179 – Transformative Service Experiences with Frederick J. Riley and Jackie Wolven

September 11, 2025

Episode #179: Transformative Service Experiences with Frederick J. Riley and Jackie Wolven 

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast, Tobi Johnson dives into the topic of transformative service experiences with guests Frederick J. Riley, Executive Director of Weave the Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute, and Jackie Woven, Executive Director of Main Street Eureka Springs.  

They discuss practical strategies for building, growing, and scaling volunteer talent within communities, emphasizing the importance of local, relational, and mutual engagement. The trio explores how grassroots efforts, trust-building, and collaborative service can address community challenges and foster social connections. Jackie talks about the Main Street model, while Fred shares insights from the Weavers Network, offering listeners actionable steps for enhancing volunteer programs and community resilience. 

Transformative Service – Episode Highlights

• [03:22] – Jackie’s Journey into Nonprofits and Volunteerism 
• [04:29] – Frederick’s Inspiring Story of Community and Volunteerism 
• [06:21] – The Importance of Volunteerism Today 
• [11:58] – Transformative Service: What It Means and Why It Matters 
• [13:58] – The Role of Virtual Volunteering and Hybrid Models 
• [17:41] – The Roots of Volunteering and Community Connection 
• [19:12] – Challenges and Opportunities in Measuring Volunteer Impact 
• [26:10] – Nonprofits vs. Corporate Models: A Discussion 
• [29:54] – Transforming Volunteer Programs: A New Approach 
• [32:33] – Embracing Fluidity in Volunteer Programs 
• [33:07] – Facilitation Skills for Volunteer Leaders 
• [34:48] – Encouraging Risk and Resilience 
• [35:54] – Aligning Volunteer Work with Community Needs 
• [37:06] – Empowering Volunteer Leaders 
• [40:08] – Building Community Through Service 
• [46:14] – The Weave the Social Fabric Project 
• [50:05] – Main Street Model for Community Engagement 
• [56:53] – Practical Tips for Community Building 

Helpful Links

• Volunteer Management Progress Report  
• Episode #164: Moving from Volunteer Compliance to Building Your Nonprofit Community  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #171: Practical Community Building Tips for Your Volunteer Team 
• Weave: The Social Fabric Project at The Aspen Institute 
• Weave Trust Map    
• Jackie’s Website 
• National Main Street Center  
• Main Street Eureka Springs  

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #179 Transcript: Transformative Service Experiences with Frederick J. Riley and Jackie Wolven 

Tobi: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and I am really thrilled to bring this topic to you. We are going to talk about transformative service experiences, and I have guests, Fred Riley, and Jackie Wolven with me. I’ll tell you in a minute about them. They are going to share with you some interesting ways to think about and practical solutions for working within communities, really offering transformative service experiences to folks in the community. 

I know many of you run traditional volunteer programs, but there is so much more we can do and even just tweaking the way we approach a more traditional volunteer program. We want to talk about all the types of volunteering that goes on in our communities. Maybe that’s unseen some of our, uh, informal volunteering, NAB Neighbors Helping Neighbors, and how by joining together and partnering with organizations, sometimes we can all have a bigger impact, both community at the community, grassroots level, and at the organizational level. 

So, there’s so much to talk about here, but I want to get started by introducing Frederick Riley. He’s the Executive Director of Weave the Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute. Fred is passionate about the development of communities and people. He has spent nearly two decades working on to ensure a positive life trajectory for youth with a focus on urban underserved communities. 

He has served as Chief Advancement Officer for the Cincinnati YMC, a National Director of Urban Development for the YMCA of the USA and has held several positions with the YMCA of Southwest Illinois. Metro Atlanta, YMCA, and nationally with a national conference of black mayors. Jackie Woven is executive director of Main Street, Eureka Springs, which is in Arkansas. 

For 17 years, Jackie has helped strengthen the downtowns in rural America. Both economically and socially. She works to foster strong connections and relationships within communities, building resilience and a sense of belonging. She’s grounded her work fully on loving where you live. I love that. And using community spaces and culture to support individual mental health. 

Building better places goes hand in hand with creating emotional wellbeing and supporting a thriving and fulfilling economy. Jackie currently serves as executive director at Main Street, Eureka Springs, as I said. So welcome to the Volunteer Nation Podcast, you two.  

Fred: Thank you. Thank you for having us. 

Tobi: So, let’s just kick off. We’ve talked a little bit about your experience, and it makes sense. Your histories make sense around what you care about and why you’re involved in this work. I like to talk about people’s birth stories, like how did they get in into nonprofit and community work? So, let’s start with you Jackie. How did you initially get into nonprofits, volunteerism, community work? How did that happen?  

Jackie: Well, my, I mean, my dad was a teacher, and my mom was a librarian, and they believed that work was service. That’s, that was how they brought all of us up, is to think that service is the work that you should be doing. And so, I did not do that and went into the corporate world quickly and got dis. Gauged because the corporate world, all those supports, initiatives that are important, they miss. There’s a piece of it that’s missing. And so, when we moved to Eureka Springs sight unseen 23 years ago, I knew that I wanted to make a difference in a different way. And so that, that was really it. And also, just knowing that I had more to give than just someone else’s bottom line. Mm-hmm. That was really, that’s really the impetus. Like I have more than just that.   

Tobi: Yeah, I get that. Fred, what about you? What was your kind of birth story in volunteerism and nonprofit? 

Fred: Well, I think my birth story in the volunteerism space goes into my birth story. Hmm. I grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, once a Midwestern boom town, but now it’s a little battered, but it is still full of promise. And I often say it’s full of promise because of the people you know, growing up in the Midwest, in a town that, you know, folks from Detroit often say that when the state of Michigan has a cold, the city of Detroit has pneumonia. 

I believe those smaller cities like the one I grew up in, are on life support when the state has a cold. Right? And so, where I grew up, I know what it’s like to be evicted. I know what it’s like to be food insecure. I know what it’s like to run a power cord from a neighbor’s house to keep warm in the winter. 

And so, but I also know about human generosity and what it means when people show up. Those same things in my rough childhood were made better because we had neighbors who shared food with us. Those same ne neighbors helped us run a power cord. People in our church helped us stay in our homes when we got eviction notices. 

And so, this idea of giving back, of showing up for people in a way that gives of yourself but also builds you up at the same time is something I know all too well because of how I grew up. But I also wanted a career where I could live that outlive those values out. And so, I worked for almost two decades for the YMCA and now I get to do this amazing work with Weave the Social Fabric Project. I feel like my whole life has been a, a. A turn into figuring out how to repay the generosity of people who’ve shown up for me, but more importantly, to show other people the pathway to do that in a mighty way, because I know it has implications for our nation, our country, but for people right now who are struggling a little bit. 

Tobi: So, Fred, why do you think volunteerism is particularly important today? 

Fred: Yeah. I often think about the fact our work at We, the Social Fabric Project is about how do we build our nation’s trust? And right now, 71% of Americans, according to the Pew Research Center, believe that if given the opportunity, their neighbors will take advantage of them. 

Right now, this last year, 2023 to Surgeon General says over half of adult’s report that they’re lonely. So, I don’t think these are just stats. These are real cries for help. And one of the real magic bullet ways to solve things in communities, but to also bring people together is how do you get people working together shoulder to shoulder, much like we see when people are in the military and so forth. 

And so. Our country. It’s an imperative right now with all the things that are ILE in our country. Our people dealing with loneliness and isolation and mental health disparities are all off the chart. They’re all a springboard from being disconnected to one from one another. And so one of the ways that we have to see, or that we have to, that we can use to bring people back together is through really thoughtful service, transformative service, which I believe is a magic bullet to solve some systemic issues, but also begin to reconnect our disconnected country. 

Tobi: I mean, you hear a lot about the trust crisis.  

Fred: Yeah.  

Tobi: In government, in corporations. Even in nonprofits or the Edelman Trust Barometer, and I’ll post a link to that, but I kind of track on that every year and try to figure out what’s, especially around nonprofits, what does the public think about both the informed and uninformed publics? 

They kind of break things out. Yeah. To help you kind of understand. But it sounds like a, according to this Pew research that. It is also happening on the com community level, that it is across the board that it is endemic, that it is in our roots right now. It’s infecting our roots, not just the leaves on the trees. 

Right. So, this is an interesting thing to think about, about and who is most equipped and best equipped. Our listeners are experts in engaging communities, so it’s great that they’re hearing about this. Jackie, why do you think volunteerism is important, especially today?  

Jackie: Well, I do think it’ll heal what’s happening, the divide. I think it’ll heal. I was thinking recently that my husband grew up as a preacher’s kid, so you know, Christian Church preacher’s kid, and he has told me multiple times that people sitting in the pews, although they go every Sunday, don’t believe the same thing. Next to each other, like everyone is believing a little bit different, right? 

But they’re all going, they’re all going to the same thing. And I think that that concept is the thing that we need to get back to. Yeah, we’re all going to, we all may believe a different thing. That is okay, but we’re all going to move forward in an initiative, an idea, a concept, a program, something we care about. 

And I think that idea is what will save us to remember that I don’t have to believe the same thing that the person next to me believes. Right. And I don’t have to have the same anything. But if we have the same idea about this one thing that will heal so much, and the trust, I mean, right? If you can work on one small project, I know that in my work, if I can get people to work on one very tiny project and be successful together, that just builds the trust into something maybe a little bit larger, a little more long term. 

And it’s like a stepping stone. And it’s like a, the long game. It’s like this is playing the long game. This, it’s serious now. I think volunteerism was a great thing. Like, oh, it’s great. We’ll volunteer and that seemed very quaint. You look in the way back now, I think it’s a national issue. I think now, or maybe even global. I think that this is the turning point where we change how we behave in the future. Right.  

Tobi: Oh, you’re preaching the choir here.  

Jackie: Yeah. 

Tobi: I know in my own volunteering that the folks I volunteer with aren’t al, don’t always vote the way I do. I know they don’t. And because we’ve had the safe space, especially if you’re volunteering longer term with team members and you’re on a team with, there’s a kind of trust that develops over time where you know, again, you’re, like you said, you’re focused on the mission, you’re focused on, and you know everybody’s because you’ve been volunteering with them for a while, that there’s trust built because they’re also equally committed to the mission because they’re showing up just like you do. 

And I’ve had the opportunity to talk about. Really tough issues that if you don’t know someone, it’s a very difficult conversation to have. Like reproductive health. I’ve had a very intense, not cantankerous at all, understanding, mutual understanding and conversation about reproductive health with one of my fellow volunteers, and we do not believe the same things, and it did not damage our relationship one iota. 

In fact, it probably strengthened it. So there not only healing but understanding it’s hard to like hate on somebody that you know that you’ve been working side by side.  

Fred: Yeah. I say that all the time. Tell people, well, what I think you just said is you had a relationship. Yes. And that relationship was cemented and so service helps to cement relationships. That idea of labor next to each other, arm to arm. Mm-hmm. You begin to see each other as human on the same team while you’re working together. And that’s why it’s important right now for us to push to get more people working together.  

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. So, let’s set the stage. What does transformative service mean, Fred? Talk to us about that. What do you mean by transformative service?  

Fred: Yeah. So, I think service can transform the person receiving or the issue you are working on, but also the person doing the working on it. Mm-hmm. And so, I think there are three core components to transformative service. 

That it’s local. It is local, in person, in community, it’s rooted in place. I find that people, when they’re rooted in place or on something, they really care about it. They work harder, and they’re going to show up and they’re going to show up to it. It’s relational. So, this opportunity to do transformative service is not a one-off. 

It’s repeatable, but it’s human and it deepens over time. So, people must show up in a repetitious manner. I’ll give an example. If you are a person going to go build a playground for a kaboom site after you build a playground, show up the next week and help to push the kids on the swing or show up as a mentor, it’s important and then it’s mutual. 

I think oftentimes we see service as this thing of a pot at the end of the rainbow. I’ll give you an example. My kid is in Fiji right now, in his first year in the Peace Corps. And before he left, I said, you’re going to come back and you’re going to have job offers. People are going to think you did a great thing. 

You’re going to get a pot at the end of gold, at the end of the rainbow when I should have told him, you’re going to come back more human. You’re going to come back. Understanding the human condition, you’re going to come back; understanding that people all give at certain levels, and so we push our kids to do service so that they can win something. 

But I think we should push our kids to do service so that they can become good humans. And so, there’s mutuality in the service. The person receiving it has something to offer, as well as the person giving of the service. When those things operate in tandem is a transformative service experience. Local, relational, and there’s a mutuality the service can’t be about doing for, but it’s doing with. 

Tobi: Do you think that there’s a place for. Virtual volunteering in, when you say rooted in place?  

Fred: Yeah, so, so let me not say, I think there’s, I think I have a group of people who are home bound who show up every single day in our online community greeting, leading discussion boards. But if we really want to transform, we’ve got to get people back together again. 

If Robert Putnam, tried to sound the alarm on this in the two thousand with this book Bowling Alone, which talked about when people did life together, when people did life in concert with one another, we were more connected nation. Yeah. If you think about after World War ii and when I worked for the YMCA, I studied the history. 

It was in the doors of the YMCA where Americans, people who were here taught English to people who came across the sea, who found at home here. That idea of showing up for those folks made them better humans, but it also made the people who showed up here not feel like immigrants but made them feel like they were at home. 

When we get back to this doing work together in community, it ignites something in us, but it also is a signal that we are one. So, while I think online service is important, I mentor a kid online, but I think if we want the gold star, you’ve got to do it in person, in community.  

Tobi: Yeah. I think also hybrid because the team that I just, the conversation I had was online, but, and our team does our volunteering online. 

We do a Facebook Live every Saturday during the growing season. Because we’re master gardeners, but we have met in person multiple times and we will have in-person meetings. Yeah. And so sometimes if you don’t have the option, I don’t want all the folks that engage volunteers online to think like, well it’s over. 

And I do have, yeah. You know, in our volunteer Pro impact lab, we have a few organizations that only do online, like they’re doing mentoring with veterans, et cetera, helping people with find jobs, et cetera. So, I always say. If there’s a possibility at some point to bring people together each either regionally or nationally at some type of conference that is going to cement, that is going to help those relationships. 

And if you have time for socialization and you have time for talking and sharing about yourself, it can help that and make that better. But we, and we have the opportunity, we don’t have to have, we can see each other in person, but yeah, it helps.  

Fred: Tobi. I’m going to say I agree with you completely. I do think that there is a space for everybody to come at this angle of bringing people together, but I primarily am thinking about young people. 

Yes, young people who are the most digitally connected than any generation than ever before, but they’re also the loneliest generation. Yes. They are also struggling on how to build relationships so much that schools like Stanford have a class on how to build meaningful relationships with people. Yeah. 

They are also the generation that is, they are device natives. They were born with a device in their hand, and so. In person helps them to build out the social cues that they need to take in into the workforce, but also just to be human. And so, yes, I think virtual is important, but I also think we miss some of the human connection and compassion and also social cues by being in person with people And so, we should push young people to go be together with people in the community.  

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. If you’re doing hybrid, at least it helps boost some, because it’s true, you can’t read people’s facial expressions. I think there’s like, there’s so many different senses, sound, facial expressions that you just can’t get digitally on a screen. 

Yeah. And I to, it’s so crazy how young people, they’re ghosting one another because they just don’t know how. Mm-hmm. How it works in relationship with people. Let’s talk about the roots of volunteering. And talking about relationships over results, which is going to be the trend right now in volunteer engagement. 

In fact, we’re doing training in our Volunteer Pro impact lab this month on outcomes metrics, but also how to share impact of volunteers with stakeholders, different stakeholder groups, and how to communicate that. Because if volunteer organizations cannot, they’re not able to bring funding in, they’re not able to bring in more volunteers. 

But at this point. Volunteerism started in as folks coming together in the community. Most nonprofits did not start as a nonprofit. They started as a group of people in the community and at some point, they became formalized and tax exempt and all that, and it, over time, it’s kind of calcified into this very sort of solid model that doesn’t seem to work as well right now. 

I mean, I think one of the reasons is the type of ways people want to work are different than they used to be 20 years ago, 30 years ago. I also think there’s plenty of people doing, especially during the pandemic, folks were setting up and doing work together in community and figuring out how to help one another. 

That kind of grassroots stuff really kind of came back. And we know globally, data on global volunteerism is that informal volunteering is on the rise. And it is the primary way globally. People volunteer in the US it is on the rise, but formal is still, I think, the top way. But so, what have we lost do you think, Fred, and what can we gain back by centering connection and really focusing on transformative service? 

Fred: Yeah. So, I think what we’ve lost, if you think of the stats that I rattled off earlier, we, we are, I often talk about this crisis that we’re in of trust, but that crisis of trust leads to so many other crises at the same time. Right, right. When people don’t trust. They don’t show up. They stay in, they get angry when they feel like they aren’t seen by the world. 

And when you aren’t seen and you stay in and when you come out, your brain capacity is different, right? Mm-hmm. You’re angry. We see this each day. I think as we think about numbers, I think numbers are important. I think it’s important. I was talking to a, a corporate leader and they said, last year we had 10,000 volunteer hours. 

I said, that sounds amazing, but what did you do and what did you change with those 10,000 hours? And so, I don’t think that they should not count hours. They should count hours. I think it’s important, but I also think that we must also think about the impact of what those 10,000 hours have turned into. 

Did it create more connections for people in communities? Did it get your employees more deeply connected with a community to understand it, to change practices, to work? We’ve got to think about all of that at the same time. And listen, the software’s that we have are savvy. Our corporate leaders are savvy. 

There’s a way that you can measure. Hours and count the hours but also be intentional about the impact and the outcome that you want the 10,000 hours to make in a community where you live. Breathe. I think it’s important.  

Tobi: Yeah. We’ve been focusing on the training of transitioning from outputs to outcomes, so yeah. 

What is the transformation? The transformation, as you mentioned earlier, there’s transformation in the volunteer themselves, the community member themselves, there’s transformation in the person they’re potentially serving or working with or supporting. There’s transformation sometimes in the organization because often the volunteers are the frontline of understanding how the organization is working in community. 

They’re sort of the. Sort of connective tissue sometimes, and they can reflect if the organization’s willing to listen of how that organization may or may not be meeting the needs of the community. And sometimes they become quite vocal about that. Mm-hmm. I’ve had volunteers do that and I’m like, good for your advocate. 

It transforms sometimes the funders because the organization’s able to again, advocate back and say, okay, you want to fund this, but this isn’t what the problem is. Right. So, there’s a lot of transformation that can happen. And why do you think Fred, I kind of. Posed my hypotheses as to why we’ve become more paperwork and less people oriented. Why do you think it it’s migrated that way there so many things? 

Fred: I think there’s so many things. There’s some risk involved with bringing people together that you don’t know to do service, right? I used to work with kids, and I know you’ve got to dot all your I’s and cross your T’s. There’s also this notion of, you mentioned this earlier when I worked for the, when the YMCA was created, we had more volunteers in the building than you had staff, and so you couldn’t pick out who was the staff and who was the volunteer. 

But over time, our model has flipped, and we pay for so many things versus because to get somebody onboarded. To do work that they aren’t paid for might be a tricky thing. Right? Will they show up? Will they work at the same rigor? You will, but I think that means that we must figure out how we invest in them on the top to get them there. 

And we have become a culture of, tell me what the results are, what’s your impact? Gimme the numbers. Tell me how much, tell me this. Versus it is hard to measure relationships. It’s hard to measure the impact of relationships. I, I tell the story of my fraternal twin brother who is a Marine and was in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, but Northern Michigan. 

We were told as kids, as young black men, don’t go there because they’ll kill you. They don’t want you there. But my brother said he ended up on guard duty with somebody from Northern Michigan in the middle of the night and he needed to sleep, and the other person needed to sleep. And he goes, if we didn’t know each other, if we didn’t trust each other, if we didn’t submit our relationship, we wouldn’t have been able to sleep. We would’ve been tired. So he goes, we got to know each other. Now when my brother goes home, he drives up to the Northern Michigan to go hang out with this guy. Right? I’m always like afraid, like, why do you want to do that? But they have a relationship and so it’s tough to measure when. People just knowing each other becomes a relationship. 

And I think people are afraid of the GR of the muckiness of that because it doesn’t give you the instant gratification that we’ve become so accustomed to. You do a volunteer opportunity, I had a hundred people show up, a hundred people times five hours equals this. And then you have instant gratification. 

Yeah, I think the microwave has gotten us there, but I think we must figure out how to measure the time we spend with each other as an outcome. And the relationships will come later, and we can measure that at some point as well.  

Tobi: Yeah, and I think you must find funders who are willing to have that conversation exploration with you. 

Fred: Yeah. You know, and, but I also think funders are now thinking about how they can help heal divides and bring people together. And they’re thinking about different modalities of this. So now is the right time to be having these conversations with funders about work that may seem a little murky and may not give instant gratification. 

We’re in this place right now because of it, and I think funders are at the table now thinking about how they can return to local but also invest in relationships through service.  

Tobi: Yeah. I remember I started a, in San Francisco, I started a youth employment and training program within an organization that serves unhoused youth. Mm-hmm. And so, they wanted an employment and training program. So, they hired me and said, let’s build it from scratch. We’ve got some seed money. And I was excited and worked with the funder to develop a set of outcome metrics to really figure out what transformation was happening now in employment and training; it’s a little bit easier. Like, did someone find a job? Did they, that’s an outcome for a young person is to find a job and, and what’s their average wage and how long did they stay, but also those relationships. So, I felt like I hit the jackpot in terms of a funder to be able to set those outcome metrics and really think about transformation in kind of co-producing with the funder. 

So, I feel if you’re an organization, if now’s the time, approach funders and come with some ideas. Usually, transformation on a human scale is those numbers are found through perception surveys. In general, unless you’re an economist. And in our organizations we don’t have that kind of level of capacity to do like huge economic modeling, but we can do perception surveys and ask folks how they feel about specific aspects. 

There was a country that was measuring happiness. Yeah. And yes, you can measure happiness. Jackie, you’ve been nodding your head and then shaking your head. So, what do you think about what we’re talking about?  

Jackie: I think that nonprofits unfortunately fell into they’re being modeled as a corporation and that’s where the mistake is. 

They don’t have a product necessarily, and but that is what they’re trying to uphold to their stakeholders, basically. And that model doesn’t work in relationship building. It’s qualitative. It’s not quantitative data. And every time I ask, I’m asked for quantitative data, I just want to roll my eyes because I feel like, yeah, that’s great if I’m selling widgets, but I’m not selling widgets. 

I’m helping people understand moving from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. I’m helping people feel that they have a stake in the place that they’re living in. I’m helping people feel successful in small ways for their own business or life. And so, I’m frustrated in the nonprofit world in general, that we’ve appropriated this corporate mindset of quantitative data because it just. 

That’s great that you can measure your volunteer hours, but if nobody made friends and nobody comes back, what good was it like that to me? That I don’t need a hundred people doing five hours of service if they’re never going to come back and they’re never going to make friends. Right. Because the whole point of all of this is that we get to know one another and we build community within community. 

And so, it’s frustrating to me. I do; I find this frustrating. I find this frustrating in my own job, my, the own work that I have where I’m trying, they wanted us to show quantitative data, and I’m always pushing back, no, but I’ll tell you a story or I’ll share with you a one moment that I think really made a difference in someone’s life. 

That should be enough through a program that we did. A person was an entrepreneurial support program that we did. We helped a person; they bought a home. That’s it. That’s good enough for me, right? They went through the program, and they had everything that they needed to be able to buy a home. I don’t want to tell you anything more about that except the excitement of somebody buying a home, right? 

And I think this is where it’s just a, it’s just a frustration. I don’t want to model a corporation. I do not want to model a corporation. I want to model service, and I want to model place building. And that is a very different thing. And until we get out of that model, I mean, I think that’s why we are where we are today. 

I think this is part of the problem, is that we have adopted a model that isn’t working, that doesn’t necessarily work, but we’re forcing these nonprofits to fit this model because that’s the corporate model. And those are ne, possibly the giving, the givers want it to match. I just don’t think we should be doing that. 

I think that we should be allowing nonprofits to do the work that they do in the best possible way. And tell you the story of how it worked that, yeah. Yeah.  

Tobi: Well, it’s interesting how corporate America’s trying to be learn from nonprofits around multiple stakeholders. Right. Nonprofits have a diverse range of stakeholders that we must make sure we’re serving. 

It’s really complicated. Mm-hmm. That the problems we solve are really complicated. If corporate America could have solved them, they would’ve and monetized it. And then corporate America is also understanding how their community reputation matters. So, connection with the community matters. That’s why they do employee days of service. 

And even building community within employees. Employee-based volunteering is about team building. So, there’s so much that corporate America is learning from nonprofits. It’s just fascinating. Let’s talk about Jackie, how transformative, how you’ve seen it change the lives of volunteers.  

Jackie: Mm-hmm.  

Tobi: Beyond, and you, I already know your volunteers are not just giving because they’re doing something. 

Yeah. They’re doing something. You have a different model. So, talk about that and talk about how it’s changing volunteers’ hearts and minds.  

Jackie: Right. So we no longer have the model that. People that we have a project and then people are going to come and volunteer for that project. That isn’t the model that we do at all. 

All everything we do is built with the volunteers. So, our programming is built with the volunteers. How do we want to do it? How do you want to do it? What does success look like for you and I, we’re a small nonprofit, so we are able to be nimble and flexible in this way, but this is also in response to what the community wants the people. 

So, I recently transformed our whole board, and they’re mostly 30 somethings and they don’t want a plug and play. They want a participate. Right at every level and in that space, I have found success when I’m just giving a basic framework. Often as the ed, I’m just giving a basic framework and then letting them run with whatever it is that they want to run with. 

And the success is that it’s a successful program. They, these are professional adults, they’re capable, and the trust level and the way that they’re able to express their passion for it is so different than when we were saying, oh, we’re going to do a cleanup, come clean up. Right? Like, yeah, they can come do that, but that isn’t necessarily what they want to do. 

And tapping into this new way of allowing participatory, well, we do participatory budgeting, we do participatory program making, and that really changes everything in your volunteer scape, everyone. That volunteers with us works. They have maybe multiple jobs, multiple entrepreneurial things. We don’t have a traditional volunteer where someone’s retired or a partner works, but they’re not working. 

So, that landscape for us doesn’t exist in, in small town America. That’s not how it’s working. And so, we had to figure out, well, what is it? What do we want to be? How do we want to, how do we want to transform this for ourselves? But also, for them, as an ed, you must let go you. It’s not your way. 

There are multiple ways to do a thing, right? You must be strong enough to be able to have a framework of what you’re hoping for, and then just let people go. And my experience working in other communities is that is where the trouble lies. That staff doesn’t have the cap. Capacity or willingness or ability to unclench their hands around how they want something to be. 

But you miss out on the entire experience when you don’t allow for that sort of fluidity to happen in the volunteer landscape. There are million ways to plan a program like a million. There’s your way, but that’s not the right way. That’s just a way. Right. And so, I really, I talk about that so much with people. Like there’s just ways it’s okay, right?  

Tobi: Yeah.  

Jackie: Mm-hmm.  

Tobi: Yeah. I’m nodding my head ferociously because I have worked with volunteers and trained volunteers on running their own projects and the volunteer coordinator when they’re setting up, and I’m writing a book on this right now on for volunteers who lead, and it starts with yourself and what your values are and how they align with the organization. It takes volunteers through a process, so that sort of self-team alignment with the organization and large impact on the larger world. And in the past, I’ve worked with and still do work with organizations, with chapter leaders, et cetera. 

And we really focus on leading from within. And when I’ve worked with staff, it’s that hand clenching moment you’re going to have to let go and there’s facilitation skills that are required. When folks come to you and they ask questions. If you give the answer every single time, they’re going to keep asking you. 

And they’re never going to be self-directing and they’re never going to be independent. And so, you what, well, what have you thought about so far? This is a facilitation scale. Well, what options have you thought about so far?  

Jackie: It’s so funny that you would say that I just completed a program to become a professional facilitator, because I think that is the actual role now, not leadership as usual, right? It is facilitation, right? That is all that we’re doing is facilitating the process to allow people to feel fulfilled in the service work that we’re doing. It’s all mission driven, right? We all know what the mission is, whatever that might be. Yeah. But if everyone already knows that, then it’s like the scope can be so many other things. 

There are so many other ideas. Now, I’m not going to lie, there’s failure. Right. Yeah. One of our core goal core values is risk in our organization, and so we’re willing to take a risk financially. We’re small. We’re a very small organization, so we can’t take a huge financial risk all the time, but time is also of value. 

We value people’s time, and some things will not work, and you must be resilient enough as a team to know that yeah, some things aren’t going to be as successful, and that’s okay. That’s okay. Yeah. And also, very different than the corporate world to allow risk. It also helps people become more risk accessible or feel comfortable with risk, which is a thing I think that we’re missing in the world. 

Yes, people need to feel comfortable making mistakes and that they’re not going to be reprimanded and it’s not going to be the end of the world. They’re not going to lose their position because something didn’t work. And I think you can model that in organizations if that’s one of your values.  

Tobi: Absolutely. Abso, I could not agree more. I think the also the other. Role for a facilitator is to guide, help guide, and give information about community need. Sometimes the organization has aggregate level data or has done some of the needs assessment that we don’t want volunteering to be, just be ad hoc. Anything goes, let’s just do our pet project. 

Let’s do something that’s going to have an, so we’re aligning, helping volunteer teams align their work with the community needs. And sometimes they know because they’re from the community and they’ve seen it, but sometimes people don’t have that. Haven’t been in that part of the community or don’t have that level of self-reflection or don’t have the data. 

So, I think that’s another role for organizations to kind of help them educate themselves around what are the core most important community needs right now? And if you want to have the biggest impact, here are some areas that you might want to consider. Now, as you said, the how you can help with the why, but the how is like, it’s up to you, right? 

And well, and then you just embrace it. So, I’m going to give a plug to people to try this because I think it’s so much more done because I’m not doing it or controlling it. Right? Yes. And that is an amazing thing if you’re thinking about a small nonprofit or even a large nonprofit. 

But if you are saying, I’m going to allow the freedom, people understand the framework, people understand the need. People under how you, they’ve given them the data. They know what, what the scope is, and then you unleash people to be able to complete these projects. You’re, you’ve just made this massive jump in what you’re providing, which before you could not, because you’re holding on so tightly. I can only do so much. I am one person. Yes. Right?  

Tobi: Yes. I hear that all the time. I’m a department of one. I’m a department of one. My capacity, I go, well, have you grown some leaders? How about volunteer leaders? Volunteers can do we train on welcome teams? Why do you have to do all the, the onboarding of volunteers and training, why can’t volunteers do that? 

And having been a volunteer who’s led strategic planning, I’ve taken my skills and gifts and given them to organizations in some of the leadership teams I’ve been on, people have mad skills. We just have to tap into them. And sometimes I think volunteers don’t understand how their skills can transfer. 

I’ve worked with volunteers who are like mechanical engineers, like have a career and they’ve retired from mechanical engineering they’ve worked in, OR materials. I have a friend who is a materials engineer and when they get into like a leadership role, they’re kind of. F kerfuffle around kind of, they lack a little confidence, and I’ll say, well wait a minute. 

You had a career doing this. You led meetings, you’ve done this before. It’s just different with this group of people. So, I think it helps to help volunteers reflect on not only their values, but also the skills they bring that they may not recognize, do transfer into this new role. And sometimes they just don’t see it. 

I don’t know why that happens, but they think nonprofits are a mystery world sometimes if they’ve never worked in nonprofits, especially, because we use a lot of acronyms, but, and then I’m like, no, you got, you have mad skills. You can bring all these skills over.  

Fred: Well, I think what you just said, Tobi, is that you’ve been intentional about how you place people, and you give real thought to where they’re going to be successful. 

Volunteerism is sometimes like a conveyor belt. We’re putting sandwiches in a bag. Come join the line, put the Turkey, put the cheese, wrap it up and put it in a bag. But I think if you come to me and you say, but I’m really interested in how I can create a story on the bag so when somebody gets the sandwich in this bag, that they’re going to be inspired to X, Y, and Z. 

And so, volunteerism can’t be a one-stop shop. We must listen. It’s not the volunteer manager’s fault. They aren’t resourced enough. They’re being given some really big goals to achieve, and most of the time they’re under resourced. But if we really want people to give up their best, we have to really be conscious of where we place them in, how we place them. 

Like, would you put a a brain surgeon and tell them you want them fixing the boiler? No. Like you want to give them a job where they’re going to flourish and we must think about volunteerism as the same way.  

Tobi: Yeah. Let’s switch gears and talk about the transformation of the place. Yeah. Fred, what have you seen? You’ve seen a lot of this going on in the Weavers network. Yeah. What. What? How have you seen CHA changes in community resilience? Trust. Sense of belonging? Yeah. As a result of sort of transformational service experiences. Yeah. So, and transformational service.  

Fred: That’s a great question. A couple of years ago, we launched this idea called trust map.org, and so it gives every community in this country, every zip code, a score based on trust, social trust, trusting behaviors, whether people volunteer outside of their home, whether they show up, whether they give money to charity, trusting intentions, whether people actually have the temperature to trust, right? 

Whether they want to put their foot in. And then the trusting infrastructure, whether a community has the. Parks and community spaces and third spaces for people to come together on our, on that trust map, there’s a story about Ugal Washington, and it’s a town outside of Seattle that people were escaping Seattle because the houses are cheaper and overnight their population almost doubled and tripled. 

And it’s a community where people are like, I don’t know my neighbor anymore. And the at the height of the pandemic, people were like fighting over politics and toilet paper, and a group of people got together and said, we must do better. One of the fastest ways to bring people together is through service together. 

So, they started creating opportunities to beautify the city, to paint murals, to feed the home, the unhoused, to do all these things, but do it together. And they started inviting the whole community, knocking on doors, please come help us with this. It’s one of the fastest ways for us to get to know one another. 

Overnight people started hanging out together, something they hadn’t done before, and they have transformed their community by just actually creating the table and allowing people to come and serve together. There are a bunch of stories like that on trust map.org, but I, I have seen communities like that all around the country where there’s one person who says, it’s up to me to do this, and they start to connect the whole community together with this low entry way. You said it earlier, once they submit their relationships, now they can have a deeper conversation about polarization politics, or it may even just fall by the wayside because now they know each other.  

Tobi: Mm-hmm. Interesting. I’m in right now, I’m across the Puget Sound in a small town when we’re, I’m from the Pacific Northwestern. We’re going to be retiring out here in a few years, but. I find living, most of the time I’m living in east Tennessee, in Knoxville. It’s a bigger city. We still live in a kind of suburban area, but I’m out here now in a more rural area. We already have friends here. We’ve already gone over to people’s houses, people come to our house. 

It’s just an interesting how quickly we’ve made relationship with people here, and I don’t know if it’s necessarily because it’s rural, but it, different places have different feelings. Yeah. And it’s nice to know. That you personally can just make a decision that like, hey, you know what? 

I don’t like the way my community is right now. I’m going to do something to change it. I’m going to start inviting people to get to know one and have fun. I mean, have fun. I think people, volunteer experiences aren’t fun if they don’t provide some respite from the stress of people’s regular lives. If they don’t offer a sense of community, if they don’t provide an area where people can build trust, then people don’t come back. 

If it just feels like a JOB, they don’t come back because it’s like, I have enough of the stress of that in my regular life. So, ha heck no. Okay. We’ll be right back after this break with our discussion of transformative volunteer experiences with Fred Riley and Jackie woven. So don’t go anywhere. We’re going to get more into, uh, social weaving and community weaving. 

We’re going to talk about Jackie’s main street model. We’re going to get a little more specific so folks can walk away with some real takeaways, although you’ve already dropped so many awesome value bombs already, so we’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.  

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Okay, we’re back with our discussion with Fred Riley and Jackie woven about transformative volunteer experiences. Fred, let’s talk about the power of weaving in transformative service. For listeners who are unfamiliar with Weave the Social Fabric project. Talk about weaving and what it is exactly. 

Fred: Yeah. Yeah, so, so I didn’t come up with the name weaving, right. It was here when I took over the role. But David Brooks, the New York Times author and just a really good guy was writing about polarization and sometimes he says doom and gloom and decided he needed to actually do something other than just write to feel his spirits from writing about a lot of the stuff that was happening in the country. 

And so, in 2018, we launched the Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute, and one of the first thing David and the team did was they traveled around the country to around 15 un, not in common cities. So big cities, small towns, rural places, forgotten about Midwestern hamlets. But before they would get there, they would ask three questions. 

Who do you trust? Who shows up for people? Who’s the leader in your neighborhood? Would get to the town and have dinner with about 50 people. And they were all weaving the fabric together of their community. They were people who decided that they weren’t going to wait on anybody else to come solve the problem. 

They were going to do it themselves. They decided that they were going to do it because they lived there and they owed it to that place. And they decided that they were going to bring everybody in their neighborhood and community along and they were going to build relationships. They treat their work almost like a bank where everybody deposits and takes something out of it. 

And so, we started hearing some of the coolest projects from people leading community gardens to people feeding people after a hard day’s work to people really figuring out how to knit back together the culture of. Their neighborhood. And so over the years we have built out a whole resource hub for those people because they come from all different walks of life. 

We figured out how to fund their work. We’re doing a scaling project of our Weaver Awards over the next three years, and we’re going to go to 75 different communities giving out Microgrants to people who are doing work in their neighborhood. We’re doing this all because I often tell people about FDR in his first week in office and how he said, put your money back in banks. 

You can trust me. I fixed the system. Your money is safer there than it is under your mattresses. And the next day, the equivalent of $2 billion showed up in US banks. Now we don’t have leaders like that who I believe can. Could push people to go put money in a system or do action on something. But we do have these neighborhood folks, these neighborhood FDRs, who broker trust, who offer trust, and they are the people who I embedded on who have the potential to help bring together our nation. 

We are often asked, how do I start a weaving project? Or I don’t know how to get started. And so, we launched, uh, what we call is the weaving network, which is using software from a bunch of different volunteer organizations where we go in and hand kind of select weaving opportunities that are local, relational and bill mutuality. 

Right now, they’re about 10,000 on the site. And if you’re looking for an opportunity to go find something to join into, that’s going to help to connect you to your society, go to the Weaver Network. But we’re thinking about how we bring people back together again, and volunteerism or working together in neighborhoods around our country is one of the fastest ways to do it. 

I’m not just saying this because. I think I’m smart, but people like Dr. Ori Crystal, who led the Columbus Trust project talks about this. Kristen Lord, who is now the Vice President of strategic something at Arizona State University, has written about it in the Stanford Innovation Review Journal. Like folks know that services is the way to bring people together, and we are just doing our part by connecting weavers but also trying to figure out how we can push this idea of going an extra step in volunteerism. 

Tobi: Yeah, fantastic. Jackie, let’s talk about transformative service with the Main Street model. How, how do you go about it?  

Jackie: Yeah, so I think there’s about 200 main street communities across America, and for the most part. They’re rural, but not necessarily. There are some in Chicago and cities in California. So, the first thing is just going to mainstreet.org go online and you can find all the cities, right? You probably have one like someone or near you. There is one near you. They’re a great entry point for people to get involved in their community. I’ve never met a person who didn’t want to change something about where they live. Like, I’ve never met a person. I can ask anyone, but what would you change? 

Right. Sometimes it’s really big things, but mostly it’s really small things. Well, I would put a bench here, or I would have a flower garden here, or I would have a free little library. Like it’s, it’s minor things. Or I would like to have community potlucks. Like it’s surprising to me how little it is for the most part. 

And the Main Street group will often, I’m not going to say always because I can’t say that for everybody, but they’re a good entry point for people to get involved right into their community. They’re different than a chamber because they’re not necessarily a membership organization. They’re about downtown placemaking. 

And so, it’s a nice framework. They have four areas that they work on, design, economic development, the organization itself, and promotion. So there’s always. Any project will fit into any of those four points, which is nice. So that that’s easy. That’s the easy part. And if you don’t have one, you could easily make one up. 

All the things about a Main Street organization are free and accessible and online. And if you were just a group of people who wanted to make a difference in your downtown or your community, you could use that same framework that I think a lot of people get stuck on, how do I get started? And they get a really easy way to get started. 

Right? And, I tell people this when I go speak, it’s that if you want a bench, let’s, I use that as an example. Because this is often a thing, a bench, and you don’t know the process. You can’t just put the bench there. Now, I know that your city government might not love that bench, and they may get irritated about the bench and they may remove that bench, but then you’ve talked about the fact that there’s a bench there and need it there, and the city may come back around and put the approved bench, right? 

That can happen, but I would help people who want to do something just do it ask. It’s really a question. It’s the idea of like. Like do it and then ask for forgiveness. Like just do it. Just do the thing. I think we are waiting for someone else to do something, like someone else will fix it and I’m, no one is going to, no one is coming. 

Yeah. We are it. And so, I just, that, that’s why I like the framework, I think, is because I feel like, oh, any project can fit in this and it’s accessible. It doesn’t cost very much for a lot of projects. And if you show success in these small ways, right, that can build upon, I often will coach people or teams in other community’s pick location. Like if you have a downtown, don’t do a bench over here and flowers over here. Do a bench here and a flower here. Right. To show impact. And I just, I love the idea that it’s just like self, you could just do it. Just do it. I don’t know. I just feel like we’re waiting. We don’t need to wait. And all the, I’m sure all the volunteer managers are like, oh, tell her to stop. 

But if you are, let’s just say if I saw in my own community a group of people wanting to do something, instead of me feeling like it’s competition, and I do see this in the nonprofit world. Yes. Right. You feel like, well, I, we’re the right way. It’s very turfy. It can be very turfy. Exactly. I’m going to engage your listeners to let that go and to instead support the initiative. 

One, you look like better people. You don’t look like the jerks that are saying no. Right? You also are empowering people who might come into your organization if you allow the door to open. The minute you tell someone, no, they can’t do it that way. They don’t like you. There’s no, they’re not coming in. 

They’re not coming in to volunteer with you. And it’s like, how, instead could you help them do what they’re doing or just support what they’re doing? And I think that’s kind of our role. Again, we go back to who are, what is our role now as not our, as nonprofit leaders. Our role is to facilitate things happening, not to hold on to how it’s supposed to happen. 

Tobi: Yeah, it’s interesting. So, we have this house, we’re going to be moving here, we live here kind of part-time. When I got here this spring, there’s a stop sign. We’re kind of at the end of the road and it goes down to a T and then it’s a dead end. So, there’s only one way in and out. And it’s all five acre lots and Pacific Northwest. 

So, there’s a lot of like big fir trees and you can’t see everybody house. And I started walking, doing, just walking up and down the road just to get some exercise. And I noticed that in our community, in Knoxville, everybody waves, no matter if you’re like there to do work or you’re there to, everybody waves at everybody. It’s very southern. 

And I noticed here, nobody waves. And I’m like, well, I’m going to start waving. And so, I started waving and now people are waving. So tiny thing. And then the other day. I saw a little signpost it up and it said, we’re doing a community bike ride. Anybody who wants to come, it’s on this day, this time meet here, and you can just throw a party, just throw a party, and you start to get where do you live. 

And I remember on Pie Day my, somebody had stopped by, my husband was walking down the road and around pie day and a neighbor was driving by, and they stopped and they started chatting. And then she said, well, why don’t you come to our house and for pie day, here’s where we live. And we just went down and he said, do you want to come? 

And I said, okay, I don’t know these people. They’re way back in the woods. And we’re driving back there and I’m like, oh, this is strange. And we had a great time. And so, and I’m pretty sure we don’t vote the same and all that but doesn’t matter because we’re in a community and we need to support one another. 

So, I think on the, first, not to be afraid, just do something. But also, as a participant, if you see an opportunity, take advantage of it. Even if it makes you nervous. Yeah. Because it’s a matter of survival. You need to make; you need to have relationships with people in your community. I see that.  

Jackie: What I’m seeing is people are thin on time, and you know, just thin on time. Or also they don’t, like, they can’t go across that threshold. It feels like there’s something that’s a block to go through that threshold. So, someone’s having a bike ride, right. And it’s like, for some reason there’s some, like, I didn’t start it. I don’t know the people. I would love to have an experiment where like for a month we all just decided that when we saw a thing, we were just going to go do the thing. 

Just go do it. Say yes. What harm is it? Say yes. Yeah, just say yes and then you don’t like it. You don’t have to go back. It’s not that big a deal, right? It’s not, yeah. I just feel like a little bit of trust to just try something and I do think this is like a post pandemic thing. I think we’re still in that place where we’re not quite trusting about going and doing and so having a little bit of fun around that with your friends or your community to say, Hey, we’re going to just say yes to somebody else’s thing, might be really move the needle in a way that would not have moved it before. 

Tobi: Yeah. And you will be surprised having done this a few times, you will be pleasantly surprised. If you’re in conversation with people, you will find similarities. You will find things in common because we’re human. Everybody loves their kids, or most people do, or their pets. Everybody wants the best or their pets or whatever. 

So, it’s not that hard to find things in common. So anyway, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for coming today. Before we wrap up. Fred Jackie, first, what is one thing you’re excited about in the year ahead? This is like a question I ask every interviewee guest.  

Fred: Well, I was going to, I’m trying to be more human, so I won’t say anything work related, but in a couple of weeks I am leaving for a three-week vacation. I’m going to go first. I’m going to land in Naughty Fiji to see my kid who’s there in his first year in the Peace Corps. We’re going to tour Australia in Vietnam. Oh, fantastic. And I am like over the moon, excited to see his little face. He’s grown up so much over the year and I am so excited to see how he’s becoming a better human through the service he’s doing in the Peace Corps over in Fiji. That’s what I’m most excited about.  

Tobi: Really exciting. Jackie, what about you?  

Jackie: I’m super excited about my 30 somethings. Honestly, I love working with them. I love being with them. I’m 55 and I feel like they help me stay fresh. I just love this opportunity to be with people who are younger than me and I just love to see them be successful and what they’re in places that I’ve already been, right? And I don’t have to say anything. I can just watch and enjoy them being in that place. And I just, I am still tickled by it, and I think I’ll be tickled by it for a long time.  

Tobi: Awesome. Awesome. So, one last thing is before we wrap up, Jackie, where can people get in touch with you?  

Jackie: Uh, well mainstreet.org You can find, always find me there. It’s my phone number. That’s the phone number for the organization. So, you know, you want to get ahold of me. That’s that I cannot hide. 

Tobi: Fred, what about you? How can people get ahold of you?  

Fred: Weavers.org. I mean, all those are good ways to get in contact with us. I just would like to leave. Can I add one thing that I think folks should think about? Yes. I think that we are in a place where we, it’s hard to build trust, but it is easy to impress culture and what you all just said earlier, Tobi waving at people and now everybody’s waving. I always leave people with three things. If you are looking for something that’s low bandwidth to do, when you leave out in the morning or in the evening, look somebody in the eye and say, good morning. Hello. Good evening.  

It can change the entire day or trajectory of a person, a middle size entryway knock on the door of a neighbor and invite them over for coffee or tea and sit outside and just have a conversation if you don’t know them, it is an easy way to get to know somebody and to. Build some commonality with somebody who lives in proximity. The third thing is to find something to get involved with in your community. 

It is not only a pathway to build trust, but it also helps us to live longer. It makes us healthier, but it also helps to build trust. And I think if everybody in our country is doing one of those three things, it’s an entryway to really connect the disconnected country. And I push those everywhere I go. 

Tobi: Fantastic. On that, y’all, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for joining us here and to our audience. If you know anybody who could use a little inspiration, thinking about community, thinking about transformative service experiences, thinking about weaving, thinking about Main Street, any of this, please share this episode with them. And as always, we would love a rating and a review. We like those five-star ratings.