On this episode of Looking Forward Our Way, we hear from Matthew Goldstein, the founder of Besa, a nonprofit organization that aims to reduce barriers to volunteering and connect people to opportunities to give back to their community.

Matthew shares his personal journey of discovering a love for connecting with others through volunteering, and how Besa has grown to offer 50-70 volunteer projects every month. He also discusses the challenges facing volunteerism, such as decreasing rates and busy schedules, and how Besa is working to overcome these obstacles.

With inspiring stories of volunteers going above and beyond to help others, this episode showcases the power of community engagement and the positive impact it can have on both individuals and society as a whole.

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Recorded in Studio C at 511 Studios. A production of Circle270Media Podcast Consultants.

Copyright 2024 Carol Ventresca and Brett Johnson

Central Ohio community is just 1 of the most remarkable communities I've ever been a part of. I've lived in a handful of places, Washington, Philadelphia, a couple others. And I am just constantly amazed at this undercurrent of support across the community. I remember when I started BESA, I went to the Columbus Foundation and just reached out to them and got a meeting with their number 2 at the time was Lisa Cordes who now runs United Way Central Ohio And she took a meeting with me. I'm just a 20 something year old guy with an idea for a nonprofit. I don't know how many people she meets with like that, right? But she still took the meeting.

We are looking forward our way from Studio C in the 511 studios that's in the Brewery District just south of downtown Columbus, Ohio. Hey, this is Brett. You know, a valuable resource in our community is the high level of volunteering by our residents from young children accompanying their parents, neighborhood outreach by K through 12 students, college students working in their local school communities, and for families and our older adults. Central Ohio has a distinct advantage to meeting the needs of residents because we have an incredible array of strong nonprofits

Thanks for welcoming me. It's good to be here.

There are so many people in our community who provide volunteer hours. Some may not even call it their support volunteering. However, before we hear more about Besa, Let's talk about you and your professional journey. Tell us about your background, career path, how you got here today. So

Just like it's a sunny day today. Right, right.

I'm from Philadelphia and you know, it's kind of interesting. I came to Columbus and I didn't know anyone in Columbus when I first came here. Completely foreign to me. I'm embarrassed to say, I didn't even realize Ohio was right next to Pennsylvania. Oh dear, there you go. There you go.

Well, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are really like different worlds, right? They are different worlds.

And so I came here not knowing anyone. And I think that's what I needed in my life is I wanted to branch out of my bubble and explore something new and challenge myself in that way. And so that's why I came to Columbus. And I have been in Columbus now longer than I lived in Philadelphia where I grew up. And I just love this community. And so I came here for the Ohio State University. I graduated with degrees in marketing and political science. I was very much on the path that I'm going to go into business. And so I was in the business school. And when I graduated, I went right into business. And my last stint was in corporate retail. We have a lot of incredible corporations, retail companies based here. And that's where I was. And I was doing market research there. And so that's essentially, you know, in a snapshot of that chapter of my life. But while I was doing corporate retail, and I love market research, right? Like that's what I was doing. I was traveling the country. I was talking to employees and customers and reporting back to leadership. This is at Abercrombie & Fitch. They gave me a lot of responsibility. At 1 point, I had a job offer from Target in Minneapolis. And 1 of the reasons I chose Abercrombie over Target is that Target at that time, they were saying that the men that worked there would have to wear shirts and ties to work every day. At Abercrombie, you could roll out of bed in shorts and a t-shirt and for a 23, 24 year old, that sounded pretty good. Plus it's a lot colder in Minneapolis than it is here. When I went there, it was I think spring or summer and I saw that all the buildings were connected by these skyways. And I was like, well, it's warm today, but I know that's there for a reason. Yeah, yeah. So Abercrombie was a fabulous experience and there wouldn't be a Bessa if not for my experience at Abercrombie. But what I realized is while market research is something that I very much enjoy doing, jeans and flip-flops were not lighting me up in the way that I wanted to be lit up. And that wasn't fair to me because I wasn't doing, I was in a seat that wasn't the right seat for me. And that wasn't fair to the person who wanted that seat because I was taking up space that they couldn't get into. And so I just started to explore, what else do I want to do? Where do I wanna be? This is, I think I was like 26, 27, and I said, where do I wanna be when I'm 30? And do you remember the other paper? I was at Spinelli's Deli, which I don't think is around anymore, in Victorian Village. And in the back of the other paper, they had a whole stack of other papers there. In the back of it, there was an advertisement for suicide prevention services. They needed volunteer shift workers, hotline workers. And I signed up and I knew nothing about the nonprofit sector. And quite quickly, I learned a lot. I learned about the business of nonprofits, if you will. I learned about the people who are staffing these nonprofits and the incredible amount of heart and soul and intelligence that they are putting into not just their work, but our community. I connected with shift volunteers, my fellow volunteers, and 1 of them is 1 of my best friends to this day. And you learn a lot about yourself and other people when you're in a very small room, a quarter of the size of the room we're in right now, just answering phones and trying to connect with people. And that was the other thing, I loved connecting with people on the phone. I appreciated that experience.

I, if I was still a career counselor, I would tell every 1 of my students that the best professional opportunity you can have is to work in a nonprofit. Because it truly is running a business that you are giving away the products and having to find the money to make them again as opposed to making a profit, making a widget, making a profit, making a widget. It is an amazing opportunity. So good for you. You really, the Fisher College of Business is probably surprised, But proud of this work you're doing. So let's talk about BESA. Now, BESA is an Albanian word, which I didn't realize. Did a little of my research here. And it means to keep the promise. So your belief is that when we work together, we can impact our community in a powerful way. That says a lot. So tell us about this flicker of your idea to create BESA. Yeah, so when I was at Abercrombie,

Now, there, I don't know if Abercrombie had this, but there are a lot of companies in town who have those, like a portal, so that their employees can volunteer. Did Abercrombie have 1 of those at the time? Not at the time. No, Abercrombie

is a different company today than it was back then. It's gone through a lot of transition and philanthropically, it's a much different company. And so that was 1 of the things that I was excited about back then. I had the opportunity to try and advocate for some of these philanthropic initiatives because they were new. And I didn't know what the heck I was doing, but that kind of worked in my favor because they were kind of early in their start in terms of how they wanted to do philanthropy as well. So it gave me some runway

to work with smart people and figure some stuff out in terms of how to get the employees engaged. Right. Because right now, I mean, there are many, many companies who have those, and I'm going to call it a portal for lack of any other word. Platform portal, yeah. Right, that push their employees into doing nonprofit work. Columbus has always had a strong volunteer base in the schools and the churches, but this is all something new.

Yeah, no, definitely. And we can get into this in a little bit, but especially since the pandemic, there is an incredible need for volunteers. But even before the pandemic, the number of people volunteering has started to decline, was starting to decline, and the pandemic just supercharged that. So companies, you know, during the pandemic, for example, the food collective, right, the food bank, depends on so many volunteers. And I believe it's something like 50% come from corporations. Well, during the pandemic, those corporations were not sending groups of volunteers to the food bank. And so the question is, how do you rebuild those programs,

particularly when more people are coming to the doors of the agencies that are serving our community. Right. Well, and coupled with more people working from home as well too, so you're not really collectively there, but I could see that as a benefit too, that, okay, I don't see my coworkers, but maybe 2 times a week. Now volunteering, I get to see them because we're doing this. So I guess it's a yin and the yang on that 1 too. So, and now BESA is working with hundreds of nonprofits in the region. Can you tell us how you find quote unquote, the nonprofits needing help? Is there a process they got to follow to be included in the BESA schedule? Yeah, so it's a great question.

We have a team that all they are doing is building relationships with nonprofits, understanding the needs in the community. And it's not for us to go into a neighborhood or a community and say, here's a pain point and here's how best I can help, right? Like that's not the approach we take. The approach we take is number 1, building trust, right? We have to go to a table, be invited to a table. And all we're trying to do is have a conversation to understand what is this organization doing in the community? What is their mission? What are some of the pain points that they are feeling? And then are there opportunities for BESA to plug in and support. And so I think the reason BESA has been so successful is we are genuinely interested in helping build capacity in our community through nonprofits, right? Getting volunteers to nonprofits to increase capacity, to increase scale. And we start with just having conversations with nonprofits. And so nonprofits, to answer your question, either come to us, they go to our website, they fill out our form, or we have a team member who is constantly learning about the community, making connections, and going out and meeting with nonprofits.

When you really think about that, the BESA model adds a layer for a nonprofit manager. They could go out and find their own volunteers. You can bring them in, but it adds another layer. So how do you convince them that this is not adding another layer, it's making it easier?

So we did research with this incredible firm downtown called Lexstint. Lexstint are data scientists. So they work with all kinds of companies, major companies, Fortune 500 companies and all others, to understand consumer behavior and what makes a product click. And we worked with them on trying to understand what is the value of BESA for the community, right? How do we perceive the value of BESA? And then how do our stakeholders be, companies, nonprofits, volunteers, perceive the value? And something that kept coming up with the non-profits was 1, it's exposure. We are bringing a diverse group of volunteers from all walks of life to the doors of non-profits. We have 1 non-profit where the majority of their volunteers come from the College of Social Work. We bring corporate volunteers, stay-at-home parents, teenagers, and so it just exposes them to a broader swath of our community, which then increases resources and capacity for the nonprofit. Right. Right. We have great relationships with media. I was just yesterday at Columbus Early Learning Centers, incredible nonprofit in town. I think they have 6 centers working with youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods. And we were there with Monica Day and NBC4, and there's going to be 2 or 3 segments, and then Monica's going to be out volunteering and getting viewers to volunteer at Columbus Early Learning Centers. Nice. And so it's those, so it's the storytelling that they appreciate, it's the exposure, it's resources, right? We have volunteers. I was just talking to somebody, this is really interesting. We had a group of volunteers volunteer at the conservatory. And the manager at the conservatory said, you know, it's really interesting. I used to be in the medical field doing data management and I volunteered through BESA and I volunteered at all these different community gardens and I fell in love and now here I am at the Conservatory.

That notion of increasing not just capacity of number of people but the width and the breadth of the people you're bringing in, the resources, and that exposure, that is incredible. I hadn't even thought about that. Yeah, it's what- It's amazing. It's my love language. There you go, there you go. Okay, so now the other side of this coin are the volunteers. Why would somebody wanna go through BESA as that platform for a volunteer opportunity? What are the steps? Is there an application process and is there a background check?

Great questions. No application process, no background checks. Some of the nonprofits we work with do require background checks, but our team works with the volunteers on those specific ones, 95%. We try to reduce the number of barriers between someone wanting to volunteer and the opportunity to volunteer. When I was working on the business plan, I did, it goes without saying, market research. And I talked to a lot of people, and 1 of the people I talked to, his name is Ryan, and he worked at Abercrombie. He was working 60, 70 hours a week and he was looking for some way to like release some pressure, right? And feel connected to his community. So he wanted to volunteer in the community with a children's nonprofit and something related to hunger. That's what he put into Google. Now this is going back, I don't know, 10 years, and do you know what movie was out at the time that was a big hit? The Hunger Games. So the first page of results were all about The Hunger Games, where you can see the movie. Then he got to page 2, and there are different non-profits, he's reaching out to them, and he's not really getting a response. And that's when he threw his arms up in the air and he said, I just don't have time for this. And so that's a missed opportunity because here's someone who wanted to contribute to the community and didn't feel like he had the opportunity to. So we at BESA try to eliminate as many barriers as possible. You can just go to our website BESA org Sign up there's 50 60 70 different projects every single month across this community where you just show up there's going to be a group of volunteers there. There's going to be a volunteer leader to help orient you with what's going on and make sure that you're not just standing around, that you feel really engaged and connected to the other volunteers and the work that's happening. And from start to finish, we focus on the Experience you have because our goal is you don't volunteer just once But you come back again and again and again and you bring your family members your friends your colleagues Because to us that is when we can create true impact in a community through civic engagement

So let's take the barriers to the next stage here. And my question being, what else stops people from volunteering? What do you hear that, you know, their ears, yes, makes sense, but how do they finally pull the trigger? And they say, yep, I've been wanting to do this, but couldn't because this. What do you hear a lot? The biggest thing is that I'm busy, I'm too busy. I can't fit it into my schedule.

Nonprofits taking a look at that time commitment and maybe Re-evaluated how much time they're asking of volunteers to match or to at least be, okay, we usually ask 5 hours. Can we bring that down to 3 knowing the time constraints? We work with our nonprofit partners all the time on that kind of, that's part of the experience.

Is there a sweet spot? I would say 3 to 4 hours. Yeah. I just threw a number at you. Yeah, no, no, 5 hours. You know, when we get to 5, 6 hours.

That's a job then.

Almost. You know, seriously, because that's a day. That's a day. And then what, you know, when you're done doing that job, you might feel good, but you also might say, you know what, I don't know if I'm going to do that again. Right. Yeah. So what if we broke that job into 2 or 3 shifts, right? And then it's 2 hours, 3 hours in and out. You have a great experience. We always ask for feedback. There's a quick like 3 question survey, how would you rate your experience? What was a highlight of your experience? Anything that could make it be better, right? And we take all that feedback and apply it to the next experience.

Going back to the age issue when you were talking about couples with young children, in my world, it was normally when somebody retired and they had time to volunteer as an older adult. Now with a pandemic, older adults were staying home. Have they come back out to volunteer? Have you, are you seeing older adults? Yeah, I definitely,

that needed help. Right. They knew people were literally going to be starving without their help. Yeah. And you know we really do have to put a shout out to all of the the food pantries and all of the volunteers who worked with seniors who made sure they were getting not just food but other items that they needed And we had some incredible volunteers and Life Care Alliance and the Mid-Ohio Food Collective. And I mean, they did some amazing work. So shout out to them.

I'm a little biased, but I believe that volunteers are the beating heart of our community. Oh, great. Right? And at the height of the pandemic, people showed up. I mean, it makes me teary-eyed. I'm trying to fight back the tears. People showed up in the most profound ways to support other people, strangers.

Very good. So, you were saying that there are about 70 opportunities a month or so. I was looking through the list of volunteer activities and I was amazed at the variety, the different tasks. If I had not ever been a volunteer, I'd be overwhelmed. There's so much out there to do. Hi, can you highlight a few of your favorite opportunities or what's been most fun, what's been most successful? You know, what do you tell folks when they're like, I don't know what I wanna do?

You know, I think it's just looking for something. I always think about If you've never been to a homeless shelter, right just thinking about it can be intimidating Where do you park? Who am I going to run into? You know, what entrance do I go into some of them have the the machine that you have to go through, the metal detector. And so it can be a really intimidating experience. But to answer your question, 1 of my favorite ones is the Van Buren Shelter in Franklinton, which is literally like, what, 2 miles away from here. And something we do, we do a lot of serving meals there. And the manager, the volunteer manager said that during the pandemic, Bessa was the backbone of their volunteer program which was felt really good. And not just because we were able to support them, but because of the relationship we have with them, the trust that we built with them. Every Valentine's Day, we go to the Van Buren shelter. Right, so like for me and my husband, we used to like to go to the top steakhouse when we ate steaks, now we're vegetarians. But anyways, we'd go there and 1 year he said to me, you know, we could go anywhere, but I think where I wanna be is at the Van Buren shelter. And so we started this thing maybe 5 or 6 years ago where we literally wrapped these families in blankets of love. So we have an incredible huge meal, we decorate the dining room, Jenny's comes with their ice cream, we have live music. 1 year we had a professional photographer that did family portraits, and then the next day dropped off prints of the portraits and so many of the families were saying we've never had a picture of our family together like this and it's just a it's a magical experience to be there right And so like that's 1 of my favorites. During the pandemic, we worked with Franklin County Public Health, and there would be these food drop sites where basically you would have public health officials and BESA volunteers working together, cars would come through, and you would put food in the back of the car so the health officials would check in the car, the BESA volunteers would put the food in the car. And I remember just stepping back from that 1 day and seeing like everyone working together, like no 1 wants to be there, right? You're not, It's just not somewhere anyone really wants to be if they can avoid it. But here you have this group of people, people in need, volunteers, and Franklin County officials working together to meet a need. And I remember just looking at the line of people and it's people from all backgrounds, right? Like I remember seeing an older couple with a handicap placard on their rear view mirror, a young couple, it was just everyone. And they were all smiling and saying, thank you. And the volunteers were saying, thank you back. I could tell you a thousand stories like that and there are so many opportunities that I enjoy doing. I'm trying to think of ones that I don't enjoy doing, right? Because each 1 is a unique experience that you get to meet really special people. I think the 1 message I always told my volunteers

at Employment for Seniors was that when you show up to volunteer, you are going to help somebody. It is an absolute automatic, you are gonna help somebody and make their day.

How much better can it be? And in so many ways I think what people don't realize is that somebody is sometimes even themselves. Right, very true. Yeah.

Yeah, I know you're a data person so my next question, do you keep records? Of course you do. But I guess what we're curious is, is to this point, is there a record for like, in most instances, how many times people volunteer? Also, I'm really kind of curious, do volunteers commit to 1 agency or they maybe shop around, move around, not because they are intentionally like, okay, I'm done with that, I wanna move to the next 1, or do they continue to add on

and do more and more sort of thing? Yeah, so it's all over the place, right? So we have people that love the diversity. And when we post new projects, they're the first ones to sign up. And that's wonderful and their energy is incredible and infectious. Right. And then we have people who find that 1 agency that they love. So I just heard from my team that someone volunteered at 1 of the community gardens, fell in love with it, and signed up to be an ongoing regular volunteer. And the community garden loves that because that's their biggest need. We have a volunteer who volunteered at, it's called Buddy Up. They work with kids that have Down syndrome. So if your child has Down syndrome, the way the founder described it to me is that you're always on, right? Like you're always on. And here's a program where the kids can go to this tennis clinic. The parents are in the bleachers and they can turn off, right? They can watch their kids or they get to also talk to other parents and step back. And I have a volunteer a couple of years ago that discovered Buddy up through BESA and is now a board member. Oh my gosh, that's wonderful. Yeah.

Wow. Wonderful. Good, good.

So Matthew, we're gonna switch a gear here a little bit. My background's in career advising and I always told my students, as well as my older adult clients, that volunteering can provide not just the satisfaction of giving back and helping people, but it's also could be a step in a job or career. As you said, somebody became a board member, you're looking at somebody who's making a change in their projection, You never know where that's going. Volunteering, you can hone your skills, learn new skills, utilize a volunteer opportunity as a networking connection, which is huge in looking at jobs. Is there something that works with for a BESA volunteer in looking at new career opportunities, if they're a member of BESA, can they utilize that? I mean, does this make sense in your format or no?

So can people leverage being a volunteer at BESA in terms of exploring new career opportunities? Learning new skills. Yes. Honing skills they haven't used for a while. Definitely, right? Like everything you're doing in terms of going into an unfamiliar environment and trying to master that environment and become part of that community, if you will, is so important. Working with a group of fellow volunteers and staff members to accomplish a goal. You know, there's a story that sticks out to me where we had 20 volunteers from 1 of the retailers in town. They went to 1 of the shelters and there were pallets of clothes that had to be sorted, men's, women's, children's. And then all the clothes that had holes in them because they were samples or something had to be in another pile because what are you going to do with clothes with holes in it? So there were 20 volunteers. They spent 3 hours. That's 60 hours of work that they put in. First of all, the manager of the shelter said, thank you, right? Like me alone, I was going to do this and it would have taken me a week and a half, 60 hours. Then 1 of the volunteers piped up and said, oh my God, we donate pallets of clothes all the time just like this and we didn't realize the burden that we're putting on the shelter. Right, Like we think we're doing something good, offloading our problem to the shelter and it's a solution for them and it's a net win for them, but we didn't realize the cost we're putting onto them. And it was really interesting to listen to the discussion between the various employees about this, and then how do they bring that learning back to the company? Interesting. Right? And so I think there's so many opportunities for people to learn not only new skills in terms of teamwork and collaboration and all the rest, but then also to apply that to their everyday work right now.

You know, networking is something that I put a lot of time into when I was working with job seekers. And it oftentimes people say it's hard to network, but actually as a volunteer, you are building a new network.

You're building a new community. Right. Right? Like the reason I started to volunteer is I lived in Victorian Village. I worked all the way out in New Albany, right? And those were my bubbles. And I would go back and forth between my parking lot in Victorian Village and the parking lot in New Albany. And I was missing what was in between, right? Which is community. And so I remember 1 year we did a fundraiser and it was called Adventure Lives Outside Your Tent. And it was really cool. We had, it was at 400 West Rich. We literally had tents set up and like Amy turned sharp poet in town. She was set up in 1 of the tents doing poetry on demand Nina West and and Jenny Britten were the hosts and they were just as camp counselors and have Everyone do me but the whole idea was like we played up the theme But the whole idea was you have to get outside of your bubble. You should get outside of your bubble and explore the world around you, the community around you outside of your bubble. That's just gonna give you a much more well-rounded appreciation. And also, it's easy, and this is 1 of the reasons Bess was founded, it's easy to go on Facebook or watch the news and become overwhelmed with some of the negativity. And all we wanna do is channel that energy into something positive, and hopefully Bess is a tool, a vehicle for people to do that. Right.

1 more thought I just had on the notion of using volunteering for job search. Oftentimes people don't know what type of job they want. And so in actuality, doing some volunteer work could lead to a whole new career profession, industry, not just that you may want to go work for a non-profit, but you may be meeting people who are working in other industries, finding out what they're doing. So it leads to not just networking contacts with people, but networking information gathering.

And I will tell you, it always makes me smile when I'm on LinkedIn and I see someone list Bessa Volunteer as on their LinkedIn. And I have heard from HR people and companies that we work with that they're interviewing someone and they have BESA listed, right? And so we work with 15, 20 different corporations in town helping them mobilize their volunteers. And so when people are applying for jobs, if they have Bessel on there, it can be a conversation starter. Right, right, right. So

to pick the right nonprofit to work with, I mean, some people are great with hammers and screwdrivers and you'd think, oh, they're gonna go Habitat for Humanity, build a house and such, but they may not want to do that. They may want to do something totally different. So I guess my question being, how do you have up to 70 organizations? How does you help the volunteer decide? Is in their mind going, yeah, I can do this, but I really don't wanna do this because I do this all day already. I like to, you know, do you help them explore in their mind where they could go, what to do? Yeah, we try to definitely have diversity in programming on the website.

And there's a variety of different ways to search for different opportunities. But we leave it up to them to decide where they want to plug in and show up. You know, I hear from a lot of people that they say, for example, I didn't think I would enjoy serving dinner at the homeless shelter. How do you know if you're gonna enjoy it or not until you do it, right? It's such a unique experience. You don't know what to expect until you try it. And sometimes it's that first, You asked earlier, how do people get engaged? How do they get over that hurdle? We have really easy projects like baking cookies at Ronald McDonald House. And that seems to be the gateway for so many people. They do that with their loved 1, with their kids, and they fall in love with meeting other volunteers with the families that are staying at the house that they're able to support. And then all of a sudden they're like, okay, let me try something else. Maybe something a little more difficult. Right, that makes sense.

To me too, the experience of being able to talk about the experiences of doing it too. I've talked about this experience many times to many people, maybe even on this podcast, I don't remember, but we put together sack lunches a couple of times a month as a group through church and take them down to the friends of the homeless. So when my daughter was still in high school, she was having a horrible day and she says, dad, can I come down and help? I said, yeah, always, you're always welcome. So she comes down and puts the sandwiches, we take the sandwiches down that day, that evening I should say, and drop them off in this, 1 of the, they always, 1 of the guys always come up and help unload, always do. And he comes up and he says, you know what, I'm, you know, I really appreciate you guys putting these lists together and bringing them down. When I get back on my feet, I'm gonna do this. I am gonna give back and help. And it changed my daughter's day

to hear that. Makes me teary-eyed, right? Like that's what it's all about. It's what's all about. It's the human experience. He didn't have to say that,

you know, seriously, at all. But I believe him. And I ran across another gentleman about a month ago, he was asking, he said, do you know of any positions that are open? And stuff like that. I said, what do you do? We started having a conversation. And he said, wait a minute, I'll go get my resume. And so I said, yeah, sure, sure. I threw his resume a couple of different places. I don't know. But that's, again, it's that you just never know what you can do to help. Very simple things of just being human of those opportunities. But it's just pretty amazing.

It's about meeting people where they're at, right? With no expectations.

We're in a society that- And yes, who isn't uncomfortable in those scenarios? You don't know what to say. Yes. But all you have to do is say have a good evening. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, that's all you have to say They're not necessarily looking for a conversation.

Yeah 100% just human

human eye contact. Yeah, and and saying and looking at them going I realize that you are here You're not non-existent Have a good evening. Yeah, Because all day they probably had the eye aversion because they're homeless.

You know, it's just- We have another volunteer, I'm gonna go back to the Van Buren shelter for a second. She worked at, at the time, I think it was L Brands, and she had a long day and she was gonna go home and watch the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills with a glass of red wine on her sofa. I remember her telling me this. And she took a detour. She went to the Van Buren shelter and she served dinner to 200 women and she fell in love with the work, right? And she told me how this 1 woman held up keys and said, this is my last night in the shelter. Tomorrow I move into my apartment. This volunteer, that was 1 of her first projects with Bessa. She has volunteered hundreds of times. She's a volunteer leader now. She's helping orient other volunteers, right? And it's just making, to your point, eye contact and meeting people where they're at. Yeah. It's simple as that. Yep. You know, 1 of the issues

that when Brett was saying, how do people decide what volunteer position to take? 1 of the issues is you're always a little afraid to make a commitment and something that you're not gonna really feel comfortable doing or not want to do. The value of BESA is you get to experiment and you're never not successful. If you go and do a 2 hour stint with 1 of the nonprofits, that's success. Regardless of the outcome, that's success. So you can experiment and look at different places until all of a sudden you're like, yep, I'm home. Yes, 100%.

Commitment is work and we are all overworked. And so how can you make it, How can you help people realize this is a commitment that they wanna make and keep? Right.

So Matthew, you've already told us about a lot of your different volunteers. Any others you wanna tell us about? There's some special people out there. I'm telling you, there are so many.

Lydia. Lydia, I mean, there's even a dispatch article out there from a couple years ago with Lydia and the amount she volunteers, not just with Bessa, but with so many different agencies. And she was at the Broad Street food pantry 1 time and this woman, it was raining outside, and this woman comes in for food and her shoes are just in tatters and Lydia says what size shoes do you wear and It turns out they wear the same size and it turns out Lydia had a new pair of shoes in her trunk and went to Her trunk got the shoes and gave it to the woman, right? There's just, there's so many stories like that of, I have, I was just telling a new employee about this incredible gentleman named Paul. Paul worked at, I think it was like 1 of the big technology companies like Cisco, right? And he was doing sales for them and he traveled the country doing sales. And then the pandemic hit and he's stuck at home and he's like, what do I do with my life? He started volunteering and he fell in love with the work. And he just, he showed up almost every single week volunteering, getting other people involved. And he loved it so much, it's so funny. He knew 1 of my board members and he said, you know, I wanna make a donation to BESA. And he, and the board member said, you know, ask for a certain amount, you know, it wasn't a big amount. And I walked out of there with 1 of our biggest checks because Paul and his husband were so committed to this work, understood the value it brought, appreciated the value it brought to his own life. And he wanted to make sure that other people had that opportunity. And there's so many, I mean, I can, right, I can tell you hundreds and thousands of stories. Well, and on the flip side, you probably have had,

I can't imagine not, that kind of impact on

non-profits you're working with as well too. That may have saved them possibly. I just yesterday, right, I was at Columbus Early Learning Centers. They have this plot of land that they grow fruits and vegetables for the kids. I think it's 400 pounds of food a year. The CEO there, Gina, incredible human being. I probably said incredible a thousand times on this podcast so far, I apologize. But that's how I feel about the folks I get to work with. And she was saying just yesterday that there's no way that they could grow the food, have the kids in the garden to learn about growing food and the texture and the feel and how much water to put in, the food that's given to the community, the food that's given to the parents, right? There's no way they could do that if they didn't have the volunteers. That it would just be incredibly cost prohibitive that they wouldn't have the garden. Yeah, yeah.

And this is a bit of a side note, but again, going back to our sack lunches, what we do, but we've changed locations. What we do with it's downtown at Broad Street United Methodist Church. And between these 2 tall buildings, you have like about 4 or 5 raised bed gardens. And I looked at it, I'm going, that is the epitome of hope. The sun touches those raised beds probably 3 hours a day, but they're still trying to grow vegetables or something in these raised beds, in between these 2 tall buildings. Yeah. It's like, wow. And kind of going off the garden thing. You can, yeah. It's just like, okay, they're trying,

but with what they have. You can do a lot with hope. There's a whole presidential campaign on hope. I know. Every year I plant my lettuce seed in hope. Yeah,

Yes, yes, yes. But it just, I don't know, just the ongoing looking at going, wow, if they can try to do that there, what little we can give makes a big difference. Huge difference, right? Yeah. It's the energy. It's just the energy we put out. What kind of energy do we wanna put out? And we get to choose that. Exactly, yeah. What do we want to be known for and what we did do and what we get help with? It's not an ego thing. It's that, I think there's some factual piece to that, you know, you giving actually is very healthful.

Yeah. Beneficial. Oh, 100%. Yes.

And that sort of leads into my next comment. And when I was researching, putting the questions together for Matthew today, I found an article, or actually a website called helpguide.org. And they have this incredible sort of a checklist on what's volunteering and how do you do it and what do I want to do and what am I comfortable doing? So it's really cool and listeners we are going to include that in our resources sheet and we're gonna put lots of information for you so that if you are interested in volunteering Maybe you don't live in central Ohio, so BESSA's not an opportunity. Volunteermatch.com, there are other ways of finding volunteer opportunities in your community, so we'll make sure we have all of that together. Matthew, 1 of the last things we always ask our guests, and needless to say, our time with guests goes way too fast, but we always ask for sort of your last words of wisdom. What would you, either we haven't talked about or you want to make sure to emphasize to our listeners?

1, in this Central Ohio community is just 1 of the most remarkable communities I've ever been a part of right? I've lived in a handful of places, Washington, Philadelphia a couple others and I'm just constantly amazed at this this undercurrent of support across the community, right? Like I remember when I started BESA, I went to the Columbus Foundation and just reached out to them and got a meeting with their number 2, at the time it was Lisa Cordes, who now runs United Way Central Ohio. And she took a meeting with me. I'm just a 20-something year old guy with an idea for a nonprofit. I don't know how many people she meets with like that. But she still took the meeting and she still wanted to help me and support. And the Columbus Foundation has been a big part of this agency of BESA and where we are today. And there are so many other organizations in this community, individuals, philanthropic people, volunteers. I'm just, I don't know, I'm constantly in this state of gratitude because I don't hear no that often. And when I do hear no, I probably should be hearing no and it's a learning opportunity, but so many people say yes. And I'm just so grateful for that because then we're able to, that's when the magic happens. It does. And

our day would be so much better if we remembered all of this positivity that we're getting with our nonprofits as opposed to, and our volunteering, but as opposed to the few no's. Yeah, and I think the other thing is to your listeners is,

like you said, in your own community, get involved. There's so many ways, and you don't have to start a nonprofit or sign up for 40 hours. Carol, like you said, sign up for 2 hours. Sign up, show up, meet some folks, and see if giving back can be a bigger part of your everyday life. That's what we're all about. Well, and we have to give a shout out to the Columbus Foundation, which is an incredible organization

and supportive of my agency, of our podcast, and also to our buddy Dan Sharp, who put us in contact with Matthew, convinced him that we were okay, and he should come and talk to us. So we thank Dan for that too. You know, a quick story about Dan. Early on,

we did a capital campaign. We wanted to raise a million dollars to, we talked about 50, 60, 70 projects. It used to be 567 projects, right? And we knew we could scale this, but we needed the funding. And Dan was 1 of the first people I talked to about this. And I remember sitting with him at the Roosevelt Coffee Shop showing him a one-page document. And he helped guide me in terms of, first, he believed in it. And then second, he provided counsel on, okay, here's how we can get this to next. And with Dan's help, Doug's help, the Columbus Foundation's help, we're able to secure the million dollars, right? And not just from the foundation, but from across the community, from people who understood what we're trying to do and wanted to invest in it and be at the table with us. Right.

1 question that I meant to ask earlier, and my apologies, I'm stepping back here a bit. 70 plus projects at any 1 period of time. How many agencies are you actually working with?

Boy, anywhere from 100 to 150 per year. Yeah, all sizes. Tomorrow we'll be at COSI Science Festival. Right, and so last year we took that on. They used to manage the volunteer programming And that's what we do best. And so we partner with them and it saves them all these hours that they can reallocate with their team on the programming side of it and we can manage the volunteer side. So big agencies like COSI to the community gardens, the diaper banks,

and everything in between. Wonderful, okay. Well, Matthew, thanks for joining us today. This has been great. Again, like you said, it's flown by. Listeners, thank you for joining us. And as Carol mentioned, don't forget to check out our show notes for contact information and resources. That'll be on our website at lookingforwardourway.com. We're looking forward to hearing your feedback on this in any of our other podcast episodes.