Class of 2015
Giving back to the community: What I love
Searching for a volunteer opportunity freshman year, I came across an outdated and unappealing website, but one with a great mission: an online search engine that connects teenagers to local service projects. After contacting and meeting with the creator of the website, I was “hired” as the new Volunteens.com president. When I took over the site, the listings of service organizations and opportunities were out-of-date, and the site was getting only 5,000 views on average per month. I made it my goal to turn the website into a functional business: I updated its look, populated it with more charities, and maintain the information regularly.
Coincidentally, at the same time, I was selected to participate in the Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA!), a national business program that provides teenagers with the lessons, mentoring and skills needed to plan, build, run, and fund a business – from insurance, to branding, to writing a business plan, to developing a product. I dedicated my time in YEA! to maximizing the potential for Volunteens and even won a competition that awarded me $750 in seed money. I used this grant to improve the website from the outdated Dreamweaver model to Wordpress, which increased functionality, improved aesthetics, and made the site more user friendly.
Over the past three years, I have spent more than 300 hours improving the website. Today, when a student visits the site, he can scroll through nearly 100 opportunities listed for Broward and Palm Beach counties and access all the information needed to establish contact and begin to volunteer. Additionally, charities email me details about events they are having. In turn, I email a description of the event to Volunteens’ several-hundred subscribers, thus serving as a link between volunteer opportunities and volunteers. I have also increased the unique visitor count by 100%. Volunteens now has an average of 10,000 visitors per month, and in June 2014, Volunteens had 14,500 unique visitors!
Recently, I initiated an effort to expand the reach of Volunteens beyond Palm Beach and Broward counties. Through networking, I recruited students in other parts of the United States as “Volunteens Ambassadors” who compile volunteering opportunities in their local communities for me to program into the website. Ambassadors are already working in Naples, Florida; San Diego, CA; and Columbus, OH.
Volunteens has become more than just a business or hobby to me – it is an opportunity to give back to the community and leave a legacy.
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