Happy Volunteer Month!
Although, if I’m being honest, I prefer referring to DASH volunteers as part of the DASH family; it feels more true to what we are.
There are a lot of reasons I love volunteering with DASH, but my favorite one is that the people I have met working and volunteering with DASH are some of the most incredible people I’ve ever met. They challenge me to evaluate my relationship with Christ, with others, and with my culture in a way that pushes me to love people and Christ deeper.
You may not know this, but DASH runs primarily on volunteer power… this is one of the reasons our budget is so lean. We provide a large amount of services to each resident on an extremely small budget ($25/day per resident). We have only 3 full-time and 3 part-time paid team members compared to the 10 leaders on our team who act as unpaid staff members (some of whom are listed here and some work exclusively behind the scenes). The selfless nature in which our volunteers give their time amazes me.
To put this into context, I decided to add the amount of consistent volunteer hours donated to DASH annually and multiply that number by $15/hour (still vastly underpaying the services provided to us). I found that close to $200,000 is donated every year in CONSISTENT VOLUNTEER TIME! This doesn’t even include the one-off volunteer efforts and the goods donated to DASH. In fact, when we add up goods, services AND volunteer time, we found that over $750,000 is donated to DASH without even counting financial donors. That’s almost double our annual budget.
That is powerful.
I am incredibly humbled to volunteer for this organization and I know that all of the hours donated goes to a ministry that God has His hand over. I have seen incredible prayers answered over and over for DASH, many of those answered by volunteers.
Thank you so much, DASH family. No matter what size a part you’ve played in this ministry, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Warmly,
– Sharlyn Francis
Communication Coordinator
