Manzanita Outreach held a launch event for its new volunteer program, the website VolunteerSedona.com, at the Sedona Public Library on Friday, Sept. 20. 

The website is designed to help connect residents with available volunteer opportunities with local nonprofits based on their interests. Volunteers can sign up with their organizations of choice for two- to four-hour shifts that require little training and can be booked on short notice. Listings are updated daily depending on changing needs and currently range from the Humane Society of Sedona, which is looking for people to clean up after the animals, to the Sedona Arts Center, which is looking for volunteers to help with this year’s Sedona Plein Air Festival on Oct. 19. 

Additionally, the site can help organizations find volunteers for projects that require more training or more consistent shifts, and can help match groups of volunteers to opportunities that interest them. Visitors can also use the site. 

“This is not the completion, this is the start,” Manzanita Outreach Executive Director Ben Burke. VolunteerSedona currently has 26 different organizations posting their volunteer needs. “We’ve got a lot to figure out in terms of just getting more folks used to using the site, both on the nonprofit side, and then in terms of promotion, there’s a long way to go.” 

The initiative started after local couple Spring and Fred Graf spent six weeks volunteering with Hungry Heroes Hawaii in the aftermath of the August 2023 Maui wildfires. 

“For me, service is love in action and that’s what my life’s about right now, is being part of the community,” Spring Graf said, explaining her new mindset after returning on Nov. 10 from volunteering with Hungry Heroes Hawaii. “Even sweeping the floors was making a difference. We were plating 200 meals a day and then delivering them daily to all the displaced people in the campgrounds … When I got home, I had already been volunteering with Stewards of Sedona, and we pick up trash along Oak Creek Canyon. I thought I needed to up my volunteer game, because this was such an impactful part of my life. And so I Googled ‘volunteering in Sedona,’ and there was, there was just the nonprofits, there was no centralized database.” 

Steve Calkins, the cofounder of Hungry Heroes Hawaii, was on hand at the VolunteerSedona launch event. 

“We’re an organization that started at the onset of COVID focused on feeding the unsheltered,” Calkins said. “We felt a big need there, especially when we were in COVID lockdowns. There were no tourists there to give handouts or not even a half-eaten meal in the garbage. All the tourist towns [were] ghost towns. So my friend and I just started with 15 meals. We just went out and fed the people that we know living on the streets, and we posted on Facebook. By the end of the first week, where we had enough donations coming for 100 meals. By the end of the first month, we were in a commercial kitchen doing 450 meals a day.” 

VolunteerSedona does not require participants to be registered nonprofits, and Burke said that municipalities and some local farms have also looked into using the site. The city of Sedona’s Parks and Recreation Department is considering using the website to help staff its Fest of Fall event on Oct. 19, according to Special Events Coordinator Jason Vargo. 

“They can just go to the website VolunteerSedona. com where they can see all the upcoming events, and they can select an event that they wish, read the description, and then they can sign up directly through that portal and it will send an email to the event coordinator so they can reach out to them and let them know any more additional information about the event, and give them confirmation of their signup,” Manzanita Outreach AmeriCorps Vista coordinator Kalil McRoy said.