Arthur Blank Family Foundation

By Alma E. Hill

The year was 1989, when the self-indulgent "me" generation was full of itself.

For young urban professionals, the roughly 25- to 35-year-old age group with a large disposable income, making money and having it all was fashionable. "Greed is good" became a catchphrase.

Elise Eplan, then 29 and a yuppie herself, had just returned home to Atlanta after completing graduate school in New York. A promising career in the banking industry was her ticket to success, but it wasn't enough. She knew there was more to life than a Rolex watch.

Her commitment to volunteerism led to the creation of Hands on Atlanta, the city's premier volunteer organization that Eplan and a group of friends turned into an agency with a $6.3 million budget. The nonprofit group celebrates its 11th annual Hands on Atlanta Day Saturday, with more than 15,000 volunteers who will work on more than 200 projects ranging from fixing up parks to painting schools.

Hands on Atlanta filled a void that Eplan and many of her friends were experiencing in the 1980s.

"I was increasingly frustrated because it was harder and harder to do community service," recalled Eplan, who had grown up volunteering with her family.

A friend in New York was starting a program there that would line up volunteer projects for busy professionals so all they had to do was show up, work a few hours and call it a day.

Eplan thought the concept might work in Atlanta, so she called five close friends and asked them to each bring a friend to her Ansley Park condo to brainstorm. They met over appetizers and cocktails in Eplan's living room one winter evening in 1989.

Mark Bernstein, one of the founders, came up with Hands on Atlanta because the group wanted a name that symbolized helping hands.

The small group included Deva Hirsch, who currently serves with Eplan as co-director of the Arthur Blank Family Foundation; Kent Alexander, then an assistant U.S. attorney who went on to become U.S. attorney and is now senior vice president and general counsel for Emory University; and Karen Webster, who later went on to become a Fulton County commissioner and now works for Beers Construction.

Like Eplan, many of them had been volunteering since childhood.

"At my mother's urging, I stuffed mailboxes for every cause and candidate imaginable, probably starting in second grade," said Alexander, 43.

Emulating their counterparts in the New York program, called New York Cares, the Atlantans became matchmakers. They each spent about 20 hours a week of their free time contacting and volunteering at nonprofit service organizations that needed help. Each time they had a meeting or project, more people showed up anxious to get involved.

"It was like a mosquito tapping a major artery. We didn't realize how many people wanted to volunteer," Alexander said.

Motivated to help

The early volunteers, mostly in their 20s and 30s, were motivated for a variety of reasons.

"They were on the track of making money, but they wanted to do something in the community or they wanted to meet women or it started to be a little bit cool," Eplan recalled.

Within eight months, the organization was growing so rapidly, the organizers applied for nonprofit status. Days Inn donated office space on Buford Highway. And, with a $5,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Metro Atlanta and donations from their parents, they had $7,500 in the bank to hire a director and pay for office supplies.

A friend told Eplan about a recent graduate named Michelle Nunn, who was interning for a judge while deciding if she wanted to go to law school.

"She was foolish enough to say yes," Hirsch said. "That was a pretty smart hire, because look at Hands on Atlanta today."

Nunn, now 35, the older of two children of former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, took the part-time job as executive director for $8 an hour. By 2001, Nunn's annual salary had grown to $77,484, according to tax documents filed with the secretary of state's office.

Hands on Atlanta had a $50,000 budget in 1989, a handful of office workers and 12 monthly service projects that attracted hundreds of volunteers. The budget for the 2002-2003 fiscal year is $6.3 million. Money comes from individuals and corporations, as well as foundations and government grants.

Of the total budget, 86 percent is spent on program costs; 14 percent is for administrative expenses.

Hands on Atlanta Day, the agency's single largest day of volunteer service, began in 1991 with 2,000 volunteers and more than 100 service projects. So far this year, the nonprofit has coordinated 97,694 volunteer opportunities. Volunteers donated an estimated 402,749 service hours in 2002, compared with 7,632 hours in 1990. "It's so much more than what we could have envisioned," Eplan said. "It's not just about volunteering. They're doing AmeriCorps, they're doing service learning, they're doing team projects for corporations."

Moving on, expanding

None of the original founders remains on Hands on Atlanta's board of directors. Some have moved out of state. Bernstein is in San Francisco, where he volunteers with Hands on San Francisco. However, Eplan, Hirsch and Alexander are part of the 13-member advisory board, which meets three times a year.

In addition to overseeing Hands on Atlanta, Nunn is also executive director of CityCares of America, the national umbrella agency located in Atlanta. It was created in 1992 by Hands on Atlanta, New York Cares and D.C. Cares. CityCares provides information and resources to other cities that are starting similar organizations.

There are now 30 CityCares affiliates in the United States, 13 in Britain and one in Manila, Philippines.

Hands on Atlanta receives high marks from the nonprofits who use its volunteers.

"They did a great job for Generation Green," said Christy Sizemore, who coordinated the community gardening project for the Georgia Conservancy in April. "They did a tremendous amount of work cleaning up the garden and making it look nice."

Hands on Atlanta's AmeriCorps volunteers work with Project Grad, a mentor and tutorial program run by Atlanta Public Schools, whose main focus is to boost reading and math skills.

"Our kids really benefit from the time and the attention the volunteers devote to them," said Pat Bowers, a spokeswoman for School Superintendent Beverly Hall.

For her part, Nunn said guiding Hands on Atlanta has "always been a labor of love, even when I was being paid $8 an hour for 14-hour days." Her workweeks still average 60 to 70 hours, she said. The organization is outgrowing its rented space near The Temple on Peachtree and is looking for space for a new headquarters.

Nunn also would like to expand AmeriCorps volunteers to every public school, to ensure that all students read at grade level by the third grade.

In addition, she wants to broaden Hands on Atlanta's outreach throughout the metro area. Now its work is limited to the city and to Gwinnett, Fulton, DeKalb and Cobb counties.

Although this is the only job Nunn has held since she graduated from college, she's not feeling a career burnout yet.

"I don't have an end line," she says, "but I also think we have emerging leadership within the organization, so I am highly dispensable at this point."

©2002 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Further reproduction, retransmission or distribution of these materials without the prior written consent of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and any copyright holder identified in the material's copyright notice, is prohibited.

THE ARTHUR M. BLANK FAMILY FOUNDATION

History: Established in 1995 by Arthur M. Blank, co-founder of Home Depot.

Purpose and areas of support: The foundation supports programs that create opportunities for young people, enhance their self-esteem, and increase their awareness of cultural and community issues. Most grants go to youth-development projects that involve arts, athletics, the environment, after-school activities, or promoting tolerance. It also makes grants to improve the organizational effectiveness of such groups and to preserve green space in the Atlanta metropolitan area, as well as some discretionary grants.