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Volunteers are the lifeblood of CFS. In year 2007, volunteers contributed 36,000 hours of labor! This is the equivalent of 17 full-time employees; more people than we have on our paid staff!
If we had to pay for this labor, it would have cost over $600,000 ! Not to mention that it would be impossible to find temporary help that would be available for such odd hours and that would be willing to do such hard work. It is a god-send that these wonderful people donate so much of their precious time to help others. We literally couldn't do it without them!
The benefits of helping are enormous. As a volunteer you are giving back to the community, working with terrific people, and feeling great about being part of the solution.
The current volunteer opportunities are:
1. Sort daily donations of produce, bakery, dairy, canned goods or frozen meals.
- We consistently need volunteers to sort daily donations of food in to food guide pyramid food groups, restock our shopper shelves, prepare bags of food for clients, repack bulk donations or help clean-up. Come for two hours or stay for three and ½ hours. Any weekday morning (8:30 - 12:00) or afternoon (1:00- 4:00).
2. Tuesday evening crew.
We gather each Tuesday evening from 3:30 - 6:30 p.m. to do a variety of projects, both in the warehouse and in the office. It's a drop-in thing, but you might call for directions and any current updates on activities we will be achieving.
3 . Drivers Assistant M-F, 7:00am – 12:30pm
Assist one of our paid truck drivers or another volunteer truck driver as they pick up food donations or deliver food orders to agencies. You need to be able to lift 30 – 40 pounds off and on during the 4 to 5 hour period from 7:00 AM to 12:30PM. We need MUSCLE!
4. Warehouse crew leader ½ day a week
Learn our routine warehouse jobs and then supervise other volunteers. There are quite a few daily and weekly jobs that are easy to perform. Our staff will take you through those procedures. Then you'll help a small group of 1 – 3 other volunteers to accomplish that day's jobs. The variety of routine jobs includes re-stocking donations, checking dates on food items, organizing and sorting donations and cleaning.
5. Drivers (using your vehicle or our vans or trucks to pick up and/or deliver food)
A variety of drivers are needed. Anything from using your own vehicle, consistently deliver groceries to a route of elderly homebound, or driving our very large truck to pick up or deliver pallets of food from/to Denver or Greeley . Driver training and a clean driving record are required when driving our trucks
6. “Customer Service”/Check-out “cashier” in the warehouse to help shoppers,
Monday-Wednesday, ½ day a week .
Assist our agency shoppers so they can quickly find the food products they need. You'll become familiar with the staff of many of the human service agencies and their food needs, and have the satisfaction of matching them with our available inventory. This position also includes working with our computer inventory program that provides each shopper with a receipt. We need people who are available during weekdays to commit to ½ day a on either Mon., Tues. or Wed.
Thursday – Saturday, 9 am – 2pm (either 9 –11:30am or 11:30am – 2pm)
Assist individual family members as they shop by restocking and organizing food. Monitor shopping floor so that posted limitations on items are met. Speaking Spanish is a plus!
7. Elder Share Deliveries.
Community Food Share supplies supplementary groceries to over 900 elderly people in Boulder and Broomfield Counties , using 10 local sites through the Elder Share Program. We need help delivering the food to either homebound persons or to a local distribution site. We are specifically looking for people who can make a six-month commitment to be available two times a month (either the 2nd & 4th or the 1st and 3rd days of the week). If you are interested in being an Elder Share volunteer, please call Sue at the numbers below. (Immediate need for volunteers on the 1 st and 3 rd Thursday about 11am in Lafayette and 2 nd and 4 th Fridays at 12noon in Boulder !!)
Follow this link to frequently asked questions about volunteering.
Elizabeth McCall, accepting The Longmont Rotary Club's Tower of Compassion Award for "Love, Empathy, Understanding, Gratitude for all things, and Giving Selflessly of oneself for the happiness of all beings."
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Bruce Jackson
WOW, for the past 14 months, Bruce Jackson has averaged volunteering 11 hours a week with us. Pretty obvious that he's a major player here at Community Food Share! Bruce first came to us a little over a year ago because of his association with one of our Member Agencies that receives food from us, Calvary Evangelical Free Church in Broomfield . He was also on a Medical Retirement and, as he says: “had sat at home and seen every TV show there ever was.” He's helped us with a variety of jobs, but because of lifting restrictions, the perfect match has been re-packing beans and rice. He converts purchased,50 pound bags into usable 2 pound bags for our customers. Because of volunteers like Bruce, re-packing for us, we are able to save about $1,000 a month over the cost of purchasing rice and beans in individual small bags. Thanks Bruce for your dedication and time commitment to us!
Vicki Rodgers
Vicki has been helping us with our Feeding Families program every Thursday morning for over a year. She's seen her duties grow from “looking for things to do” to “ we need more volunteers here, NOW!” Vicki first saw something about CFS needing volunteers in the newspaper and responded. She was between jobs and had just moved back to Boulder from Indiana . She has also helped with our Elder Share program in Longmont , preparing bags of food for about 450 people every other Wednesday, and as a substitute driver to deliver groceries to homebound Elder Share members. This week, she has family from out-of-town visiting and “invited” them all to help her at the Elder Share site! Talk about dedication!! Thank you Vicki for all your hard work!
Wayne and Dorothy Darras
Wayne and Dorothy Darras have been volunteering at the Longmont Elder Share site for 3 years, assisting Elder Share Members who are able to come to the YMCA site and pick up their own food. Wayne and Dorothy are masters at efficiency and make it possible for 150 to 180 individuals to file through and receive a bag of produce and a bag of non-perishables in about one hour. They help unload the food and organize all other volunteers so that food is unpacked and ready for members to pick-up. Dorothy even finds time to do all the paperwork to check participants in and out! It all makes sense when you know that Dorothy is a retired customer service manager and Wayne is retired from IBM and the military! Thanks, Wayne and Dorothy! |
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