A Family For Every Child
Internship / Volunteer positions
Last updated 1/17/2011
Please contact Bethany at bethany@afamilyforeverychild.org for specific instructions
You will need to fill out one or more of these according to your responsibilities:
Online Volunteer Application
Release of Liability
Confidentiality Agreement
Volunteer Time Sheet
Background Check Form
A Family For Every Child/Heart Gallery is looking for a dedicated passionate person to help further the goals of our organization. We are primarily a Volunteer organization. We are only limited in our ability to change the lives of Oregon's Foster children, by the amount of dedicated volunteers/Interns we have.
We need you! Please look at our Volunteer (most positions could also be designed to fit the criteria of an intern role) needs below and see if we might be a good fit for you? You may be able to Coordinate or do one task with in a group, either is welcome and needed.
Our mission is to find loving, permanent families for waiting foster children. As a non-profit our work takes hundreds of volunteer hours, without these amazing people our work would not be a success! We value each and every one of our volunteers and cannot thank you enough for your thoughtful consideration.
With that being said we have several needs at this time.
Submission Team:
We send nearly 700 home studies each month to various caseworkers for families who are waiting to be selected. To do this it takes many volunteer hours from people who can pay attention to detail and are able to email and attach files. This position takes someone who is able to come to our office and can range anywhere from 3 to 20 hours a week, depending on your availability. While this work takes a lot of time it is highly rewarding, especially when you get to see a family chosen for a child!
Office Assistance:
We are in need of a few people who can assist with filing, answering phones, checking references and other various tasks. All training will be provided. This person would ideally be able to volunteer 2 – 5 hours per week.
Child Listing Specialists:
We are currently working to partner with several other states and their photo listing agencies to list more children on our public and non-public sites. We are currently in need of several volunteers who would be willing to help list children in our database and on our sites. While this may sound as though it’s a difficult task, all training is provided and only requires an ability to pay attention to detail. Any number of hours would be great for this position.
Venue Volunteers:
Another tool we use for recruiting for children is our local venues. You may have seen these around the area (if you reside in Oregon). We display photos of available and waiting children with bio information in restaurants, doctors and dentist’s offices, airports, grocery stores and the like. We are currently in need of several venue volunteers in the Eugene and surrounding area. All photos and needs are supplied by our organization. This basically consists of picking up your new photos, going to the venue and swapping them out with the old.
Foster Support Meeting Volunteer:
Twice a month we hold meetings at Boys and Girls Aide for current foster families. We would love to have one or two volunteers that would commit to spending time with the kids while their foster parents are in support meetings. It would be ideal to have college age volunteers who are willing to play with and support these kids. The meetings are generally two hours and are on every other Thursday evening.
Volunteer Family Adoption Specialists:
We have a Matching Assistance Program that partners with families that are currently in the adoption process. This program is geared towards families who have not yet had a placement and have been in the process for a year or longer. The goal of this program and the task of the Family Adoption Specialist is to walk alongside families in their journey. Give them feedback on their family profile page, perform child searches for them, correspond with caseworkers and their behalf and surround them with resources and encouragement. While this may sound as a though it’s a difficult position please note that all training is provided by our organization and requires only that you are consistent and compassionate. If you excel in communicating, following up and have the capacity to give 5 hours a week per family we would love to have you. We ask for a 6 month commitment as families need as much consistency as possible.
Volunteers are needed to help reconnect foster children with those they love and those who have loved them.
The Family Finding model offers methods and strategies to locate and engage relatives of children living in foster care. The goal of Family Finding is to provide each child with the lifelong connections that only a family can offer. Family Finding volunteers work closely with caseworkers. They perform file mining, make phone calls, and search the internet for relatives or other meaningful people in the child’s life. While each case is different, the typical case takes approximately three months to complete, and 5-10 hours a month in phone calls and research.
If you like playing detective, than this is the position for you! Most roles can be performed from a distance and we provide all training – even for those volunteers who are not local!
Current needs:
- Spanish speaking volunteer: We are in need of a Spanish speaking volunteer and have deserving children waiting for the right person! Family Finding volunteers work closely with caseworkers. They perform file mining, make phone calls, and search the internet for relatives or other meaningful people in the child's life. While each case is different, the typical case takes approximately three months to complete, and approximately 5-10 hours a month in phone calls and research. All training is provided. This volunteer does NOT need to be local.
- Follow-up volunteer: This volunteer follows up on cases after the children have been reconnected with their loved ones. Follow-ups consist of phone calls and data entry. Follow-ups are made in 3, 6, 9, and 12 month intervals. All training is provided. This volunteer does NOT need to be local.
- Family Finding Expert needed to learn and perform Genograms on our Family Finding Cases. We will supply the program, but will need a volunteer, distance or local, that can learn it and perform this tool on our cases for us.
- Volunteers can perform one or all of the functions. File mining can only be performed at local DHS offices, but internet research, phone calls, and engaging loved ones can be done from near or far, from any of the 50 United States. All volunteers need to pass background checks prior to starting any cases.
Please let us know if you are interested, and we can get you involved in this very innovative way to not only get kids out of foster care but reconnect them to lost loved ones.
Please contact:
Laura L Follett
(541) 343-2856 | FAX (541) 343-2866
Laura.Follett@afamilyforeverychild.org
Recruitment Family Liaison Coordinator
This position would include:
- Act as a “Family Liaison” for Oregon Families in our database
- Input Oregon family inquiries into database
- Send questionnaire to Oregon families in our database
- Schedule and conduct Oregon family interviews and possibly home visits where applicable
- Send out “Urgent Need for Families” emails to above families
- Document all Recruitment Efforts for Process Binder Run prospective parent reports for kids that have been on our site the longest
- Develop Home Study Request emails for above children to be sent out to emails on the generated reports
- Assist in generating statistics for families and children in our database
Recruitment Coordinator
This position would include:
- Create/Find “filler” pieces for Family Matters Newsletter for 2009 Calendar
- Document all Recruitment Efforts for Process Binder (so it can be duplicated in other parts of the state)
- Run prospective parent reports for kids that have been on our site the longest
- Develop Home Study Request emails for above children to be sent out to emails on the generated reports
- Assist in generating statistics for families and children in our database
- Adoption Inquiry Specialists
Submission Team member—3-20 hours a week
We get upwards of 300 adoption inquiries from our website each month and need regular, dependable, committed volunteers to assist us in supporting families through the adoption inquiry and Home Study submission process
Matching Assistance Program---
We have a new Matching assistance program, it is our newest program. We have a director, but there are many elements to it, such as, marketing to Parents, Marketing to Case workers, and Agencies. There are also roles in reaching out to other photo listings and building relationships to photo list their kids. Here are a few options. We would love to have you join our team.
Web Listing Volunteer
(Best if done an hour a day, may be less, needs regular attention)
Adding children into our Web data base, editing as a child’s status changes, updating picture, adding media links etc… Checking Monthly to keep children updated on the web, by comparing other sites.
Web Page/writing Volunteer—
Any hours you have to offer
Research, write and compile info for us to link and paste on our Web pages, especially those on the Log on site that have “coming soon” on them.
Web Process Volunteer
Any available time
Signing on to our new log on site and acting as a family, writing script and suggestions that will help our site be more user friendly for families. Help to create Web forms and other ways to assist families. Help to develop RSS feed tools, Twitter feeds and other ways families can get immediate info on children they are interested in adopting.
Newsletter Volunteer
3 newsletters a week, 1-2 hours a newsletter
Using our outreach tool-Constant Contact-build templates for newsletters and outreach tools. Create 3 newsletters a week as well odds and ends announcements and email outreach for recruitment. (Possible Newsletters themes—Kids in need—Resources—Sites to visit – Articles and updates on adoption.
Volunteer Adoption Specialist-
Would like each volunteer specialist to take on a # of families to represent and work with-5-10 hours a week. Because of the training involved we ask you to be able to commit to 6 months.
Have you wanted to be an Adoption worker? Did you and your family struggle through the process and wish you had a liaison to assist you? Now is your chance to do that for another family. We will train you, provide materials and guidance to assist other families, help them create bio page, search for children, submit their studies, follow up with workers for them, and help build families.
Matching Admin. Volunteer-
Any number of hours a week to assist with foundational support for the program and Director.
Help creating a program process binder, filing, data entry, outreach, faxing, scanning, creating check lists, helping with processes, Researching current programs in place in other states , Create materials and forms needed
Child Specialist –
Same as Child specialist above- several hours week over several days
Add kids to our data base, make sure all need fields are checked, photo is added, remove children as needed.
Child Outreach Role-
Any number of hours you have
Contacting and building relationships with other photo listings to try and link each other, photo list their kids, build partnerships to help each other recruit for more kids.
Program outreach-
Any number of hours a week you have.
Send our flyers, emails, materials to promote the Matching assistance program, link partner sites, share hour message about the program with Agencies, Adoption workers, Parent groups and Potential parent.
Targeted Email Outreach for families on specific children in urgent need of placement-
Several hours a week-once you do an email, there will be a few hours spend responding and submitting on children for potential families. Each email is approx. 1 hour to prepare and 2 hours to respond.
This is our most important role, the more you do it the better and faster you will get. Involves really understanding and using our data base. We get “urgent” requests from case workers for placement on children, this we see as an opportunity for us to get families in front of case workers. We go into our data base of over 5000 families, do a search on families that would be a good fit for these children (2 parent, open to older kids, a certain age group, race etc..), then we send an email with the child’s info and ask if they would consider this child and submit their study on them, then we send their studies in to the case worker. We can often get 20 plus families in 24 hours.
Research Volunteer—
Any hours you have
Researching training, articles, support, state-by-state info for our web, family support materials and notebooks, newsletters and etc…
Matching Assistant Submission Team-
Any number of hours, does require computer skills and a fair amount of training
Submitting the home studies to case workers on children, all computer data base work
Assess/Evaluate Families Readiness-
2-3 hours per family
Evaluate a families registration with the program, evaluate their home study, recommend needed items to add or build into their bio page, evaluate for up to date, make recommendations on when and what to do to stay current and competitive.
Matching assistance Search and Match specialist-
5 hours a week
Search for Parents on kids that we list, send Case workers a serious of bio lines on families of results of search.
Survey & Evaluation Volunteer-
Any number of hours
Outreach to our families, how can we do more? What is most helpful? What is not? Survey and check in with families to help us improve our program
Scholarship program-
Project-help us build and run a Scholarship program for families that can’t afford the monthly fee
Funding Expert-
Any number of hours
Reach out to funding sources, grants, donors, and fundraising options
Matching assistance Blog, Form, Bulletin board-
Any number of hours
Help us develop information sharing tools for our log on matching assistance program.
National Web Site Outreach
- National website outreach
- Heart Gallery of America website
- AdoptUSKids website
- Develop list of Specialty Agencies Nations wide
- Developing relationships with other photo listings for our children
Web Site—Outreach
- We need a volunteer to reach out to businesses, organizations and web sites to link us and to feature our waiting children weekly and/or monthly. This could be done from home with some simply verbiage and AFFEC flyers.
HEART GALLERY
Heart Gallery Expansion Coordinator
This position would include:
- Statewide outreach for Photographers and Videographers
- Statewide outreach for possible gallery venues/vendors/volunteers, etc
- Statewide outreach for resources (printing, frames, brochure holders, easels, banners, etc)
- Creation of a Heart Gallery Start-up binder
- Process Documentation
- Assist in maintaining Gateway and VRC Galleries
- Assist in organization of storage (photos, frames, matt board, supplies, etc) to create sample for other sites
- Document gallery set-up, storage of equipment, etc with photos/video to be used as samples
Photographer/Videographer Coordinator
- Outreach--Connecting-processing Photographers from all over the state
- Scheduling photo sessions, following up, processing images once completed
Business Advocate (part of the Heart Gallery Venues)
- We have started a Business Advocate effort--Where we are offering business the opportunity to high light a child in their place of business, on an easel, or as a window display to do some specific recruitment for the harder to place children. I have one person that is working on this, but, can see (because of the immediate interest) that she could use a partner. It is a creative way of displaying children. We have VRC, GATEWAY, and 5 Th Street Market committed to Window space, hopefully on an ongoing moving basis. So if you have a creative, artsy flare, this might be your strength
Faith-Based Heart Gallery Coordinator
This position would include:
- Scheduling exhibits for our 2009 Faith-Based Heart Gallery calendar
- Sending letters to prospective faith-based sites
- Coordinating site set-up prior to exhibits
- Helping with exhibit set-up
- Maintaining brochure inventory
- Attending one Sunday a month as an Exhibit Host
- Following up with sites after an exhibit (thank you letter, rescheduling for next year, etc)
- Soliciting donations for needed supplies (frames, easels, picture stands, brochure holders, etc)
- Data-entry of all of the above
- Creation of a Process Binder for all of the above (so we can duplicate this program in other parts of the state)
Heart Gallery Faith-Based Host
- 2-3 hours per week (Sundays)
Our Heart Gallery photos are on display each month at a different local church. Sunday morning greeters are needed to attend the display where the display is showing. Duties include: directing viewers to the Heart Gallery literature, making sure the exhibit is in good order, and noting any questions to be passed on to AFFEC employees, etc.
Heart Gallery Setup
- 3-4 hours per month (Weekdays)
Help move the Heart Gallery exhibits to a different local church or other venues 1-2 times per month, typically on a weekday. Assistance is needed transporting easels and photographs, etc. Use of a vehicle is helpful.
Easel Builders—We are always in need of new Easels for our venues
Frame repair and/or collecting Frames for our venues at Garage Sales and other sources.
Graphic Design Coordinator
This position would include:
- Flyer Creation (examples below)
- In-Kind Donations Flyer
- Annual Event Flyer
- Princess Event Flyer
- Orientation Flyer
- Slideshow Creation
- Video Editing
- Photo Editing
- Powerpoint Creation
- Creative Photo display-We have some wonderful photo pieces that include the photo and child's bio all in one frame and we would love to have these duplicated for variety in our Heart Gallery exhibits. This could be an on-going project
Family Building Program Coordinator
This position would include:
- Organize the 2009/2010 Calendar
- Line up speakers for the Family Building Trainings
- Research, document and contact services and resources for families
- Make above information available on the AFFEC website
- Trainings by county list on AFFEC website
- Manage the Family Building email outreach through Constant Contacts
More Family Building--We are still looking for dedicated folks to work on our Family Building program, we have the opportunity to impact, the pre adopt drop off rate of families starting out and the post adoption disruption rate of kids and families after placement. We are exploring different ways to support and train families, we have many ideas and volunteers but need a few good over-seers.
- Within this Program we have different area's that can be coordinated by different people that will work as a team:
- Kids Support Group
- Waiting Training's for Families
- Meet and Greet Coordinator
- Recruiting families and Mentor Families
- Developing Support Groups for Families
- Researching Services available to Families for us to put on our web site.
- Researching information about Subsidies available in the state of Oregon for the web site.
- Two additional Support options:
- Party Planner for a kid friendly support group-- This would be finding a location for kids to meet and discuss their needs and issues regarding adoption and assimilating into their new family. We hope to get kid friendly location, but, still able to meet quietly as well, to donate their locations or some food for these once a month group meetings.
- Training's-- Perhaps you have the ability to Train or hold a class in something that may benefit a new adoptive family or one just starting the process. Think outside the box, perhaps you could hold a class on Scrap booking as part of the child's Welcome home album, or Life book. Perhaps you have a special skill in
- video or power point
Volunteer Driver Program Coordinator
This position would include:
- Researching current programs in place in other parts of the state (also, DHS program)
- Designing the program
- Creating a Process Binder (so the program could be duplicated in other parts of the state)
- Create all materials and forms needed
- Background check process and get clearance
- Develop training
- Develop recruitment process
- Develop marketing materials and avenues of distribution
Respite Program
This position would include:
- Researching current programs in place in other parts of the state (also, DHS program)
- Designing the program
- Creating a Process Binder (so the program could be duplicated in other parts of the state)
- Create all materials and forms needed
- Background check process and get clearance
- Develop training
- Develop recruitment process
- Develop marketing materials and avenues of distribution
Foster-to-Adopt Program Coordinator
This position would include:
- Developing and documenting a process
- Creating a Program Process Binder (so the program can be duplicated in other parts of the state)
- Coordinating email outreach (in Constant Contacts)
- Uploading information on AFFEC website
- Bi-Monthly Recruitment Flyer
- Sales force Database Management
- Finding stock photos for website and writing and recording Child Bios
- Status updates
Communications Coordinator
This position would include:
- Become a Constant Contacts Expert
- Create a Constant Contacts user’s manual (so the process can be duplicated in other parts of the state)
- Manage AFFEC constant contacts email schedule
- Promote trainings, orientations, etc
- Create surveys that can be sent out to the different segments of our database
- Establish contact with identified media orgs around the state
- Write Press Releases
- Manage our Blog/Social Networking Sites (Ning, Facebook, My Space)
Donations and Events Coordinator
This position would include:
- Manage and solicit In-kind donation request process
- Solicit “Monthly Gift Card” requests
- Create Forms and flyers for Donation requests, thank you letters, etc
- Data Entry Management for above items in Sales force
- Work closely with Executive Director to begin process for Annual Event
- Create Donation and Events Process Binders
- In-kind Donations Coordinator
In-Kind Donations
We are looking for someone to head up our In-kind Donations. Duties would include applying for monthly donated gift cards from local businesses, soliciting food donations for meetings, trainings and pop-up events, and requesting items from our department wish lists.
Events:
Princess Event—Need a coordinator and committee to make this special day happen
Open House-Annual Event—Need a coordinator and committee
Mentor Program Coordinator
This position would include:
- Data Entry Management for e-mails and monthly reports in Sales force
- Assist in generating statistics/reports for families and children in our database
- Participate and implement volunteer orientation and training sessions
- Complete reference checks
- Develop new relationships with groups that are potential sources of volunteers.
- Soliciting donations for needed supplies (paper, printing supplies, folders, etc)
We are also looking for help with our mentor program, we have a very exciting program to teach Independent Living Skills and would love to have volunteers help gather information and write very general guidelines, you don't need to be an expert, and you don't need to teach the class, just help us gather information about an ILP skill and help us to create an outline, we will give you plenty of examples.
Be a Mentor! You must be at least 21 years old and complete the Heart Gallery Mentor Program Application Process. There is no limit on the age. The youth we service are in foster care and range in age from 12-21. They need any person that is willing to commit and dedicate to them. Mentors are all ages and consist of business people, stay at home moms, families, single people, college students, retired people, grandparents, as long as you have a desire and dedication to youth and are able to complete our Heart Gallery Mentor Program Application Process that is all it takes.
We are really needing Male mentors!
Family Finding Department Support- flexible number of hours a week
- Family Finding Department needs a volunteer familiar with the Family Finding process to assist with administrative project
- Family Finding Volunteers—To Work Cases--How you can get involved:
- Join a search team
- Work closely with caseworkers
- Make phone calls
- Build family trees
- Search the internet for lost relatives
- Create positive supportive family connections for isolated foster children
Administrative Assistant--Flexible number of hours per week
Duties would include: filing, answering phone calls, sending and receiving faxes, data entries, mailings, making copies, scanning documents, creation of training packets, etc.
Reference Checker
- 4-6 hours per month
Each of our departments is in need of volunteers willing to make reference calls.
Appreciate Coordinator—
- Do the important work, sends thank-you's to our sponsors/donors/supporters, birthday cards and gifts if possible to our kids, recognizes volunteer’s birthdays and work effort and so on.
- Notify the Portrait sponsors when their child is placed, and when a new one goes in. Updating local business on the contribution they have made.
Volunteer Coordinator
Oversees the recruiting, interviewing, hiring, training, and scheduling of volunteer workers. Ensures that the activities of the volunteer workers meet the needs of the organization. Relies on experience and judgment to plan and accomplish goals. Performs a variety of tasks. Leads and directs the work of others. A wide degree of creativity and latitude is expected. Typically reports to a supervisor or manager.
Data Base Expert—We use Salesforce.com, and could use a volunteer that would specialize in using this tool and all its partners to the capability we need.
- There are many options for add-on programs, researching them and implementing them and then training our staff to use them.
Phone Volunteer—We are always in need of volunteers to help answer our phones, training will be provided.
Web Volunteer—
- Email newsletters
- Resizing images
- Proofing web pages
- Building resources/training and links for our web page
- Writing bio’s
- Working on our web page—building more web pages, enhancing what we already have.
- Building Web forms
- Build Spanish pages
- Expand Volunteer and Employment area
Marketing & Public Relations Coordinator
Volunteer/Internship Opportunity
Summary of intern responsibilities:
The Marketing & Public Relations Coordinator will be responsible for creation of ads, flyers, and other marketing materials for distribution and promotion of upcoming community events. The intern will be working closely with the Development Director to and relay event information to the media via social network, and communicate with existing donor and media database contacts. Other duties will include some administrative tasks, and assisting Development Director and Board members as needed.
Responsibilities include:
- Develop and produce messages that communicate the value of the agency, A Family for Every child: Heart Galleries of Lane County
- Attend Fund Development Committee meetings
- Help with agenda and implementation of volunteer events
- Attend department brainstorming sessions, create and distribute marketing materials
- Represent, "A Family for Every Child: Heart Gallery" at service club meetings as public speaker and guest
- Create monthly update info for staff and volunteers
- Assist with keeping agency website updated on the media page
- Help recruit and maintain communications with volunteer committees
- Other as discussed and defined based upon interns goals and objectives
Skills needed:
- Creative and outgoing, energetic
- Writing and composition
- Work independently from the team
- Organization and time management
- Currently enrolled as Junior or Senior
- Knowledge of Twitter, Face book, and other social media applications
Other volunteer opportunities in the Development Department:
Research Assistant
Grant Writer (Beginning)
Fund Development Strategy
Events Coordinator
Organization Development – department volunteer training and incentive program development
Community Outreach Coordinator
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Misc….. |
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Legislator/politician Outreach
Because we are a 501c we cannot indorse or back any one policing. But, we think it would be in our favor to have a volunteer that is reaching out to likeminded politicians, obtaining their emails for our newsletters and educating them on whom we are. Also, educating themselves on the different issues and people that we need to be connected to in this realm. Someone that has an interest in politics and legislator would be a natural fit.
General Awareness Campaign "Why Not Me"--This is a smaller traveling foam core show that we are hoping to have circulate the community at different festivals, conventions, and small venues. We need people to man booths as well as someone to coordinate this effort.
This can also include many other kinds of "Why Not Me" outreach, such as, billboards, bus sides, sports field signs, lawn signs, posters and so on!
