Executive Summary

The Volunteer Phoenix Service Plan was developed to coordinate volunteer and service efforts across all City departments, including partnerships with non-profit organizations, businesses and neighborhood groups. The overall goal of the Service Plan is to ensure that all service efforts support key citywide priorities identified through community engagement efforts and by the mayor, City Council, city manager and the executive team.

The three key focus areas of the Service Plan are: Neighborhood Revitalization, Youth and Education, and Community Resilience.

This Service Plan was developed with generous financial and technical support from Cities of Service. The creation of the City’s first Chief Service Officer (CSO) was also made possible by support from Cities of Service. The CSO will, among other things, be responsible for implementing this service plan throughout the coming year.

The Service Plan includes three impact volunteering initiatives:

• Love Your Block PHX: A mini-grant program to support neighborhood revitalization projects.
• Resilient PHX: An initiative to support low-income neighborhoods in efforts to mitigate the impact of extreme heat and monsoon flooding.
• Read on Phoenix: The City’s education initiative to support third grade reading through volunteer tutoring.

All three initiatives address the three focus areas of this plan. They are powered by volunteers and implemented in partnership with non-profit organizations in our community.

The City has conducted comprehensive engagement campaigns in recent years as part of PlanPHX, the City’s General Plan update, and ReinventPHX, the City’s vision for development along the light rail line. Thousands of citizens dedicated hundreds of hours of time to share their vision for the future of Phoenix. It was important that this Service Plan align with these earlier efforts. We also conducted a neighborhood specific survey to fill in the gaps related to volunteering and service.

A Cities of Service Working Group was formed to help shape this plan and ensure that a comprehensive approach to design and implementation of the initiatives is taken. This group is comprised of non-profit organizations and key City departments engaged in volunteer efforts.

This plan will serve as a foundation for current service efforts in the City and will transform in the coming months and years to ensure that changes in priorities are reflected in our service efforts.