Why connect with your community beyond SFSP participants?
Beyond reaching those who may participate in your program, it's important to build program awareness among your entire community.
Organizations can often offer:
Organizations can often offer:
- Extra promotion via word-of-mouth or sharing info with partners
- Volunteers
- Activities and presentations
- Donations in the forms of materials, monetary amounts, equipment or other
Presentations
Presentations in your local communities are most often going to be casual and informational, especially if your program is new. When preparing a presentation, include details such as:
Always end with a call to action, whether you need volunteers, materials or would just like to see more families at your site!
Here's a list of some organizations that you could reach out to:
- What the program does
- Who it serves
- Children, families, the entire community...
- How your organization became involved
- Highlights from the past and future summers
- Are you hosting any special events? Did you have increased participation last summer?
Always end with a call to action, whether you need volunteers, materials or would just like to see more families at your site!
Here's a list of some organizations that you could reach out to:
- Rotary club
- Lyons club
- County or city foundations
- Parent groups
- Student organizations
- Student Council
- FFA
- National Honor Society
- Teachers
- Business associations and the Chamber of Commerce
- City Council meetings
- Churches and ministerial alliances
- Sororities and Fraternities
- Libraries
- K-State Research and Extension
Recruiting volunteers
Before you begin recruiting volunteers, determine how many volunteers you'll need, what days and times you'll need them and what they'll be doing. Strong organization will ensure that you do not have too little or too many volunteers. It will also ensure that the volunteers feel like their service and time has an impact on the program, providing them with a rewarding experience.
You can search for volunteers in many ways, but reaching out to organizations (like those listed above) and schools to see if anyone is looking for opportunities is a great place to start.
You can also create an account on Volunteer Kansas to list volunteer needs you have!
The California Capital Region United Way put together a fantastic guide:
How to Recruit, Train and Manage Volunteers to Support the Summer Food Service Program
You can search for volunteers in many ways, but reaching out to organizations (like those listed above) and schools to see if anyone is looking for opportunities is a great place to start.
You can also create an account on Volunteer Kansas to list volunteer needs you have!
The California Capital Region United Way put together a fantastic guide:
How to Recruit, Train and Manage Volunteers to Support the Summer Food Service Program
