Impact Austin Women Making a Difference: The Volunteer Lens

Impact Austin women bring leadership, collaboration, and the inherent will to improve whatever nonprofit or program they become involved with. Impact Austin’s blog team is making it a project to share some of the impactful work our members do in addition to – and perhaps because of - their Impact Austin membership and involvement. This article shares one member's focus on volunteerism. It reinforces why giving circles like ours embrace a broad definition of philanthropy that includes time, treasure, talent, ties, and testimony.

Caroline Wilkinson became an Impact Austin member in December 2023. She'd relocated from Houston the year before and had just completed a Master's program at UT. Caroline's motivations to join Impact Austin were many. As a new Austinite, she wanted to get the lay of the philanthropic land here. She specifically wanted to learn grantmaking. While this desire to learn was fundamental, it didn't hurt that her best friend (also a Houston transfer) was Impact Austin member Erin McCord, now on our board.

Caroline's learning quest drove immediate engagement as a new member. She joined a GRC to learn the behind-the-scenes work of philanthropy in general and grantmaking specifically. She attended her first Discovery Day and loved it all: exposure to the issues facing Central Texas; hearing the perspectives from "those on the ground" working in nonprofits; and considering policy through a philanthropy lens. She amped up her engagement, joining the Advancement Committee and now the Membership Committee as interim co-chair alongside Erin McCord.

And then last year, Caroline started a Substack* focused on volunteering! Why? We'll circle around to the why, because various concepts and interests came together to make it happen.

Caroline's UT Master's program in the Human Dimension of Organizations made her curious about people in the workplace and how they form into groups. She could see applying the frameworks she'd learned in graduate school to nonprofits and to groups of volunteers. Caroline is reminded that nonprofits are organizations just as for-profit businesses are. Volunteers are groups of people like other groups.

Now beyond the realm of academia, Caroline wanted to beef up her writing skills again. "I had a little spark to write about volunteering," she explained. And so it all came together on her Substack. When asked which of her 18 Substack posts is her favorite, she quickly cited her third, entitled My Mother's Service. Caroline said, "All the things I am is because of the model she set for us." Caroline complimented how seriously her mother took her volunteer work, how dedicated she was, and her "service-oriented mindset." Caroline said she'd love to interview other professional volunteers, everyday people, ordinary women. She's intrigued that she hadn't previously considered volunteering as a form of civic engagement, but now she does.

Explore The Volunteer Lens. This blog author particularly recommends:

• Trusting the Communities You Serve (a bit about trust-based philanthropy)

• Reflections: Shared values, lasting friendships

• The Thank You Gap, Pt. 1 (it's not just volunteers who need thanks)

• The Overhead Myth

• Reflections: Building a Service Practice

*Substack is a free platform where independent writers, thinkers, and dreamers publish their work online. Subscribe to The Volunteer Lens at carolinebwilkinson.substack.com, and her next post will come straight to your inbox.

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The interview that informed this blog article included discussion about nonprofits as businesses, nonprofits as two businesses-in-one, and the issue of "overhead." Caroline cited two blog posts from  Insights4Equity (Impact Austin member founded!) on this topic.

Let's Respect Nonprofits as Businesses

Nonprofits are Actually Two Businesses in One