Three area organizations announced a partnership to help nonprofits flourish in the future by putting a new spin on a past program.
The Scranton Area Community Foundation, Leadership Lackawanna, and United Way of Lackawanna, Wayne and Pike Counites this month launched Board Match — a new regional initiative designed to connect talented, community-minded individuals with nonprofit organizations seeking board and committee members.
Board Match creates a two-way connection by helping individuals find meaningful opportunities to put their skills, experience and interests to work in the community while helping nonprofit organizations identify engaged leaders who can strengthen their boards and advance their missions, Scranton Area Community Foundation officials said.
Nicole Morristell, executive director of Leadership Lackawanna, noted the collaboration began after leaders from each of the groups realized they were individually working toward the same goal.
“We spent about a year talking it through,” she said. “Something very similar to this concept was started in 1989 by the Leadership Lackawanna class.”
At that time, the Board Bank created through the Voluntary Action Center of Northeastern Pennsylvania sought to connect community members — who were seeking to serve — with nonprofits.
“Back then, you used paper and pencil, and filled out applications, and then someone would look at the actual application and manually call you on the phone,” Morristell said. “Fast forward, it’s electronic and we have partners, but there is a need now more than ever. A lot of nonprofits need volunteers, and we’re hearing, over and over, that volunteers want to get involved, they just don’t know how.”
Now, the process for connecting qualified people with groups seeking leaders has been simplified.
“You fill out the form based on your interests, your skills, your availability, and you go into a database,” Morristell said. “At the same time, we’re encouraging nonprofits to fill out a form telling us their needs, and the system makes the match. We facilitate the match, and then it’s up to the individual and the nonprofit to take it from there.”
Training offered by the Scranton Area Community Foundation will help applicants become prepared for the new board positions, Morristell added.
The applications — which may be filled out at any time — are available on each of the three partner organizations’ websites, she said.
“We suspect the first matches are going to start at the end of the month,” Morristell said.
Angela Bassani, executive director of United Way of Lackawanna, Wayne and Pike Counties, hopes the initiative will encourage more community members to follow through on their mission to serve organizations throughout the region.
“A lot of times when you reach out to someone to ask them to be on a board it’s because they already know someone on the board, and we’re missing large pockets of the population that are really skilled in what they do,” she said. “We’re hoping this kind of fills that gap. We just started and we have over 20 applications on either side already. There are so many skilled people that are coming through that no one knew prior to this.”
Laura Ducceschi, president and CEO of the Scranton Area Community Foundation, believes the new program will provide a boost to organizations
“Nonprofits do an incredible amount of work in our community — everything from people’s ability to get placed in a new job, access to food and safe housing, and mental health support,” she said. “It benefits all of us if they can have the strongest support network they can.”