Godni Amir is the Founder and Executive Director of A Free Bird, whose mission is “to empower children affected by cancer to discover their inner artist.”
Godni joins host Steve Boland to talk about building and sustaining a nonprofit powered almost entirely by volunteers. After being inspired by his voice teacher’s experience with cancer, Godni launched A Free Bird 18 years ago with a single Craigslist post and a free first event at Bloomingdale’s, and has since been honored six times by NYC Service for volunteer engagement. He shares how the organization now coordinates 20 to 60 volunteers and interns from around the world across eight departments, using tools like Slack, Salesforce, and Google Workspace (plus a custom community dashboard in progress) to protect volunteers’ time so they can focus on relationships. Godni talks about recruiting for passion first, pairing newer volunteers with experienced ones, and holding to clear policies and procedures while treating volunteers like family. He stresses the ideas of offering job references, learning opportunities, and appreciation events long after their service ends.
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