Thanks to Christina!!

When Christina applied to volunteer with the Foodbank, she really wanted a summer internship to gain experience in software development while sharing her skills and talents with an exciting technology company. She's majoring in Computer Science at UCSB and has a ton of computer/web programming skills.

At the time, we didn't have anything within her area of expertise that we needed help with. What we really needed was people to help plan and promote our upcoming fundraiser, Fork & Cork Classic. Even though this was not an ideal volunteer opportunity for Christina, she began attending our meetings and became super excited to help us.

After a few meetings with the committee, we decided that we needed a website for the event. Michael Kramer, owner of Ameravant, offered to build and maintain a website as an in-kind donation! I introduced him to Christina and now he has created an apprenticeship/mentorship opportunity to enable Christina to fulfill her internship objective!

Christina is now instrumental for the success of our Fork & Cork Classic Website. She is in charge of making all of the updates and adding logos and pictures for all of the sponsors and exhibitors who are participating in the event.

We love the work she is doing! We recently created another volunteer position for Christina to update the Foodbank Website too. We are excited to receive her advice and suggestions for the new website that is being built.

Thank you, Christina, for being flexible, patient, and loyal to us! I'm so happy that we were able to create the opportunity that you really wanted. We really appreciate all of your help!)

Thanks to Penny!!

Penny is our ServSafe Certified Warehouse Sorting & Packaging Leader! She volunteers two mornings per week to lead our warehouse sorting and packaging projects AND the second Saturday of every month to facilitate the packaging station for our Kids4Foodbank Program.

Attention to detail, following "The Book," and making sorting and packaging FUN is Penny's M.O. She starts off her day coordinating with our warehouse manager to see what needs to be sorted or packaged that day. Projects include sorting fresh produce that our amazing Back Yard Bounty volunteers pick, sorting canned and boxed food, and packaging pasta or beans.

When volunteers come in, she gives them a FUN tour of our warehouse and explains what the Foodbank does. Then, she gets right down to business - instructing everyone on her team on how to follow the food safety rules so that we are in alignment with ServSafe guidelines.

Penny goes above and beyond every day! She's always making suggestions on how we can improve our processes and procedures to become more efficient and she NEVER let's anything slide. Her perfectionism is imperative to the success of our sorting and packaging program.

Thank you, Penny, for your never ending determination and dedication!)
   

Thanks to Nallely!!

Nallely is our Bilingual Volunteer Coordinator. She's responsible for recruiting bilingual volunteers, giving warehouse tours, collecting paperwork, filling bilingual volunteer positions, following up with volunteers, and managing her volunteer's schedules.

Since we have a ton of program sites that need to be managed, Nallely quickly realized that she needed to structure her position as a leadership role and train in assistant volunteer coordinators to help manage each program site.

As soon as she finalizes and documents her system, she will be traveling up to North County and training in a "Nallely" there to do the same thing!) She understands that to be successful and efficient, delegating and duplicating is how it's done!

Nallely is currently recruiting for lead volunteers to help with Picnic in the Park, our summer feeding program. During the school year, she will be recruiting for bilingual volunteers to help with Kid's Farmers Market, Healthy School Pantry, and Teens Love Cooking. If you or anyone you know is bilingual and interested in helping, please E-Mail Nallely.

As if all of that isn't enough, Nallely went above and beyond and visited our Teens Love Cooking site in Carpinteria, interviewed and videotaped the volunteers, and made this extremely heartfelt video:

Nallely, we can't even begin to describe how much you mean to us. Please know that you are so, so, so appreciated!!!

Thanks to Beatriz!!

Beatriz lives in Florida and volunteers remotely to enter all of the information from our volunteer applications into our database. She responded to an ad we placed online for a data entry expert and after one training webinar, she hit the ground running.

I love the fact that she asks questions to clarify exactly how we need the information entered so that our reports will be efficient on the back end. This demonstrates high-level/big picture thinking, not just following the training manual step-by-step and never asking "why" or suggesting ways to make the process more efficient.


We will be transitioning to a new database (SalesForce) soon, so Beatriz not only has to learn how we need information entered into the current database, but also in SalesForce simultaneously!

Because of her extensive database experience, especially in SalesForce, Beatriz's feedback on how we can structure things more effectively within SalesForce will be greatly appreciated. We are confident in her ability to manage this project successfully and extremely fortunate to have such a committed and experienced team! Thank you, Beatriz!)

Thanks to Lisa!!

Lisa lives in New Mexico and is volunteering remotely from the comfort of her own home on her own time. She responded to an ad we placed online for a data entry/project management expert to help us organize all of the businesses that are participating in our Fork & Cork Classic fundraiser.

We quickly swooped Lisa up and assigned her to one of our most challenging positions when she responded, "Analyzing data? Not a nightmare, A DREAM!!! I'm one of those people who stop you from throwing away a knotted mess of string because I'm completely convinced it can be untangled! It's a lot to go through but totally manageable. I'm sure once I get used to using SalesForce and start developing the most proficient route for organizing this data that it won't be such a nightmare anymore :)."

Lisa has been a dream come true ever since! She completely disentangled the project and got everything organized in a flash. Rebecca, one of Lisa's teammates for this project, exclaimed, "This is amazing! Lisa is a GEM!!! I am so thrilled that you have found someone like her." We agree and are extremely grateful to have Lisa on our team!

Thanks to Tasnim!!

Tasnim volunteers remotely for the Foodbank from Georgia! She responded to an ad we posted online for a database expert to help us transition into SalesForce from our old database and train in our staff on how to use it. Her commitment to this project is immeasurable and she deserves a national award for all of the time and effort she's put into this!)

Working closely with key Foodbank SalesForce decision makers, Tasnim first needed to understand how the Foodbank wanted to utilize SalesForce and how the data was to be used in reports. Then, she browsed the training manual sections in SalesForce to use as templates and added Foodbank-specific instructions as well as screen shots so everyone could see and read exactly how to perform each step.

Tasnim's dedication to this project doesn't end here. She continues to go above and beyond and has created a professional training program to offer training videos and live training webinars for our staff! She is also assisting our database expert teams on Foodbank's specific data entry processes! Having Tasnim answer questions from other database volunteers frees up Foodbank staff's time so that we can focus on getting more food, money, and volunteers into the Foodbank.

We are so very fortunate to have Tasnim on our team and our appreciation for her efforts is indescribable.

Thanks to Prasanna!!

Prasanna is a database expert and volunteers remotely for the Foodbank from Arizona. She is absolutely outstanding!) She responded to an ad we posted online to help enter data in our SalesForce database for our food and wine tasting fundraiser, called Fork & Cork Classic.

Once Prasanna understood the complexity of this project, and realized that we had tons of accounts and contacts to manage for this campaign, she took off in a rage of keyboard flurry to keep up with all of the new businesses we had to manage that kept pouring in.

After creating a system to organize the steps to complete this process, Prasanna divided up the responsibilities so that a team of database experts could help her. Now, she's training in the team, which is relieving her from having to do all of the entries herself.

Prasanna's accessible via e-mail for this project almost 24/7, which is another reason she's so valuable. Foodbank staff is relieved from having to enter and manage all of this data, and every time we e-mail her with a task or a question, she responds almost instantaneously. We know we can depend on Prasanna and her team and we appreciate all of the time and effort that she gave to accomplish this!)