Volunteer on a Mission: Watching a New Organization Emerge

One of the most powerful things a volunteer can do is see a need and start trying to meet it. With enough passion and hard work, that initial maverick will attract other volunteers to the cause and a worthy organization will emerge and grow. That evolution might expand over time to raising money, hiring staff, and moving volunteers to governing boards and service-assisting positions. That’s the history of most of the institutions and organizations we take for granted today.

In this article, we introduce Stephanie Myers, a recent MPA (Masters in Public Administration) graduate at Villanova University in Villanova, PA. As readers soon learn, Myers is a decidedly determined young woman who is taking steps to try and change the world through her role as a volunteer and her dedication to a cause: the unrecognized – and therefore untreated – mental health issues among student athletes. To address these issues, Myers founded Mind4Athletes, Inc. (M4A), an organization so new that it doesn’t even have a Web site yet. In this article, we get to know Myers and her work, and discuss why and how she decided to form M4A.

In future stories published over the next months and years, we’ll revisit Myers and M4A to see how things are going. We hope this shared journey will give our volunteer management readers insight into how to support mavericks, Millennials, and dreamers like Myers.