Volunteer coordinator: What I do and how much I make

Hello, my name is Ashley, I am 30 years old, I work for Cityteam, which is non-profit here in the bay. I make $43,500 a year as a volunteer coordinator slash administrative assistant. Cityteam is a non-profit, Christian organization. We are a drug and recovery program. It's similar to the alcohol anonymous program where it's 12 steps, and within those 12 steps what we try to do is help them understand what their reasons are for using the drugs and also ways to equip them to not use drugs as well. We also incorporate applying scripture to their lives in order to live it out. So, a list of some of the responsibilities in my role include: processing and tracking donations, creating different opportunities for people to volunteer, building partnerships with some of the different single room occupancy housings in the area. Our main project for Cityteam are Saturday clinics. We have a group of people, the max we can hold are about 50 people and we'll have them split up, bring in 100 to 120 bags of food, we call them bags of love. Then our men in our program they take them down to the single room occupancies that I was talking about earlier. What they do is they'll go into the rooms, knock on the doors, hand people the lunches, ask them if they need anything, ask them if they would like prayer, and then let them know about our lunches. We have an all-you-can-eat lunch for the people, anyone on sixth street in the area that comes in. We also do foot washing, we'll wash their feet, provide them with a new pair of socks every Saturday, and so that's something that we do for people as well and then you get the opportunity to get to know people and it's a very intimate and humbling experience, and we've learned that people open up more because you're beneath them at that point. They're up here and then you're kneeling at their feet, and so they'll speak to you more. Another thing we're able to do is our clothing distribution, which is we let them go downstairs and pick out about three items of clothing, and if we have shoes or anything then they're allowed to pick that out as well. It's really funny, people are very entertaining and you get so many divas when they pick out clothing, it's just a joy. And, you get some amazing requests, and it's amazing, you'll get hugs and people love you for it. So, I make $43,500 annually. The pay is on the lower end of the spectrum considering how others are doing in the area, but that is expected for working at a non-profit, but, you get other benefits. The mindset and skills that one would probably need to work for an organization like Cityteam would be definitely a great multi-tasker, great organizational skills, patient, you'll need a lot of patience, kindness, definitely have to be kind and show people kindness, and be able to be open to expect anything for the day. The days could go up or down, you never know, so you have to be flexible for the type of work that I do. You definitely have to see the bigger picture of things, it's just important to be able to look past whatever is happening. Some people may come in and be frustrated for the day and may take those frustrations out on you, so you have to be able to not take it personal once you're there, and to always show kindness and a good heart, and to show people what love and friendship looks like when you work for an organization like this because people are hurting, and the people that you're encountering are hurting people, and so you want to be that light and be able to show them what a healthy person looks like or what something looks like when it comes to love or kindness. So, the worst day on the job probably would be if someone comes in for the lunch period and they're either intoxicated or they're having a bad day or they haven't been able to afford their medication, so they're either seeing things or they're drunk and they're causing problems with the other guests, kind of have to be a bouncer and break up a fight or something, so that's kind of a rough day. The days where I come home and I feel like I did a great job, those are the days when I get a random hug off the street from like a homeless lady or something, and they are just like, "you don't understand what you do for me," or, "your smile just lights up my day." My favorite is when a student, like a sixth grader from a school comes to volunteer and they just get it, they are excited to do, in my mind, God's work, it's something activates inside of them and they just, they're transformed, they want to do it, they have a hunger for it, they go home and they continue to seek it out, like they start volunteering with students or children or serving on the weekends with their families, it becomes their mission to do whatever it is that they can do to save someone or to help someone, and for me that makes me understand this is why I'm doing what I'm doing and it brings me joy.