to explore ways to strengthen the effectiveness of these programs. The Points of Light Foundation is a national, non-partisan non-profit that specializes in increasing the effectiveness of volunteer programs.

The broad range of programming in schools requires sophisticated school-based volunteer programs that draw volunteers from all sectors of the community, and necessitates complex volunteer management systems. While diverse volunteer pools bring ranges of talents to local school programs, efficiently utilizing the talents of these volunteers can become a challenge.

The Ball Foundation enlisted the assistance of the Points of Light Foundation to provide consultation and training to their partner schools to enhance the staff's skills in managing effective volunteer programs. Those schools included Wilcox Elementary, Graham Elementary (now Vachel Lindsay), Harvard Park Elementary, and Springfield Ball Charter School in Springfield, Illinois District 186, and Dobson and Hearn Academies in the Phoenix, Arizona area.

The project identified the strengths and weaknesses of each school's existing volunteer program by using self-assessment tools to benchmark the current climate of volunteering in the school and identifying ways to enhance the engagement of volunteers. The schools that participated in the project developed volunteer program action plans based on the findings of the assessment. The action plans included strategies for increasing parental involvement, enhancing the management of volunteers, and acquiring additional resources to support the program.

The Points of Light volunteer management assessments are aligned with the Ball Foundation's School Design Collaborative vision of increasing parental involvement in decision-making and the foundation's overall goal of increasing student achievement. Research shows that a parent's involvement in a child's education stimulates that child's participation and ultimate success in school. Parent involvement can range from assistance with homework to serving as a classroom tutor.

What follows are a few of the tools used in this process which may be helpful to you as you begin your volunteer program improvement process. When these tools were originally developed and used by the six Ball affiliated schools, an independent consultant was engaged to provide training and conduct the interview process for collecting data. While using a consultant is ideal, not all schools have this option; we believe a self-facilitated team can use these tools effectively as well. The tools have three phases of use:

1. Information Gathering
2. Data Analysis
3. Plan Development

For more detailed information and additional tools, please contact the Points of Light Foundation at 202.729.8107 or visit their website at www.pointsoflight.org.

Tools Home

Productivity
Building Effective Teams
Running Effective Meetings
Consensus Decision Making
Data Collection and Analysis
School Design Collaborative
Miscellaneous References