Service has taken on a whole new meaning this year. It has been made more challenging because of the pandemic. traditional methods of volunteer gathering have paused and nonprofits volunteer bases have dwindled. Amber reminds us that we can serve using anything and anywhere. As we enter the holiday season, listen to this discussion on how service has pivoted and how you can serve right where you are, with what you have.
Website: https://activategood.org/
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America is having a moral convulsion by David Brooks; the Atlantic
(music plays: "FasterFasterBrighter" by Blue Dot Sessions)
[00:00:00] Kenneth Brown Jr: For a long time, Amber Smith has been activating good.
Amber Smith: My friend and I, we'd been volunteering a lot.After high school and into college, we wanted to make a difference, but we didn't know what that looked like. We didn't know how to necessarily do that. So, we were just volunteering for everything. We built habitats for rescued tigers. We served at the men's shelter. We did anything and everything.
Kenneth Brown Jr: They wanted to see if they should use their energy to inspire others, to get involved in their community and so how far would their impacts spread? So they went on a road trip.
Amber Smith: We saved us money. We went across the country, volunteering in over 20 States, every state that we landed in. We did ask random strangers what they thought sometimes. They said, "Yeah, you know, I've been thinking of getting involved and I'm not quite sure how to get started" would hear that time and time again, people at their core want to get involved, but sometimes figuring out how to get started, what problems to tackle, where to volunteer, what they're interested in, how they can use their unique skills, all these [00:01:00] questions. That's the hard part.
Kenneth Brown Jr: Thus, Activate Good was born. Believing that we all have the power to make a difference. They mobilize volunteers to improve their communities through people-powered projects and things were going okay then the pandemic happened.
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Non-profits like The Green Chair Project, A Place at The Table, and many others rely on volunteers, but gathering limits and social distancing has dramatically dwindled the volunteer base even has the need for services rise. For Activate Good, it's been an opportunity to expand people's definitions of service.
(music rises: "FasterFasterBrighter" by Blue Dot Sessions)
This is Pivots, the podcast about navigating transitions, negotiating change, and re-imagining our world. I'm Kenneth Brown Jr. and recently chatted with Amber Smith, founder and executive director of Activate Good on how they have pivoted, all while [00:02:00] encouraging people to serve in a variety of ways, but with this at its core, doing what you can with what you have, where you are.
I kind of want to start with something that, with a poem that you wrote, or that you tweeted in December of last year, and it in reference to the good hub, which I definitely want to talk about later, but I think you was also taking a peek into the future. and I want to read the part of it that resonated with me and that I want to ask you about. You wrote:
"Until this thing has opened doors
I will not stop. I will not rest
It won't be easy worthwhile things aren't;
Next year will put me to the test
but to see each person in our town
knowing each their power of change
the longest hours and many no's
is not at all a hard exchange.
[00:03:00] There was one thing I know for sure
in these dark uncertain times
we need to come together now
with helping others on our minds."
Hearing these words and looking at where we're at now, what comes to mind?
Amber Smith: Gosh, I'm, I'm actually a little emotional hearing that because I knew I wrote it before everything went down. Obviously, the first thing on my mind is, it feels even more relevant now. And you, you mentioned The Good Hub. The Good Hub for folks listening who don't know that. Literally a couple of weeks before the pandemic came to Raleigh, Activate Good, had launched the pilot test of a physical space. It was meant to be, like an actual building, a physical place where anyone in the area could come in through the doors and learn about local issues and causes and volunteer together and build community around [00:04:00] the idea that we can all make a difference. And we had just set up this pilot test space. We called it "The Good Hub pop-up" opened the doors. February 29th was our kickoff party. Got to stay open 10 days and then had to shut it down, after all of that work. And we couldn't gather, we couldn't be in a space that was about building community more, but what we saw as the months progressed after that was that the need to connect, especially around a common cause, around common goals was even stronger as the pandemic worsened in our area and, and the, the exposure increased in all of that. So, I have a lot of things on my mind about that, but I guess that would be the first thing.
Kenneth Brown Jr: Speaking of that space and kind of gathering and bringing people together. I had a chance to chat [00:05:00] with Maggie Kane, who is the executive director and founder of "A Place at The Table." and just chatting with her about that corner, that space and cultivating community around that and in times of tragedy we want to help out, we want to reach out. And so in the work that you have been doing, how do we serve? How do we, hold these two competing arguments or these two competing things of staying indoors and keeping people safe? Because we don't know fully how COVID spreads, but also understanding that people are hurting and that the need for service has risen and, the urging for people to serve is also rising as well.
Amber Smith: I want to reiterate that the needs right now are greater than we've ever seen before. Activate Good mobilizes volunteers, thousands of volunteers every year to support [00:06:00] work being done by over 500 nonprofits across the Triangle that are seeing so much need. So, the demand for what these nonprofits, our partners, and what Activate Good, is doing is through the roof. But the resources are less, they're fewer. And that includes financial and it includes access to volunteers because of the reasons you stated. A challenge is the assumption that you can't do good from anywhere. There are lots of ways you can help your community. Through remote, volunteering, virtual volunteering at home, using your computer. There's plenty of "do it yourself" service projects we've got on our site, activategood.org, lots of ways to get involved. You can donate from home. You can do phone calls from home. You can write from home. You can talk to people who are lonely from home. You can do so many things. And so I [00:07:00] think one thing that has always made me so passionate about this community is this idea that when there's a problem, we step up and I think that this is the time to embody that principle more than ever before.
Kenneth Brown Jr: That goes into another thought that I have been thinking about in preparing for this interview and lots of pieces, especially recently and in the Walter magazine, you used a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt that says, "do what you can with what you have, where you are." and you have, you mentioned that in a newsletter responding to COVID, you wrote that "Activate Good has always believed and lived by the idea that anybody can do good for others or their community and for the world." And then a few months back, you tweeted "In a world where everything was out of control, focus on what you can do, hope one person than another, and then another." So is this your [00:08:00] definition of service and where does this come from?
Amber Smith: The beautiful thing about service is there is no one definition. To some people it's helping a neighbor to others is activism to others. It's food bank. The purpose is not box service into a specific, strict definition. The purpose is to inspire each individual, to think about what they uniquely can offer the world and to go do it. So I think that's all the quotes you mentioned, I think that's at the heart of them and it's not productive. It's not helpful to box service into a single definition either. We're living in a time and lots of people are suffering economically. They're not necessarily able to donate or to give their time the way everyone else can. And we have to recognize that, and we can't have [00:09:00] expectations of people. to do specific things when they themselves need help, but we can rally around each other at different times. When I can't give and when you can, you can help me too. So that's what community is all about and what I think service is all about.
Kenneth Brown Jr: It sounds like for you, like, no matter regardless service is bigger than the box, as some people may put it in, Has your, has the definition with doing remote opportunities and connecting people with those? Has your definition, has that definition or your definition of service changed over the past few months?
Amber Smith: I don't know that I would say it's changed, but I would say the public perception of it has changed. And I think that that's a good thing and that it's really important because of the restrictions we're facing, going out and also the disintegrating trust between people and their [00:10:00] institutions, you know, having ideas around service that allow you to think of it as helping your neighbor, helping someone else. These are small actions anyone can take that help rebuild that trust and that's what we need right now as a community and as a country.
Kenneth Brown Jr: What has pivoting looked like for Activate Good? What has pivoting look like for you? And what was that moment you realized that "Oh my goodness? This is bigger than what we thought we have to make some moves."
Amber Smith: I would say the day that we had our first case in Wake County. That's when we knew we had to pivot. So we pivoted within a week or two to start, curating and developing virtual opportunities to serve with our community partners, promoting them, getting them out to people, helping educate people on the ability to do that. So we moved pretty quickly and another thing we did was we took a step back and talked to our community partners. It's [00:11:00] really important to understand what, our friends in the nonprofit sector are going through and how we can better serve them. So we did an extensive interview of about forty-five of our community partners in March and April to get the lay of the land, figure out how the community can be better supporting them as, the pandemic started to pick up.
Kenneth Brown Jr: What types of things were you hearing during that time?
Amber Smith: Volunteers make a huge impact. So, for so many of our nonprofits to not be able to set up for volunteers, put a huge, huge barrier in front of their ability to achieve their missions. You know, the food bank slowed down, lines down the street to get food support. Diaper bank had to close, food pantries across the board, had to close, organizations that provide tutoring to students all closed. So, like everything across the board had a domino effect to get, gets hit when, in a situation like this. And, you know, I always like to help people [00:12:00] understand the role of nonprofits and civic institutions in their lives. If you've ever been to an art museum or, been to a well-maintained park or, you know, gotten tutoring support, or support for single parents, you know, nonprofit has touched your life in some way so it's important for people to be able to turn around and support these institutions that are keeping things going, helping our most vulnerable neighbors in a time like this and the inability to get volunteers and the cancellation of so many fundraising events and, people having to cancel donations because they were laid off. There is an economic, there's a human capital and a financial capital ripple effect across the whole local nonprofit sector and it's honestly worsened because the wave of support that we got in the sector immediately following [00:13:00] everyone sense of urgency around that has now started to taper off and more and more people are, are unemployed. So, more support needed now across, across the nonprofits, you care about.
(music plays: "Longtime Rye" by Blue Dot Sessions)
Kenneth Brown Jr: What have you been learning and what do you hope sticks around long after this pandemic is over?
Amber Smith: Yeah, so you know, our mutual friend, Damon sent us an article this morning, that I spent quite a bit of time reading because it was just fascinating from the Atlantic about how, you know, we're, we're at a crossroads as a country, civic and social trust is at an all-time low. I mean, this isn't necessarily a surprise, but the article really articulated how we got here. But when I'm most excited about is it [00:14:00] talked about how we can get out of it. And it was also very validating because we've known and we see research all the time, in Activate Good and, in volunteer mobilization organizations across the country about how civic and social trust is genuinely built through connecting while supporting a cause, you know. Coming together and volunteering- that's where you have conversations. You meet others who have similar passions. You learn things you have in common with other people, even other people who are different from you in other ways. That's how you build civic trust person to person. and actually, I would love to read a quote from that article if you don't mind. The article challenges, think about what we can do, and here's, here's how it concludes spoiler alert, reading this article: "Trust can be rebuilt through the accumulation of small heroic acts by the outrageous gesture of extending [00:15:00] vulnerability in a world. That is mean by proffering faith in other people when that faith may not be returned. Sometimes trust blooms when somebody holds you against all logic, when you expect it to be dropped it ripples across society as multiplying moments of beauty and a storm." And I think that's a super eloquent way of saying help each other. That's what's going to rebuild civic and social trust. What one person to one person that blossoms out to organizations which evolve into communities and then to cities and then to States, and then to a nation.
Kenneth Brown Jr: What small heroic acts have you seen more recently?
Amber Smith: I've seen. People, you know, despite barriers to involvement, sign up and go out and help people. I've seen reaching out, offering groceries, a [00:16:00] ride to work, you know, little things like that that are not actually so little and these are strangers people taking in animals, fostering animals, adopting animals who need them right now. There's so many acts, small and big people can do.
Kenneth Brown Jr: What do you hope is different about service and engagement after this?
Amber Smith: I hope that there's more of it because it's needed. It's going to be needed to repair, to rebuild, to create together something newer and better for everyone and it also heals the person doing it. When you volunteer, when you help someone else, your sense of worth your sense of meaning, all of these things are built upon in a way that cannot be removed by other external forces. So, I think the, for the healing, for bringing people together [00:17:00] for fixing things that are broken, and for creating things, that can be better than they were before. I mean, obviously, I'm biased, but I think volunteering and service is the key,
Kenneth Brown Jr: Has this pandemic taught you something about yourself that you didn't know or taught you, something about your community that you didn't know?
I would say it reinforced something. I always believed to be true but haven't seen in action the way I've seen it this year and that is that every person literally is the piece of a puzzle. You know, especially in the world of nonprofits, I have never seen such an amazing level of nonprofit collaboration coming together, sharing information, resources, asking each other, how we can help, you know, it's, it's something that, the local nonprofit community is, has always been pretty good at, but it just blows my mind how amazing it's been this year. [00:18:00] and I don't know what's going to befall the nonprofit community, over the next several months, but I know that at the very least we'll have each other's backs and that is just, a snippet of what you can see in terms of how the non-profit community has the community's back. We're not this isolated bubble, just helping each other out. We exist to serve the community and, the community, I think, is very lucky to have the nonprofit community that we have here.
Does that give you hope? Is there other things that's giving you hope?
Amber Smith: It does give me hope and I feel sometimes I joke to my friends that I sometimes feel like I'm in like a rosy-colored bubble, just surrounded by amazing heroic idealists all the time who are out there kicking butt and, you know, doing amazing work and that it shields me from seeing much of the badness in the world, but, Yeah. I don't know. That always gives me hope. There, there are good people out there. I know it sometimes seems, [00:19:00] especially if you just doom-scroll on Twitter and Facebook, as they say, that there aren't good people out there, but I can promise you that there are, and if you don't know any, I can introduce you to several dozen. So just give me an email,
Kenneth Brown Jr: Someone listening to this, you know, might just be curious in how people have pivoted, how leaders and organizations have pivoted, And they're and they might be trying to think about, this is a lot, this is too much, how do I pivot? I don't know what this looks like. What words would you offer to someone listening to this right now?
Amber Smith: I would say do what you would do in any normal situation, which is pause and ask people what they need. Just ask the simple question, you know, what are your top needs right now? They've maybe they've changed from before the pandemic. What are they? And then think of your existing resources, connections, assets, et cetera, and figure out how you can apply those tools to [00:20:00] meeting the new need. We knew what we were good at. So, I would say understanding what you're good at, what your superpowers are, so to speak is super important, because then you can kind of think through how to apply those to any new situations. So, know who you are, know what your organization or your yourself as an individual is all about what you bring to the table and know your place in the ecosystem. You know, we've got all these amazing partners. We know that our superpower is to mobilize volunteers, to help all of the work that they do and reaching out and building relationships. I would say probably the most important thing I've learned or have had reinforced throughout this experience is the power of relationships. that'll get you through most anything, but it starts with as, as any new business organization or project would start in any other case, it starts with just asking what the needs are.
Kenneth Brown Jr: Well, thank you, Amber. How can people get involved? How can people read more? How can people know more about Activate Good?
[00:21:00] Amber Smith: Well, that's easy Kenneth, I would say go to our website, activategood.org. We are also very active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. so, follow us, activategood is our handle on all three of those.
Kenneth Brown Jr: Awesome. Thank you very much.
Amber Smith: Thank you.
(music plays: "Speaker Joy" by Blue Dot Sessions)
Kenneth Brown Jr: You've been listening to Pivots, a podcast about navigating transitions, negotiating change, and reimagining our world. Pivots is a project of the AJ Fletcher Foundation. Produced and hosted by me. Kenneth Brown Jr. Our music is composed by Blue Dot Sessions. Sound effects from freesound.org. You can hear this episode and more by going to our show page at [00:22:00] www.pivotsajf.simplecast.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.
See you next time.