Press Release: Richmond Art Center Honored with NobleCause Grant to Foster Volunteerism
The Richmond Art Center Honored with NobleCause Grant to Foster Volunteerism
RICHMOND, CA–March 24, 2016– The Richmond Art Center is pleased to announce that they have been awarded a $6500 grant through NobleCause, a national grant competition mobilizing volunteers to address the greatest challenges facing their local communities.
These funds will support The Richmond Art Center’s efforts to create a more visible presence of the Richmond Community in their volunteer program, and to make the program, and its benefits, more accessible to the community at large. The center will elect a board of empowered volunteer leaders, a governance team, who will be essential in creating new goals for the volunteer program and in deciding new recruitment and retention strategies. The governance team, with the support of the Art Center’s volunteer coordinator, will implement these new goals and strategies to achieve a volunteer body that is more representative of the Richmond community.
In order to ensure success, each volunteer leader will attend two professional development courses on volunteer management and conduct site visits to volunteer programs that have a successful, diverse volunteer program. The implementation of this governance team will not only help to diversify and increase the center’s volunteer base, but allow volunteers to foster skills such as leadership, public outreach and community development. The governance team will give a voice to the center’s volunteers, and will become a permanent fixture that represents the interests and concerns of all those who volunteer at The Richmond Art Center.
NobleCause is made possible by a donor within the GiveWell Community Foundation and organized by NobleHour.com, a volunteer management tool that promotes a culture of civic engagement and charts meaningful acts of goodness. For more than a decade, NobleHour has been connecting and equipping thousands of schools, non-profit agencies, and organizations to shape well-rounded students and service leaders, build better communities, and measure their collective impact.
In total, the NobleCause competition awarded $1,000,000 in grant, recognizing 100 organizations at the $6500 level, and seven organizations at the $50,000 level. All grant recipients demonstrated a remarkable ability to raise community awareness, foster partnerships, and cultivate leaders who take action.
“We set out to encourage communities throughout the country to tell us their big, sustainable ideas to inspire quality volunteerism, “says Wesley Barnett, managing partner for TreeTop Commons and NobleHour. “By organizing volunteers to address local concerns, NobleCause award recipients are defining social responsibility right in their own communities.”
About the Richmond Art Center: The Richmond Art Center is the largest visual arts center in the East Bay, delivering exciting arts experiences to young and old alike who reflect the diverse richness of our community. The Art Center features hands-on learning, well-equipped studios, traveling Art in the Community programs and contemporary exhibitions in its galleries.
Every year, the Richmond Art Center serves thousands of students through classes and programs taught by professional artists, both onsite at the Art Center and at sites throughout Richmond. The Art Center’s four galleries mount rotating exhibitions that display the works of emerging and established Bay Area artists. Artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Jay DeFeo, Wanxin Zhang, Hung Liu, Ed Rossbach and Peter Voulkos have been showcased here.
The Richmond Art Center originated in 1936, when local artist Hazel Salmi, who worked for the WPA, traversed the streets of Richmond with a suitcase packed with art supplies, eager to teach art to anyone interested. Today, everything at the Art Center continues to breathe life into Salmi’s original vision: That within every person lives an artist.
Please visit the Richmond Art Center’s website https://richmondartcenter.org for a full detail of activities and events.
Download a copy of this press release here.
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