Nonprofit Spotlight: WellDone Tackles Water Crisis with a Modern Approach to Volunteer Outreach

While running an event planning company in Vancouver, Amanda Patterson didn't think all that much about water. She certainly would never have predicted that down the road it would be the main focus of her career and tied up with some of her most ambitious goals.

Then, in 2008 Amanda went to Nairobi, Kenya, to join her sister who was volunteering with an orphanage there. She spent five months working at the orphanage and fell in the love with the children and the country.

"The experience completely changed my perspective on life and how I choose to live it. I wish everyone had a chance to take a journey like mine," Amanda says. "I truly believe the world would be a better place."

From then on, Amanda realized she wanted to make a positive different in the world in her work every day, not just periodically or on volunteer vacations. She often worked with nonprofits through her event planning business, and at one of her events she was introduced to the founder of WellDone, a nonprofit organization that raises water awareness locally in order to fund water projects globally.

Amanda was instantly intrigued by WellDone's fundamental mission as well as how they go about achieving it—through the use of design and technology. She was impressed with their modern approach to a centuries old problem.

In May 2011, Amanda joined the team at WellDone as the Head of Outreach. She's responsible for all marketing, fundraising, promotions, event planning and relationship building. It’s a daunting task list, but for Amanda it’s all in a very energetic day’s work. “I cannot begin to describe the satisfaction in working with a nonprofit, especially one like WellDone. I am surrounded by incredibly talented, creative people— it’s impossible not to feed off each other's energy and passion! We all genuinely care about the success of the organization, and the majority of our staff are volunteering their time on the side of full-time jobs.”

WellDone was founded in 2007 with a simple goal: to drill one well in one village in Ghana. At that time, there were no strategic plans, no corporate sponsors and no administrative burdens. But as the organization grew, its needs did as well, and soon WellDone turned to VolunteerMatch to recruit volunteers to help with all aspects of the nonprofit's operations. Continue reading…

Click here to read the rest of Amanda's story | Read more stories of engagement & social change

 About VolunteerMatch

VolunteerMatch is a national nonprofit dedicated to strengthening communities by helping great people and great causes to connect. Our award-winning online service, www.volunteermatch.org, makes it easy to find a way to make a difference by location, expertise, or availability. VolunteerMatch provides many of the nation's most recognized businesses, campuses and organizations with Web-based solutions to facilitate and track volunteer engagement at local and national levels. As the #1 ranking for "volunteer" on Google and Yahoo!, the VolunteerMatch network regularly welcomes more than 190,000 visitors each week and has become the preferred volunteer recruiting service for tens of thousands of participating nonprofits across the country.

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