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Making a Difference Together

April is Global Volunteer Month, a time dedicated to recognizing the impact of volunteers worldwide. At WayForward Resources, we’re proud to join this global celebration by honoring the extraordinary individuals who make our mission possible.

As our Volunteer Program Manager, Pam Higham, expresses:

“At WayForward Resources, we warmly welcome volunteers as invited guests, valued colleagues, and essential members of the WayForward community. Volunteers generously share their time and talents to create food security and housing stability, contributing across every corner of our organization. I am privileged to witness something beautiful as this unfolds: the spirit of volunteerism uplifts everyone – paid staff, unpaid staff, and those we serve!”

The Impact of Volunteerism in Numbers

Meet A Few Of Our Volunteers

Throughout Global Volunteer Month, we’re highlighting the stories of some of our amazing volunteers. Each brings their unique perspective and passion to WayForward Resources, and together, they make our mission possible.

Debbie Loomis

Debbie began volunteering in 2021 during the height of COVID, working in our drive-up food pantry. Since then, she’s spread joy as a holiday Elf at our Holiday Art Market and now welcomes donors at our donation center.

Her inspiration comes from her 95-year-old mother-in-law who volunteered until just weeks before her passing. “Knowing what a need there is in the community and connecting with various donors (many have wonderful stories) keeps me motivated to continue volunteering,” Debbie explains.

The moments that stay with her are deeply human connections. She treasures interactions with donors who are donating items from loved ones who have passed away, or former clients giving back. “I’m always so touched that at such times of great sadness they are able to think of us at WayForward and share their story with me.”

One of her favorite memories? “A donor’s little girl, probably around 7 years old, donated a couple pairs of her sparkly shoes. She was speaking Spanish and I was able to thank her and tell her what pretty eyes she had in her language, earning a big hug from her!”

When asked what she would say to someone considering volunteering with WayForward, Debbie’s advice is simple: “Just do it!! It’s so rewarding and the people you work with are all amazing, passionate, and fun!”

Linda Pils

Linda’s journey with WayForward began through community food drives. “I started volunteering because I was part of a community that made food collections a priority and then donated the food to WayForward,” she explains. As her understanding of food insecurity grew, so did her commitment to our mission.

Every Thursday afternoon, you’ll find Linda at the milk, eggs, and meat coolers, serving our diverse community. She shares, “Some are hesitant and just learning where food is stored, some are old friends and we chat about how their kids are doing or how was work that day.”

For Linda, volunteering brings a special kind of fulfillment: “When my shift is completed, I don’t leave with a full grocery basket, but I do leave with a full heart.”

It’s the simple expressions of gratitude that make the experience so meaningful. As Linda puts it, “Volunteering is rewarding, it is the many ‘Thank you, for being here’ comments that fill me up, reinforcing the graciousness of our guests.”

Mike Glassford

Mike joined our volunteer team just one year ago in March 2024. His motivation? “To give back to the community and serve others in my retirement.” This simple yet powerful purpose has made a meaningful difference to countless pantry guests.

Like many of our volunteers, Mike has been touched by the resilience of those we serve. He shares, “One of our guests told me she and her children just moved into a house after being homeless for a year and WayForward had helped her through that rough time and is still helping them now. She was filled with tears when she told me this story and it touched my heart.”

What keeps Mike coming back week after week? “All the great people I work with. Such a wonderful atmosphere and love for helping others. I have also made some new friends there and that is great to me.”

To all our volunteers: Thank you for being essential members of our community. Your generosity creates ripples of positive change that extend far beyond the hours you contribute. You are the heart of WayForward Resources, and we are deeply grateful for your commitment to creating food and housing security in our community.

Join Our Volunteer Team

Inspired by these stories? We invite you to consider joining volunteers like Mike, Debbie, Linda, and the nearly 950 others who make our work possible. Whether you can give an hour a week or a day a month, your time makes a difference.

Some Current Volunteer Opportunities:

For more information about volunteering with WayForward Resources visit our Become A Volunteer page or contact our Volunteer Program Manager, Pam Higham, by email or phone (608) 826-3409.

A year-end message from WayForward Executive Director Ellen Carlson

It’s been another year of unprecedented growth at WayForward. For an organization that focuses on providing the basic building blocks of stability–food and housing, growth is both positive and negative.

On one hand, we have made an impact on more people’s lives than ever before. Thanks to the support of the community, we have been able to serve over 13,000 people last year–more than twice as many as the year before. That means twice as many people have been able to avoid eviction and stay in their homes and have received the nutritious food they need.

On the other hand, our organizational growth has been driven by the tremendous rise in demand for our services. That’s why unprecedented growth is also cause for concern. We are seeing three times as many visits to our food pantry as we did just two years ago, and our case managers are booking emergency housing appointments out weeks in advance.

Numbers like these mean many visitors are coming to our food pantry for the first time. In fact, 50% of people who came to the food pantry last year were first-time visitors. Children and families with children are overrepresented. Around 75% percent of people who received food were in households with children. And nearly 100% of families served by our Connections program, a housing program that works with those in doubled-up housing situations, have children.

Key factors in this increased demand for our services include the rise in food prices, the population growth in Dane County and in Middleton and west Madison specifically, and perhaps most significantly, the increase in housing prices in our area. While we have a very low unemployment rate in Dane County, many of these jobs don’t pay enough to cover the rising cost of living here. Community members who were just barely making ends meet before are now unable to absorb a $150/month rent increase. With no increase in pay and nowhere cheaper to rent, they are turning to WayForward to bridge the gap.

These are big problems–problems that are greater than anything WayForward can address alone. And with the affordable housing gap widening and housing prices continuing to rise, we expect the number of people unable to cover the basic expenses of food and housing to continue to grow. We are committed to continuing to adapt, innovate and expand and to do all we can to make sure people have the food and stable housing they need to lay a solid foundation.

We also know that problems that are larger than us require solutions that are larger than us. We have already seen the community responding with growing support. Thank you. As we have shared with you what we are seeing, we are continuously met with offers to join the effort to build a strong community where everyone has the basic building blocks of stability. Because of your support, we have raised more dollars and brought in more community donated food this year than any previous year in our history. This is what has made it possible for us to serve more people than ever before.

In the months and years ahead, we will continue to need your support. As we expect to see demand continuing to increase, the only way we can meet it is with increased support. There are a number of ways you can still make a tax-deductible financial donation this year. Donations of your time or donations of food can also make an immediate difference. You can purchase items directly from our wish list or use our top 10 list to purchase items locally.

Donations like these help us address the immediate needs of the people coming in our doors every day. But we know that we must do more and dig deeper to address the larger issues that are leading to this increased need for food and housing support in our community. We invite you to learn more about these issues and add your voice to the conversations to develop larger, community-wide solutions. We will be hosting some opportunities in this coming year and sharing some opportunities hosted by others.

Our mission statement says we bring the community together to create food and housing security. We know the only way to create stability is through a community-wide effort. Thank you for joining with us this past year. We look forward to continuing to work together in 2025.

Sincerely,

Ellen Carlson, Executive Director

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“As COVID restrictions eased, I sought out volunteer opportunities in the Seniors Program at WayForward. I joined the volunteers who schedule rides and drive seniors to appointments. Over the last two and half years, I have also learned much more about the ever-increasing need for services and resources related to food insecurity and housing stability. I am continually amazed at the dedication of staff and volunteers to support the needs of the community. All this has inspired me to continue to support the mission of WayForward with volunteer time and financial support.

Now more than ever, whatever you can do, do it! Every volunteer effort and financial contribution makes a difference.”

Gale Barber, WayForward Volunteer

You can join community members like Gale by making a difference on Giving Tuesday. Follow along on Facebook on December 3rd!

WayForward is celebrating Global Volunteer Month in April and the volunteers who give their time and talents to build food security and housing stability in our community. Last year, more than 1,100 WayForward volunteers gave nearly 25,000 hours to support our programs.

Meet Mark Walther, who volunteers three mornings a week in WayForward’s food pantry warehouse.

Volunteer role: Mark started volunteering at WayForward a little more than a year ago after retiring. He tried out a range of roles before deciding he most enjoyed working in the food pantry warehouse, where he unloads and sorts deliveries three mornings a week. At the end of last year, he got a notification about how many volunteer hours he had accumulated and picked up even more shifts to reach 500 hours of volunteering in 2023. 

How did you get started? My wife is younger than I am, and she’s still working. So she was working from home and I had to be very quiet. So I needed to find something to do. … so I tried everything. I stocked, I cleaned, I went out on the truck for rescues, and I decided that the warehouse was where I belong.

What keeps you coming back? I enjoy the physical work. I enjoy the fact it’s a reason to get up in the morning and go somewhere. Getting up in the morning and having breakfast and reading the paper at home – I would still be in bed right now. So this gets me up and going and gets on with the day, so it’s good for me.  It’s also great to be social with other people. I’ve kind of coalesced a group on Wednesday and Friday – I call them my crew.

What has surprised you about volunteering at WayForward? I’m amazed at how much food comes in and goes out here. A contribution that comes in the front door today will be gone today. And you can’t ignore the need. They’re lined up here at 7:30 in the morning when I arrive and it doesn’t open until 10. 

What would you say to encourage someone else to volunteer at WayForward? You’re doing a good deed. You’re doing something for other people, so that’s always important. But I think it’s good for you to get out and be social and to do some work, and everyone has something they can contribute. People come here from so many different backgrounds, it’s just interesting to find out what people do. I’m always asking people, ‘What did you do before you were here?’ And then I’m amazed. 

WayForward is celebrating Global Volunteer Month in April and the volunteers who give their time and talents to build food security and housing stability in our community.  Last year, more than 1,100 WayForward volunteers gave nearly 25,000 hours to support our programs.

Meet Jamie Russell, one of our newer volunteers in WayForward’s food pantry.

Volunteer role: Jamie started volunteering six weeks ago in the food pantry warehouse, where he helps unload, sort and stock food for distribution to the community.

How did you get started? We lived in Middleton for years. We were financial supporters, but working full time. I recently retired, so I thought it was time for me to start doing something. And there was an email that came – we’re on the email list for WayForward – and it said “We’re looking for volunteers.” I thought, “Might as well give it a shot.”

What has surprised you about volunteering at WayForward? The surprise is how much effort that goes into this. From the outside, it doesn’t look like it’s as much effort as it actually is. It takes a lot of sweat.

What would you say to encourage someone else to volunteer at WayForward? My wife just retired this week, so I’m telling her this is a great opportunity. In fact, I saw a couple of people I know she knows here. I would tell anybody give it a shot … it’s a rewarding thing to do and it gets you out of the house and you’re doing something.

 

WayForward is celebrating Global Volunteer Month in April and the volunteers who give their time and talents to build food security and housing stability in our community.  Last year, more than 1,100 WayForward volunteers gave nearly 25,000 hours to support our programs.

Meet Violet Goscha, one of our newer volunteers, who gives her time in WayForward’s clothing center.

Volunteer role: Violet is a junior at Middleton High School who started volunteering in February at WayForward’s Clothing Center, sorting and organizing donations to put out on the floor for guests to choose from. Clothing is available for free to Dane County residents.

How did you get started?  I’ve lived and grew up in Middleton, and so I kind of always knew about WayForward. I wanted an organized, well-structured type of volunteering. And so I just reached out and it was a super simple process.

What keeps you coming back? It’s been a really great experience so far. The most fun thing I think about volunteering, especially in like the clothing center, is that I get to see the range of donations that we’re able to accept. Being able to place it in a way that people can come in and feel at home, and where it’s like you’re shopping and we organize it for them … this is something I can do.

What has surprised you about volunteering at WayForward?  I was really intimidated going in, but then I started and the community here is what really surprised me. I walked through the door, and everyone was like, “Oh my gosh, a new person! Can I meet her?” It’s the best part of it, because I get to stay here and not only help people, but also interact with community people and meet new friends.

What would you tell a friend who is considering volunteering? I think the biggest reason why I would say someone should volunteer here is because you get a family-like environment where you can help people and it’s organized and it’s so perfect for a schedule for a high schooler like me. … Having a scheduled, almost job-like environment helps a lot. So I love recommending it to people who are my age, in high school and just really wanting to reach out and find a community.

After relocating to Wisconsin a few years ago to live near family, Marcia Sokol-Anderson’s goal was to give back in her retirement.

When in-person volunteering during the pandemic was not a comfortable option, she found a way to leverage a lifelong hobby to support people in her new community.

Sokol-Anderson, who first started knitting at age 10, had been in search of a new project once she finished making baby blankets for her new grandson. So she started buying skeins of yarn for knitting hats to donate to WayForward’s Clothing Center to help people stay warm during the winter months.

Last year she made 80 machine-washable hats.

“I live near WayForward, which is clearly a wonderful organization,” she says. “It was a no-brainer to donate the hats to their clothing center, especially for women who face Wisconsin winters! I plan to keep on knitting, and supplying hats for quite a while.”

A year-end message from WayForward Executive Director Ellen Carlson

At WayForward, we believe that when everyone has access to key building blocks for stability, we can transform our community into the kind of place we want it to be. 

This year has presented many challenges to this vision of our community. When I sat down to write this letter last year, our food pantry was providing the equivalent of 54,000 meals per month. Now we’re distributing 115,000 per month. We see the same pressure on our housing stability programs, setting a record for the amount of financial assistance we provided in November.

When I look ahead I see no sign of the demand plateauing.

Numbers like these can be overwhelming. But I’m sharing them with you because they tell us a lot about what is happening in our community. And these numbers represent the experiences of people in our community: people who are standing in line outside in the cold two hours before our food pantry opens and people who are sitting in our lobby waiting to meet with case managers to discuss housing assistance. 

Experts report the rise in demand is due to the end of pandemic-era support, general inflation and the steep increase in housing costs in our community, which causes people to focus even more of their income on paying rent. We have never turned anyone away from getting food, but we have had to put some limits on the amount of food people can take. We worry about how we and other local food pantries can continue to ensure that everyone in our community has access to nutritious food.

It is hard to hear these things. But this challenging moment also includes milestones to celebrate. 

In the week prior to Thanksgiving, about 3,000 people received food from our pantry, including additional ingredients needed to make holiday meals for their families. We are on track to distribute the equivalent of more than one million pounds of food this year.

More than 600 households received financial assistance last year. As the Madison area continues to experience some of the highest rent increases in the country, this support allowed families to avoid eviction and stay in their homes, where they can eat dinner together and have a place for kids to do homework at night. In addition, the first participants have graduated from our Connections program, which means over the last year they have transitioned from doubled-up housing into homes of their own and no longer need financial assistance.

Your support is how we have continued to meet the need up to this point and stay focused on our mission. You ensure that families have access to nutritious food, including the nearly 3,000 people who received food for holiday meals. Your support also meant more than 600 students started the school year with backpacks loaded with the supplies they needed and 1,700 people received gift cards to help stretch their dollars a little farther this holiday season.

Every day, I am grateful for our volunteers, who have grown in numbers and put in more hours this year than last year. They adapt to our changing needs and adjust their to-do lists to tackle what is needed. We see so much patience and generosity as they work to help ensure people have critical access to food. I’m also thankful for the people in our community who recognize the impact of our work and serve as powerful advocates for WayForward and the people we serve. We will continue to need your strong voices in the year to come so our neighbors can go to bed at night knowing local food pantries – the last safety net for the most basic of all needs – will still be able to serve them.

There are a number of ways you can still make a tax deductible financial donation this year. Donations of your time and food can also make an immediate difference, including buying items directly from our wish list listed on our website, to help us continue to offer a variety of options to the people who visit our pantry.

By joining forces to provide our time, expertise, and resources, we can provide more people access to nutritious food and stable housing.

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For Stephanie Lemancik and Rebecca Johnson, volunteering in WayForward’s garden was the seed for a strong, intergenerational friendship.

The two scientists first got to know each other as members of a “Green Committee” at their company, Thermo Fisher Scientific, which has been a longtime supporter of WayForward through food drives. They started volunteering for WayForward’s garden five years ago as part of the group, sparked by Johnson’s idea to garden to help others.

Over time, the group got smaller and just the two of them remained. Lemancik and Johnson have volunteered every week of gardening season since they began in 2018, except for days when the weather is too hot or severe to safely get out there. Both say they bonded over their love of volunteering and enjoyment of learning more about gardening along the way.

“I never considered myself to be a green thumb,” says Lemancik (at left in photo), who credits Dan Johnson, WayForward’s lead garden volunteer, for his mentoring and coaching. “We meet at the garden and he gives us our marching orders.”

The work is still challenging on some days, but both women say it’s worth it. 

“I think back to when we’re focused on watering those little pepper plants back in July, and it’s like 90 degrees and we’re miserable,” Lemancik says. “And then we see these tiny plants growing up and producing so much food. When you look back over the course of the months and how much things have grown and changed, it’s such a beautiful journey.”

“It’s just such an important initiative to support the people in our community, even if we never meet them personally,” she says.

Johnson (at right in photo) says the beauty of WayForward’s garden – and what it produces to provide people in our community access to nutritious food – is part of what keeps her coming back season after season.

“I think it’s our duty in life to give to others and this is a perfect example of where our hard work actually can improve someone else’s health,” Johnson says. “That brings a huge amount of joy and happiness and satisfaction.” 

Lou Ann Wagner has always volunteered and believes in giving back to her community

As a single mom working full time and supporting her three young children, she made sure to set enough aside to buy holiday gifts for people who had less than she had. “She carved out money to do that when we didn’t have much,” says her oldest daughter, Jennifer Murphy.

Lou Ann’s connection to WayForward (formerly Middleton Outreach Ministry) goes all the way back to when the family moved to Middleton in 1981 and joined St. Bernard Catholic Church. Jennifer recalls her mother doing a number of jobs in support of WayForward’s work, including years of  stopping on her way home from work to do an hour of volunteer data entry. She has continued to support the organization’s mission over the years.

But Lou Ann’s volunteer service and her life came to a halt in August 2022, when she fell off a ladder at home and suffered a traumatic brain injury. 

Her injury was life-threatening, requiring extensive interventions, rehabilitation and therapies.  As her recovery progressed, Lou Ann’s desire to help others kicked back in.  Even though she wasn’t really “allowed” to be on her computer without support, she would not be deterred.

“I signed myself up to volunteer” she said, after remembering her log-in and password to WayForward’s volunteer site. Since she wasn’t yet cleared to drive herself, Jennifer found herself recruited to volunteer with her. For the last year, the duo has been part of the “clean team” – Lou Ann vacuuming and tidying up the Clothing Center and Jennifer sweeping and mopping in the food pantry and the lobby of the building.

“This work is a reminder of how many unseen roles matter to WayForward,” Jennifer says. “Even ‘invisible’ jobs can be so valuable. If I am someone walking into this space and it’s clean, that means something.”

Both women consider their time volunteering as a key part of Lou Ann’s recovery from her injuries. “I’m feeling really good,” says Lou Ann, who no longer needs a ride from her daughter because she can once again drive herself to WayForward.

“This means a lot to us because we see how long she’s been giving back here,” Jennifer says.

“It is right in our backyard,” Lou Ann says.

“And people need help.” Jennifer adds.

Their time volunteering together adds to Lou Ann’s legacy of helping others and they hope others feel inspired to do the same. “There’s so many ways to be helpful,” Jennifer says.