APRIL 2017 14 | FRONTDOORSMEDIA .COM in school and are less likely to engage in risky behavior. So volunteering while young clearly provides lasting effects. “It’s beautiful to watch our volunteers have so much fun spending time with seniors, read with their friends they’ve met at a family shelter, or make something special for a child they know is not feeling well,” Sklar said. “They see the person for who they are, not what they look like or what their circumstances may be. I always say that the world would be a better place if more adults could see the world through the eyes of children.” It’s much easier to have the conversation with teenagers about giving back, about being empathetic, if they’ve been volunteering at an early age, Sklar pointed out. If not, “it’s going to be really hard” to start from scratch, she said. If they start early, “they don’t think twice” about giving back to their community once they grow up, Sklar said. Geyser said, “We always say when our boys get older we hope they do the same thing with their kids and so on, so you’re kind of building these generations of philanthropists.” When they began investigating the viability of a family volunteer organization, Geyser and Sklar, who have advertising (Sklar) and marketing (Geyser) backgrounds, began organizing small events and asking friends to come. The first was at Central Arizona Shelter Services, a test run to see if there was a market for their idea. Geyser said they wanted to gauge satisfaction among the volunteers and, just as important, the nonprofit itself “to make sure they were happy with whatever we did.” They didn’t have an organization in the Valley to model. COVER STORY CONTINUED

APRIL 2017 FRONTDOORSMEDIA .COM | 15 Feed My Starving Children Packing Sessions Tranquility Trail Animal Sanctuary Empty Bowl Pet Food Pantry Magazine Publishers Family Literacy Project ONGOING VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES “We started Families Giving Back because we couldn’t find those opportunities,” Sklar said. “So we ended up looking across the country to find out where there were organizations like ours and contacted them and did some learning and information sharing to see how they got started and what kind of events they were doing.” Geyser said they talked with Little Helping Hands in Austin and Doing Good Together in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. They took the tips that come out of those conversations and used their event experience with Central Arizona Shelter Services to prove to skeptical nonprofits — who were not in love with the concept of having young children come and volunteer — that the idea worked. The women assured the nonprofits they wanted to work with that they would handle everything. COVER STORY CONTINUED Visit www.familiesgivingback.org to see the latest volunteer opportunities.