Learn - Give 5 Program

WHY GIVE 5 IS NEEDED

Because the future health and vitality of our community depend on it.

With an army of skilled baby boomers already retired, and another wave of boomers retiring over the next few decades, the communities that figure out effective volunteer matchmaking will be the ones that thrive and offer the best quality of life.

Many communities have a wide variety of volunteer needs, such as ...

nonprofits need access to experienced leaders and technical expertise
children need mentors, access to education and safe havens.
young professionals and entrepreneurs need mentorship and access to expertise, institutional knowledge, and wisdom.
city and county governments need talented, passionate volunteers to serve on their boards and commissions.
volunteers are needed to assist those most in need – the homeless, children and the under-resourced.

Senior citizens and the coming wave of baby boomer retirees have a wide variety of skills and assets, including:

experience
expertise
financial resources
a desire to give back to their community
and for the first time in their lives – time.

Give 5 focuses on:

Celebrating ... retirees and their contributions to our community.
Transitioning ... helping retirees disengage from their “work life” – the only life most have ever known – and transition to learn to enjoy retirement, while also making retirement more fulfilling.
Engaging ... helping retirees find their true passion, and helping them connect with volunteer opportunities that match and feed their passions, ensuring they feel relevant.

“The notion of citizens wanting to do something for their community is a precious thing and Give 5 is a fantastic vehicle for capturing that notion, nurturing it and connecting it with the nonprofits in that community. Every community should have a Give 5 chapter. “
- Peter Kageyama, Author For the Love of Cities: The Love Affair Between People and Their Places

"As a nonprofit organization, our services multiply in direct proportion to the support of a host of hundreds of volunteers who help us coordinate and conduct our programs on a daily basis. The Give 5 program has proven an excellent source for such volunteers in our agency. In our experience, we have found volunteers who come from Give 5 to serve with exceptional wisdom and skill, with gracious hearts, and with passionate spirits. This partnership constitutes an excellent collaboration and it serves as an example of two organizations benefitting from such an alliance.”
- Dr. Alex Cobb, Chief Human Resource Officer, Senior Age

“We’ve been in this community a long while and thought we were fairly heads-up about what’s happening, but we have a much better knowledge and appreciation for our hometown now as a result of this class. There is more of a need than we realized but there is also so much work being done and sacrifices made to help others – it makes me proud of Springfield. This program is a great idea – extremely well executed. I am honored to be among the 1st class!”
– Gayle Harper, Give 5 Class 2

“Once again, the civic leaders of Springfield, Missouri, are in the forefront of the national movement to reweave the fabric of American communities. Give 5 is a smart way to connect aging Boomers with non-profit volunteering opportunities. It’s a brilliant strategy to solve two growing social problems simultaneously—the dangerous isolation of older Americans and the dangerous isolation of younger have-not Americans. Communities across the land have much to learn from Springfield and the Give 5 program.”

- Dr. Robert Putnam, Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and author of Bowling Alone and The Upswing.