When Mary Gunn took over as the new executive director of Generations Incorporated — a Boston-area nonprofit working to strengthen the literacy skills of young children by engaging people over the age of 50 as volunteer literacy tutors — her first impression was a powerful one.
“I was struck by how young the staff was,” she writes. “I was easily 25 years older than the next oldest person in the room.”
Her second impression: “All my colleagues were bright, hard-working and passionate about our mission. I was lucky to be among them, even if I was old enough to be their mother.”
In the years since, Generations Incorporated has: 
- built a multigenerational team
- reduced turnover
- expanded the size of its volunteer corps by 40 percent
- increased the number of children it serves by 75 percent
- improved reading outcomes, and
- decreased its operating budget by 12.5 percent.
All at the same time.
You can read about how they did it and what they learned along the way in a new case study “Efficiencies on the Road to a Multigenerational Workforce,” written by Gunn and published by Encore.org.
Note: There was no magic involved!
Click to tweet: This #nonprofit built a #Gen2Gen team, reduced turnover, improved quality, added more #volunteers, served more students and cut costs. Read what they learned bit.ly/2QX5yLR @mgunn49 @Generations_Inc @EncoreOrg
Published: June 7, 2019