Tips For a Successful New Year’s Resolution (Volunteer Work & Beyond)
By: Trish Fontanilla
Tags: Giving, Nonprofit, Boston, Resolutions, Volunteering

I love knowing where all the farms are in the city of Boston, especially when they do incredible work like this one. More: https://www.instagram.com/p/BgxGAH9gR-w/

How I Did It

Finding the right places — I’ve found that when you set a resolution or goal it’s important to have multiple ways you can achieve that goal in case the initial resource falls through. Even if you don’t have to go down a different path, it’s nice to have something in your back pocket and it helps keep you flexible. Thankfully I was already a member of Boston Cares, so finding places to volunteer weekly was pretty easy. Boston Cares has over 250 volunteer projects listed each month, and once folks go through their initial orientation, they can volunteer once a day, once a month, or once a year. Other than BC I found opportunities through referrals / networking (that’s how I found out about All Hands & Hearts) and newsletters for orgs / groups / non-profits I was interested in (found out about my Thanksgiving volunteer opp through a newsletter of an NP I volunteered with 3 years ago). I also made sure to volunteer with causes I was passionate about or interested in because that’s half of the fun.

Timing— Put. Everything. In. Your. Calendar. A food rescue with Rescuing Leftover Cuisine can take as little as 15 minutes door (donor) to door (recipient), but a lunch shift at Boston Living Center can be as long as 5 hours. However the latter becomes almost a full day of work when I factor in the time it takes to get ready and to get there via walking or public transportation. It was really important to see this against my work week, and decide whether or not a shift at BLC made sense if I had a week full of meetings and not enough downtime / regroup time post-meeting. Does your resolution require prep time? Downtime / cooling time, etc? Factor that in so it doesn’t catch you off guard.

Accountability — I know some folks like to keep their resolutions quiet, and that’s totally cool and one way of doing it, but I chose to be loud about mine. It was a conversation starter when people talked to me at networking events, and it was a great reminder to keep signing up for opportunities when people asked me what I’d be doing next. Also tying in with my above motivations, I wanted to make sure people knew the stories of these non-profits / orgs, and if they were able, to donate / volunteer with them as well. It takes a village to keep these places afloat. I also wrote a 6 month checkin post here on Medium, but I also took time to post on Twitter / Instagram / and wrote longer form posts on my Facebook page (more characters!) about the populations I was working with, what the actual volunteer work looked like, and how I felt. If you’re trying to keep yourself accountable without the noise, I’ve found that daily journaling helps (either online via Docs or on paper). Also, keeping a sticky note in a prominent place (desk / wall in the bedroom / even the bathroom) of what you want to do and why it motivates you. And then of course, using your calendar and reminders (I also use Google Keep in conjunction with my calendar for additional notes / reminders).

Consider the impact — Think about ways you can measure your progress. Is it physical or mental? Are there dollars associated, pages written, or numbers of hours you can count? With volunteering, there’s definitely an instant gratification effect. In some cases you get to meet the people you are impacting, and you can just see it in their faces, how much it means to have you there. I also will honestly say, it was a tough year for me personally, and every volunteer opportunity I went into where I wasn’t feeling like myself or not feeling great emotionally, I left with a lighter heart. It was the best medicine for me this year, hands down. But if you want to see those numbers… I go to Google Sheets. Boston Cares actually has an awesome volunteer history download with dates, # of hours volunteered, org volunteered with, etc, but since not all of my volunteer opps were with Boston Cares I adapted that spreadsheet and put those stats into Google Sheets. I also went deeper into the #’s game through research. The national average value of a volunteer hour in 2017 was $24.69. In Massachusetts it was a whopping $31.17. So using the 2017 #’s on my 2018 hours, I invested close to $8,000 in my community (and that’s not even factoring in the hours I spend in my mentorship programs or money that I raised this year). Late last year I also started doing new volunteer orientations for Boston Cares and trained over 160 people during hour long onboarding sessions before they started volunteering with BC partners. I also have some anecdotal numbers as well from friends who told me they started volunteering someplace after they heard about it through my posts, which kicks that number up too. Because I volunteer-hopped and didn’t spend my time at just one place, it was harder to track other #’s, but with Rescuing Leftover Cuisine I saved over 2,000lbs during my solo food rescues. Saving an actual ton of food was such a crazy milestone I set out to raise $2,000 for RLC (which I’m still doing!).

Give yourself some breathing room — And last but certainly not least, if there are days you can’t get to your resolution because of life / work, etc, remember that you’re human and it’s okay to take a moment. The last couple weeks of the year I got pretty sick, so while I had signed up to volunteer the week of Christmas and New Year’s, I had to suck up my competitive nature to finish strong and realize it would be super hazardous for me to go into a space while being sick (especially since the opps involved food).

Pleasant surprise after this year — receiving the Boston Cares 2018 award for Outstanding Volunteer Leadership (pictured here trying to keep a straight face with my mom), as well as a Presidential Volunteer Service Award and a Milestone Award. More: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpW2idLAtkU/

Moving Forward

As someone who is self-employed, I’m going to be totally honest with you, I lost money this year because of this resolution. I volunteered ~250 hours, and that doesn’t include my mentorship work with different programs in the area. So as far as continuing with the # of volunteer hours, the likelihood of me maintaining this kind of rigor is not realistic for me, but I am looking to find a happy medium of what I was doing before the resolution and what I did in 2018. I still plan on staying highly engaged though. Starting up a solo venture can be quite lonely, so volunteering really helped me get out of the house, and seeing some of the same non-profit workers and volunteers every week was wonderful. I also struggle with being overwhelmed with everything that’s happening in the world, and so serving others and with others has been an enormous comfort.

Not all heroes wear capes. Edwin helped me believe in humanity again. More: https://www.instagram.com/p/BhK7KG4Axv3/

Some Fun Stuff

Because we all have favorite moments…

Favorite project: Disaster relief work with All Hands & Hearts in St. Thomas. Going the first week of January 2018 set the tone of perspective and giving back for the whole year.

Toughest project: I most definitely cried during the All Hands project. Seeing the destruction from the hurricanes AND how the community banded together… I’ll just never forget it.

Lifesaver moment: Edwin from Boloco finding me on the street somewhat stranded with a cart full of Rescuing Leftover Cuisine food nd him making sure I got to where I needed to go, most definitely restored my faith in humanity.

Favorite new non-profit I’ve worked with: Rescuing Leftover Cuisine… so many of the rescues are so close to where I live and work.

Favorite person at a non-profit: Sharon from Red Cross Food Pantry — she makes me smile every time I see her, and she is an incredible hugger.

Heart squeezing moment: Tie — being at the bereavement camp, Camp Erin, and just seeing kids have fun and recognize that they’re not alone. And Little Brothers, visiting with the elderly dementia patients and hearing them tell some joyful stories over and over again, while organizing flower arrangements and playing games.

Favorite office: Big Sister Boston— I love the dreams dress they have in their front lobby (a “dress” made out of Little Sister dreams on paper like being president and following their heart) + their amazing coffee table of books by incredible authors (that happen to be women).

Favorite “Boston is so tiny” moment: Being at ReVision Urban Farm and bumping into my former bandmate from Ladies Rock Camp and girls from Kappa Gamma Chi, the Emerson College sorority that I became a (formal) honorary member of my senior year.

Favorite “What, really?!” moment: Going on the tour of United First Parish Church (Prison Book Program is housed within it) during a break, and finding out that it’s the burial site Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams and First Ladies Abigail Adams and Louisa Catherine Adams!

10 years of volunteering / jackets with the Boston Marathon. More: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bhour8rBe00/

Orgs / Programs

These are the orgs I worked with this in 2018! I hope you take a moment to check them out (also wrote more in depth about some of these orgs: here and here and here)! And another plug for Boston Cares, most of my volunteer opportunities I found through their Calendar program.

All Hands & Hearts (Global)

American Red Cross of Eastern Massachusetts Food Pantry (Nationwide / Dorchester)

Big Sister (National / Back Bay)

Boston Cares (Boston, but check out Points of Light affiliates which are National)

Boston Living Center (Back Bay)

Boston Marathon — Boston Athletic Association (Back Bay)

Camp Erin (National)

Community Servings (Jamaica Plain)

Daily Table (Dorchester / Roxbury)

East End House (East Cambridge)

Friday Night Supper Program (Back Bay)

Greater Boston Food Bank (Dorchester)

Hyde Square Task Force (Jamaica Plain)

Little Brothers, Friends of the Elderly (National / Jamaica Plain)

Maverick Landing Community Services (East Boston)

New England Center and Home for Veterans (Downtown Crossing)

Prison Book Program (Quincy)

Rescuing Leftover Cuisine (National)

Resilient Coders (Boston)

ReVision Urban Farming (Dorchester)

Room to Grow (Back Bay)

Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy (Waterfront / North End / Chinatown / Financial District)

Saturday / Sunday’s Bread (Boston / Brookline)

Shawmut Corridor Gardens (Dorchester)

Southwest Corridor Park Conservancy (Back Bay / South End)

St. Mark’s Community Education Program (Dorchester)

St. Anthony’s (Downtown Crossing)

Technovation (Global)

Saw this down the street from the citizenship class I helped with in Dorchester. More: https://www.instagram.com/p/Blyivt6h1GM/

More Ideas

If you have some more ideas on where I should volunteer in 2019, or you’re a non-profit that needs more volunteers, feel free to comment below.

I hope you have a happy, healthy 2019 and take some time to give back!