Up North, Help Begins with a ‘V’

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Every holiday season, the Duluth Salvation Army needs 3,548 volunteer bell ringers to cover the hours and places available for its donation kettles. Each hour at a kettle can generate about $56; one hour of bell ringing feeds 38 people a hot meal.

Conversely, one hour without a bell-ringing volunteer means 38 fewer meals.

The Duluth Salvation Army knows the importance of volunteers.

Grandma’s Marathon Race Director Bill Brown has about 5,000 volunteer T-shirts printed up every year for the June races. He needs to fill every one of them to make the multimillion-dollar marathon and its related events a success.

“When I say I couldn’t do without them, it’s because I can’t,” Bill says, listing servers at the spaghetti dinner, racecourse aides and medical-tent staff among the thousands of jobs volunteers perform. Himself a former 10-year volunteer at the start of the half-marathon, Bill certainly knows the importance of volunteers.

Many of the events, activities and charities we hold most dear Up North depend on people willing to give freely of their time to help others.

There’s no question that volunteers bring skills and energy that benefit local organizations and people, but volunteers will tell you that they, too, reap benefits in the people they meet, the satisfaction of helping their communities and, in some cases, by learning new skills. It also gives people a chance to network with other volunteers, which may help later with job connections or broaden their friendship circles.

While our Lake Superior region offers plenty of traditional ways to volunteer – visiting hospital patients, coaching kids, serving meals at the soup kitchen or ringing those bells – we also have needs specific to our unique neighborhood, like helping with dog sled races, maintaining snowmobile, skiing and hiking trails and helping at the maritime museums sprinkled around the Lake.

The most satisfying, long-lasting matches of volunteers to service comes when people find causes about which they are passionate or places where their particular skills are best used, says Cheryl Linklater Halverson, manager of Volunteers Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario. Her organization, a division of United Way, offers programs to teach organizations the best ways to recruit, train and honor volunteers.

For people looking to get involved, the broad connections of the United Way can be a great way to connect individuals with agencies.

The Copper Country United Way in Houghton, Michigan, and almost all of its 15 partner agencies keep costs manageable with volunteers, who mentor children with UP Kids, work on crisis lines or help in times of emergency with the American Red Cross and Salvation Army.

“I think our volunteers see the benefit of having free or low-cost support and services in the community,” says Lori Weir, who volunteers as treasurer for the Copper Country United Way board. “Many have been on the receiving end and want to give back because of the help they received.”

Volunteers leave lasting legacies. Maggie Munch, program director for Big Brothers Big Sisters in Houghton, Michigan, volunteered as “big sister” for seven years and still keeps in touch with her “little sister.”

When Maggie first volunteered, she was working full time, attending graduate school and under a lot of stress. Devoting a few hours to someone else “was a wonderful opportunity to spend some time with her each week and focus on her.”

Maggie wanted to help a youngster, but as the experience unfolded, the relationship evolved. “You enter into it thinking you’re going to help a child, be an additional caring person in someone’s life, and then you realize you have another caring person in your life.”

Businesses recognize the benefits, too. Some pay employees while they volunteer or set aside days for work on a service project. For example, Enbridge in Superior and Minnesota Power in Duluth have had employees work on Minnesota’s Superior Hiking Trail. US Bank gives employees paid time off to help at places like Life House in Duluth, paying 8 hours to volunteer for new and up to 16 hours for longtime employees.

Maurices, a fashion retail company headquartered in Duluth and with 950 stores in the United States and Canada, organizes a “Best Day Ever” campaign each year in its home city. The company closes its office for a day and sends out its 450 local employees to purchase suggested items for charities or to do charitable acts, such as serving lunches for those in need. Sometimes they just randomly give away things to brighten people’s day – like this year’s gas gift card asking people to “Pay It Forward.”

The company understands the importance of volunteering. “It builds pride and engagement in the brand, especially with our millennial generation. … We know it’s really a passion of all our associates. We’re helping to feed into that,” says Laura Sieger, the associate vice president who oversees such activities, which helps the company’s recruiting, retention and job satisfaction.

Some people want to “give back” even on vacation, creating an intriguing blend of travel with volunteering. Voluntourism better connects visitors to locations they already love or want to sample.

The Apostle Islands Sled Dog Race has offered a voluntourism package for 10 years. About one-fifth of the 100 people who volunteer at the annual event are voluntourists, coming from all over the Midwest. They pay for their stay, but get a close-up contact with people (and pups) that they enjoy.

“We take care of all the details,” says Kelley Linehan, marketing and events manager for the Bayfield Chamber and Visitor Bureau. “Lodging, meals, tickets to special events. They don’t have to worry about any of the details at all. They can come in and enjoy the experience from start to finish.”

Voluntourists at the race get VIP treatment, says Kelley, including tickets to the Meet the Musher dinner on Friday night.

Residents remain the base for help. “Local volunteers know to bring their cold weather gear. … They’re ready to dive right into the experience. … Almost everyone in the community takes part in it. It becomes a social event – everybody comes together year after year to see their old friends, make new friends. People bring their friends from outside the community, and they become a part of it.”

Duluthian Jean Vincent can’t get enough of volunteering. She’s donated time to the March of Dimes and Relay for Life, to local events like Bentleyville “Tour of Lights,” to the Empty Bowl project supporting food shelves, and has worked a water station at Grandma’s Marathon. She currently devotes most of her volunteer time to the Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon.

She craves the activity, meeting people and has a philosophic motivation: “I really do believe that our real purpose is to be of service to others, whether it’s at a foot race, an organization or event for a cause, or on a one-to-one basis. It is true what they say, that you can’t be thinking too much of yourself when you are thinking of others.”

Around the Big Lake region, volunteer coordinators see a particularly uplifting trend – youths and young professionals who want to be involved. Regional universities tap that interest, investing in resources to match students to community needs.

“Students do a lot of volunteer work and it’s encouraged as a part of our campus culture,” says Lois Blau, director of the chemistry learning center at Michigan Technological University in Houghton.

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Courtesy NMU Volunteer Center

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Northern Michigan University students in Marquette help do repair work on the home of a local World War II veteran.

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Courtesy NMU Volunteer Center

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NMU students also help during the Special Olympics.

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Courtesy NMU Volunteer Center

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Other volunteers make bag lunches for needy school children to take home over the weekends.

That sentiment echoes at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. “It’s just part of the culture, it’s the expectation that you’ll do it,” says Rachel Harris, director of NMU’s Center for Student Enrichment.

The NMU Volunteer Center, part of the enrichment center, links students and residents to local organizations and activities like the UP Special Olympics Winter Games or building a Habitat for Humanity home.

At NMU, the national community service day in October usually draws up to 1,200 students and helps more than 200 people in Marquette County. “A lot of students will do Make a Difference Day on campus,” says Madison Macek, a NMU senior and a volunteer center coordinator. “We contact different community members – some of them elderly or disabled – and send groups of students out to help them rake their yards and get ready for winter.”  

For the last three years, NMU volunteers have helped to restore veterans’ homes. The four-day repair and paint project on a World War II veteran’s home attracted student volunteers, including the NMU Constructors from the construction management program. An application to Wells Fargo bank netted a grant requiring 60 community service hours – which Wells Fargo employees helped to fulfill. Working in morning and afternoon shifts, crews of 10 to 20 painted inside and out, and installed a new deck and safety railings.

Rachel echoed many who give service when she said the volunteers get as good as they give. “You go and you give your time, but you leave fulfilled and happier. That’s what we’re teaching our students … and hopefully when they leave Northern, they’ll be good community citizens.”

People of all ages, it seems, know the importance of volunteers.

Voices of Volunteers

Rick Youmans of Duluth gives his time to work on the Superior Hiking Trail, something he uses frequently. “Last year we created new trail – that was really exciting. We would carry in lumber and create little bridges of 2x8s on lower areas on the trail. We built a foundation below them and nailed it all together so people don’t have to go through swamps. Cutting trail through the new part is really unique. You’re working and doing something that thousands of people use every year.”

Rebecca Cross of Thunder Bay makes volunteering a family affair. Her two teen daughters join her at their church nursery, and her husband serves with her at the Northwestern Ontario science fair, in which her oldest daughter has participated. Her youngest daughter loves dog sledding, so they all went to see the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon. The event inspired them to give time to that and to help a Thunder Bay musher. “We thought, this is a really cool organization – how can we help out?” Rebecca says. “We’re modeling for our kids.”

Charly Ray’s experience with his own sled dogs makes him an ideal volunteer for the “Lead Hookers in the Poop Chute” at Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands Sled Dog Race. He runs the starting line and pulls out brake hooks to launch the teams from the starting chute. It can be very exciting. Once a musher was thrown from her sled at the start. The dogs took off, dragging Charly who was holding onto the brake hook. He flipped the hook into the snow and stopped the team. “There is usually something that goes nuts at some point on the starting line.”

Eileen Headrick of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, has filled many volunteer roles in the past four decades. She helped to start a support group for those with the neurodegenerative disease known as ALS and has worked on the United Way fall fair. Five years ago, she started a program to bring in volunteers to provide free tax service for the seniors in her building. She still serves as a caregiver at nursing homes. “People appreciate this little bit of kindness. It makes me feel better if I can help somebody smile.”

How to Find Volunteer Opportunities in Your Area

Looking for a way to volunteer? Cheryl Linklater Halverson of Volunteers Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario has tips about connecting to the right volunteer opportunity. She recommends attending an event such as their annual Volunteer Fall Fair where you can talk to volunteers from different organizations.

She also suggests checking the website or Facebook page of any event or organization that you might like to help, and then making an appointment to meet with the volunteer coordinator. “You’ll know if you’re going to feel comfortable volunteering with them when you do the face-to-face.”

Cheryl reminds volunteers, “It’s your time – you make the commitment for what you’re going to work into your schedule. As the manager of volunteerism, I don’t want to see volunteers burned out. I want to see them have fun and enjoy it.”

The United Way is a terrific place to start because it links to so many other organizations. The local Salvation Army especially needs help at Christmastime. Or you may find ways to help on your city’s website. Duluth, for example, lists volunteer needs for its parks. Wherever you look, you’re likely to find a need for your help.

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Duluthian Felicia Schneiderhan volunteers at her children’s preschool, Promise Preschool.