B&G SPECIAL FEATURE.

Over the last eight years, a new program that increases volunteerism and decreases social isolation has spread across a handful of cities in Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. It’s called Give 5 and was conceived by Greg Burris toward the end of his ten-year stint as city manager of Springfield, Missouri (2008 to 2018). 

Give 5 was created to establish a solid match-making program to teach retirees about local volunteer opportunities while also providing a way for nonprofits to tell the story of what they do. 

The concept was co-created with Cora Scott, communications and civic engagement director in Springfield, where it has operated successfully for eight years. The initiative gives retirees a guided path to explore community volunteer opportunities with the idea of committing to giving just five hours a month of their time. 

An evaluation of the program’s impact shows a 670% return on investment, based on a survey of Give 5 graduates, who continue to volunteer at more than twice the number of hours as other volunteering older adults, according to the 2025 Give 5 impact report.

By increasing the volunteer time and commitment provided by Give 5 graduates, the program addresses a number of current social issues:

• The aging of America, with 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 each day.

• A growing appreciation of the health risk of loneliness and isolation for older adults after retirement.

• The need to strengthen the public engagement and the social fabric of communities.

• The importance of volunteerism, given federal budget reductions, city and state budget strains, a long-term drop in volunteer numbers and what Burris calls the “desperate need” that nonprofits have for volunteer assistance.

In addition to the flagship Springfield program, Give 5 also has been operating over different spans of time in other Missouri cities, including St Louis, Kansas City, Columbia, and Joplin, with part of the funding coming through 2025 from Missouri State government. (For the 2026-2027 budget, Give 5 funding was one of a number of cuts made in the state budget.) Oklahoma City, Knoxville and Nacogdoches, Texas have also begun Give 5 programs, with funding through foundations or other sources.

After Burris left the city manager position, he served for six years as President & CEO of United Way of the Ozarks (now renamed the United Way Ozarks Region). He is now retired and taking a short-term respite from Give 5 for family caregiving responsibilities. 

Currently, he and Scott are planning for future Give 5 retiree class cohorts and Scott, who continues to serve as communications and civic engagement director in Springfield, also continues to help out with Give 5. She has also started Springfield “Ambassador Academies”, which recruit retirees to learn about and then volunteer for city departments, using similar methods as Give 5.

In the Q&A below, Burris tells more about Give 5 impact, how and why it started, and the way it works:

Q. What inspired the Give 5 idea?

GB: Cora and I started Give 5 when I was city manager of Springfield and I was watching my friends retire. I would ask, ‘What are you going to do in retirement?’ An innocent question. Many didn’t have a plan. 

I knew these were people with tons of skills and talents and I knew they didn’t intend to sit on the couch and wither away. I’d ask ‘Have you considered volunteering’? They’d say ‘I’m not looking for a full-time job.’

So, I’d ask, ‘Would you be willing to volunteer five hours a month?’ and almost all of them would say, ‘Well, sure. I could do five hours a month.’

That’s where the name Give 5 comes from.

Q. How did your role as city manager affect the way you thought about the potential for this program?

GB: When you get to sit in the city manager’s chair, you see the community through a different lens. I knew that some of our nonprofits were struggling and I knew they could use the skills and talents of this whole wave of people who retire in our community. 

Q. Beyond the benefit to the nonprofit community, what did you see as benefits to the volunteers themselves?

GB: For retirees, the issue of loneliness and social isolation has spiked for a variety of reasons. People need to be drawn out of their homes into social endeavors. For some people, it can be easy to go in and never come out. I saw that with some of my mentors. They would retire, maybe lose a spouse, and they just disappeared. 

It’s all about having purpose and boils down to reigniting that sense of purpose that maybe they’ve lost.

Q. Who can join the program?

GB: It varies depending on the city. In Springfield, you need to be 60 or better. We don’t say 60 or older. You also have to live in our county. 

But each site gets to decide its age cut off. 

Q. How have you structured Give 5 to optimize the experience for both nonprofits and volunteers?

GB: For each 20-person group that signs up, we provide one program day each week over a five-week period. On the first program day, the morning is spent educating them about their own community and even if they’ve been here for a lifetime, they learn a lot about the community that they didn’t know. During the first day, they introduce themselves to each other and start to develop those social connections. Then we put them on a bus and take them around to visit three nonprofits.

Then, on one day of each of the next four weeks, we’ll visit five more nonprofits, for a total of 23.  In that way, we show them the work that’s taking place. If we go to a domestic abuse shelter, the CEO will talk about what his shelter does and new Give Five participants can connect the dots. We also bring in guest speakers on days two, three, four and five. The class gets to feel special, because they may be hearing from a city council member. They may be hearing from the superintendent of public schools. They may be hearing from a university professor who's doing a special project for the community.

By the end of the five-week program, our graduates know about many different opportunities for volunteering. It’s like speed dating.  

Q. What happens after a typical group of potential Give 5 volunteers finishes the program?

GB: In a way, participating in the Give 5 Program is a bit like drinking from a fire hose.  It’s a lot to take in. So, after participating in the five program days, we give them a few weeks to absorb what they learned and select volunteer opportunities that touch their heart and appeal to their sense of purpose, impact and meaning. Most choose two or more.

Then we host a graduation event. We invite nonprofit leaders, the graduates’ family and friends, and other stakeholders. Often, the mayor is our commencement speaker.  Then we call the graduates up one at a time to receive their graduation certificate, a Give 5 tumbler, and get a photo with the mayor.  While they are coming to the front of the room, Cora is reading the list of volunteer opportunities they selected and why. These are the ‘goosebump moments.’

Q. How are the nonprofits selected?

GB: We have more than 2,000 nonprofits in our community, so we have plenty to choose from.

The curriculum is customized to the community’s selected challenge.  Our focus in Springfield is all about poverty reduction, so that's how we decide which nonprofits we're going to visit. The focus on poverty reduction helps us build the curriculum on day one of the program. 

St Louis focused its Give 5 program on mental health and we helped them customize the curriculum to focus on those issues. Oklahoma City chose to focus their Give 5 program on the Social Determinants of Health.  

Q. Do you confront any kind of political partisanship in what you’re doing? How does this work with people’s different feelings about government?

GB: We tell them on the very first program day of the first class that this is a non-political program. But sometimes, political opinions slip in. 

This happened on the first program day of the very first class in Springfield. They stand up and introduce themselves and we give them about ten questions to answer. Where were you born? Where's your favorite place to vacation? What's your favorite dessert? Things like that – just to kind of get people connected.

The very last guy stood up. He answered all the questions and then he added, ‘Just so you know, I’m just to the right of Atilla the Hun.’ 

On the third program day, we're over at our domestic abuse shelter, which is the largest in the state. The group is sitting around a big conference table. They just heard from the CEO and they're getting ready to go on a little mini tour. And before the guy who introduced himself that way could even get up from the table, another individual in the class came over, leaned over the desk and said, ‘Don, are you the guy on the first day who said you're just to the right of Attila, the Hun.’ And Don leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms and said, ‘Well, yes, I am.’ And Ira, who's a retired nurse, leaned in and said, ‘Well, I'm just to the left of Bernie.’

I was standing maybe three feet from this conversation, thinking, ‘Oh, crap. This is not going to go well.’ But they both laughed. They got up and walked on the tour together in the back, talking to each other as they went. 

I followed them just to make sure a fight didn’t break out. 

On days four and five, they sat next to each other on the bus and at lunch. Later, they volunteered together and became Facebook friends. That would not have happened if they had met online. They wouldn’t have gotten to know each other and they wouldn’t have seen that they were more alike than different. 

Q. What are the lessons you’ve learned in doing this? And what is the advice you can give other cities who look at this and think it would be a good path for them, too?

GB: We assumed at the start that nonprofits would be ready to tell their story and to handle a tour. 

But we had a number of nonprofits that were not prepared or had turned this over to a student intern who didn’t really know much about the organization and couldn’t answer questions. That’s when we started training the nonprofits and by the third class, all the nonprofits that were participating were doing a much better job. 

Q. What goes into the training you offer nonprofits?

GB: We train them on how to be prepared for visits from Give 5. Because I can tell you the participants are going to select those nonprofits that have their act together. 

Of course, we cover the basics – treat your volunteers they way you would like to be treated, make them feel welcomed, and communicate with them regularly.  But we also talk to the nonprofits about how to do their presentations; how to do their tours; how to speak up and talk to the group; how to deal with participants with hearing loss or mobility issues; how to tell their story.  

We also encourage the nonprofits to see the world through a ‘lens of abundance’ rather than a ‘lens of scarcity,’ which is sometimes the default setting for nonprofits.  We ask them to step back and allow themselves to dream big.  What would you do with twenty retired CEOs, twenty retired nurses, twenty retired school teachers, or twenty retired social workers?  And what type of volunteer opportunities do you have, or can you create, that would appeal to those folks?  A few may be drawn to stuffing envelopes or answering the phone, but most will not.

We also talk about little things -- like make sure you can direct them to a bathroom; have a five-minute break after we arrive and make sure to let them sit for part of the session.  Don’t make them stand for 45 minutes.

Q. How have you evaluated the return on investment that comes from Give 5?

GB: In 2025, the State of Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services asked us to survey every Give 5 graduate in the state and ask whether they are actually volunteering and, if so, how much.  The State was investing almost $1 million per year into the statewide adoption and wanted to make sure they were seeing results.

After surveying all of the Give 5 graduates in the state, we determined the State was receiving a 670% return on their investment.  The Give 5 graduates were volunteering at more than double the hours-per-week compared to non-graduates in the state.

Additionally, a study published in the Journal of Human Sciences and Extension by researchers at Penn State University and Stanford University stated the following:

“Overall, Give 5 has made significant progress towards its dual-purpose goal to support the well-being of older adults in the community while assisting local nonprofits in fulfilling their missions.”  The study also found the program increased participants’ level of empathy.

Q. How does what you’re doing connect with the needs of state and local government?

GB: When I left city management and started as president and CEO of a United Way agency, I saw firsthand how many nonprofits live so close to the bone, and I started asking myself what would happen if a third of these nonprofits shut down. Where would citizens turn to solve the community issues being addressed by those nonprofits?  The answer is probably local or state government.   

I believe local governments should create fertile ground for nonprofits to thrive 

and they need to support local-social connection because that affects what’s happening in your community.

Not everyone gets it yet. I’ve been a city manager. I know you’ve got fires on all fronts, right? If it’s not the wastewater treatment plan, you’re dealing with the airport or you’re dealing with the parks department or there’s a controversy or a city councilman going rogue.

The health of nonprofits is not on their radar screen. What I’m arguing is that it probably ought to be.

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