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Mission Volunteering: Service Enterprise Initiative – Certified!

By Mission Volunteering In Mission Volunteering

       Mission Volunteering: Service Enterprise Initiative: CERTIFIED!

“Volunteers are at the heart of what we do. They are how we get our work done, we couldn’t do half of what we do without them, and the Service Enterprise process has strengthened that notion”
– Haley Nelson, Minnesota Children’s Museum

The Virginia Living Museum has a strong volunteer base – they are the heart of our organization and contribute their time in a variety of areas throughout the museum. In order to fully utilize these volunteers and their dedication the museum the Virginia Living Museum has become certified as a Service Enterprise. As a certified non-profit SEI organization, we are able to leverage volunteer skills across all levels of the museum and more effectively meet the needs of our community and increasing the impact of our mission.  The Service Enterprise Initiative allows the museum to be more effective and sustainable by utilizing service-based skills of our volunteers and effectively placing them in non-traditional volunteer roles.

This progressive initiative is a national enterprise that began as a partnership between the California Volunteers and Reimagining Services. As it grew, the world’s largest volunteer organization, Points of Light, developed SEI into what we see today – certifying over 200 non-profits. Through training, assessments, consulting and certification modeling – non-profits are equipped with managerial tools and technical assistance to identify and manage volunteers with specialized skills sets. These skills can be utilized within our museum to help address the needs of our museum and the community. For example, a retired OHSA safety inspector serves on our safety board and an anthropologist volunteers in our collections department. This is just some of the many skill-based services our volunteers provide. We have a task force dedicated to identifying and engaging SEI volunteers in projects throughout our museum.

Our museum became certified in February 2015 – we are committed to the sustainable management of our volunteer program and the on-going mission of the museum.

Our goal is to engage our volunteers in meaningful roles within our organization in order to strengthen our commitment to our community and its needs. The volunteer base at the Virginia Living Museum is dedicated – each volunteer has a vital role to play and without them we would not accomplish our mission of education and conservation.