By Dave Cucchiara
Communications & Program Associate
Before there were philanthropic foundations, strategic plans, nonprofit Boards, and “grassroots” community groups, there were neighbors. People who simply showed up — to raise a barn, attend to the sick, teach a child to read, or care for the less fortunate. Volunteerism did not emerge from a policy white paper. It grew the way most enduring things do: stubbornly, gradually, out of need, rooted in the conviction that a community is only as strong as the sum of its parts.
The word “volunteer” itself carries a certain force — from the Latin voluntas, meaning “will.” Acting on one’s will through volunteerism is exercising your freedom of choose to make the community in which you reside a better place, a deeply American principle. In 1736, Benjamin Franklin understood this when he organized the Union Fire Brigade, Philadelphia’s first volunteer fire brigade. So did the women who staffed the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, managing field hospitals and supply lines with uniformity and efficiency. Their labor was largely invisible in the history books, but the wounded men who survived would not forget.
This tradition runs deep in American life, and its infrastructure lives on today in the form of public libraries, mutual aid societies, community gardens, literacy programs, and hospice care. These were volunteer-built long before they were institution-supported. The impulse to donate one’s time was not considered “charity” in the modern sense of the word, but instead, collective harmony and the recognition that expertise, time, and presence are forms of wealth that can be shared.
Over the last few decades, what has changed is the complexity of need. The challenges facing communities today — housing instability, educational gaps, environmental stress, social isolation — require volunteers who bring not just heart, but skill, creativity, and a sustained commitment. The people doing this work do not fit a specific mold. They are retirees and college students, veterans and artists, weekend tutors and weekday teachers.
The four individuals below — volunteers from four F. M. Kirby Foundation partners — reflect that range. Each serves a different domain, each arrived at their work through a different door, but each carries forward something ancient: the idea that showing up, in whatever form your life allows, is itself a civic act.
Patricia Melcer
American Red Cross
Patricia Melcer was drawn to volunteer with the American Red Cross because the organization’s humanitarian mission provides a similar human connection that she enjoyed while working as an Intensive Care Unit nurse for 43 years. As a volunteer, Pat continues to help people as a Disaster Action Team Supervisor when responding to local home fires. She has learned a lot in the last two years and shares her knowledge when training new volunteers to help people after disasters.
Pat’s favorite Red Cross slogan is “Sleeves Up, Hearts Open, All In” and it’s one she clearly lives by. One of Pat’s favorite ways to help in the community is as a Preparedness Team member, teaching young children how to prepare for, and cope with, disasters with the Prepare with Pedro program. As a caseworker with the International Services Restoring Family Links program, Pat helps to reconnect families who have been separated internationally by conflict, disaster, migration or other humanitarian emergencies.
Pat says she cherishes the gratitude she receives along the way. “A simple thank you or a hug; a smile on a child’s face when reading how Pedro the Penguin helps us prepare, the joy in a voice on the telephone when I “reconnect” a family. These are the moments that stay with me,” she explains. When asked what keeps her volunteering with the Red Cross, she says, “Knowing I made a small difference in someone’s life today and that I can do it all over again tomorrow!”
Nancy Hults-Rubin
Literacy Volunteers of Morris County
Nancy Hults-Rubin didn’t initially set out to become a literacy volunteer. She set out to find the next meaningful chapter. After raising her sons and drawing on her Spanish language skills, she earned a certificate in teaching English as a second language and eventually found her way to Literacy Volunteers of Morris County in 2010, where she has been teaching high intermediate and advanced English speakers for the past 16 years.
Nancy’s classroom is as much a living room as it is a lesson plan. She opens each session with a simple question — “how was your week?” — and lets the real curriculum unfold from there. Whether she’s helping students navigate the school system, find a local doctor, or order coffee at a café on a class field trip, Nancy functions as teacher, ambassador, and American friend all at once.
What keeps her showing up is what she sees in her students. “My students are some of the most courageous men and women I’ve ever met,” she says. “I cannot imagine leaving behind my family, friends, culture and familiarity, arriving in a new country where I don’t speak the language.” For Nancy, the work goes beyond grammar and pronunciation. It’s about helping people reclaim their sense of self in a new place. After 18 years working with immigrants, she puts it simply: “I’m just a person helping other people find their way.”
Jennifer Galloway
A Lotta Love
Jennifer Galloway was invited to her first A Lotta Love makeover by a friend. What she witnessed in that shelter room changed her entirely. A background in interior decorating gave her the tools, but it was seeing a family’s face transform alongside their space that gave her the purpose. She has since become the Shelter Lead for Families Moving Forward, one of A Lotta Love’s partner shelters.
The work begins long before makeover day: gathering information about a family’s needs and favorite colors, sifting through donated items in storage, shopping for what’s missing, then loading it all into the car. On site, she and her team clean, paint, hang artwork, make beds, and tuck in the small things that carry the most weight: a character lovie for each child, a coffee mug filled with treats for mom.
One moment has never left her. After completing a makeover for a young family, their seven-year-old daughter Maddie threw open the door with pure, uncontained joy. Her father, noticing a new backpack hanging from the bunk bed, nearly broke down — he and his wife had just been debating whether they could spend their last dollars on one for her. “It was incredibly humbling,” Jennifer reflects, “to realize how many of the things we take for granted are major decisions for others.” What she wants people to understand is this: “We are giving families so much more than linens, artwork, or toys. We are showing them what they are worthy of and what is possible.”
Brooks Lutterloh
Triangle Land Conservancy
Brooks Lutterloh found his way to Triangle Land Conservancy the way many lasting commitments begin — by simply living nearby. A mile from one of TLC’s nature preserves, Brooks had been hiking its trails for years before retirement opened the door to something more. That was 10 years ago, and he hasn’t slowed down since.
His volunteer life with TLC spans the full range of conservation work: repairing and building trails with the weekly Conservation Corps, serving as a site steward who walks the preserves and flags what needs attention, monitoring conservation easements on private properties to ensure landowners are honoring their agreements, and standing as a fire watcher during controlled burns. It is hands-on, physical, and purposeful work. It has deepened a lifelong connection to the outdoors into something sharper and more intentional.
What keeps Brooks coming back is the people alongside him. “The staff is very knowledgeable and willing to answer questions and teach you a new activity,” he says of the TLC team. And for anyone considering joining him on a work session, his invitation is characteristically direct: “Work can be hard, but it’s very satisfying — when you finish, you can see what has been accomplished.” In conservation, that visible difference on the land is its own reward.
