Happy Volunteer Appreciation Week!

To our thousands of volunteers we say, happy Volunteer Appreciation Week and thank you for all you do! The Salvation Army relies on volunteers to help us spread our mission of “Doing the Most Good.”  During 2011-2012 this is what our volunteers provided:

5,517 volunteers served 10, 310 hours at the Center of Hope.
5,301 volunteers served 61,913 hours at the  Boys & Girls Clubs.   
2,662 volunteers served 11,229 hours in the Tulsa Area Command office and warehouses. That's a total of 13,480 volunteers who served 83,452 total hours!

The average value of a volunteer hour in Oklahoma is $18.28. If you do the math, that comes out to our volunteers providing a $1,525,502.56 donation worth of service in just one year! WOW!

I love seeing the impact our volunteers have on the community. Think about it, these are individuals who simply feel compelled to help others, whether it is by serving meals at our Center of Hope or coaching a basketball team at one our six Boys & Girls Clubs. None of these volunteers set out to donate more than a million dollars to The Salvation Army, but because each one followed their heart together they did!

“Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

Check out the blog and our Facebook page each day this week for more ways to celebrate or volunteers!

- Jenny McElyea