CHARLOTTE, N.C. — SHARE Charlotte is celebrating 10 years of connecting the community to nonprofits and making a huge impact.
SHARE started simply when the founder couldn’t find a nonprofit to volunteer with. Now 10 years later, they’re the Google of Charlotte nonprofits working with hundreds of organizations every day.
Jonathan Gardner founded the nonprofit GardHouse after his own struggle to find work.
“The idea came from my own personal experience trying to find a job here in Charlotte, it was difficult," Gardner said.
GardHouse works with Black and Brown college students and strategically places them in internships with small businesses and nonprofits with the goal of the internship leading to a job. But when he started GardHouse in 2019, it wasn’t easy as a brand-new nonprofit.
“SHARE played a huge role in making sure the city of Charlotte knew what this organization was and the impact it could have,” Gardner said.
SHARE Charlotte offers a one-stop-shop website featuring profiles on more than 600 Charlotte nonprofits connecting people looking to help, with all the different ways to do that in the queen city, and they offer guidance to the organizations as well.
“We provide them with networking and professional development and ways to get them support and connections," Melissa Hovey, SHARE’s executive director, said.
Gardner agreed, adding, “SHARE Charlotte continuously finds opportunities not just for Gardhouse to be elevated throughout the community but all organizations and through them we can identify more internship sites.”
SHARE is celebrating 10 years this month and in that time, SHARE’s leaders say they’ve had a $36 million impact and helped orchestrate 15,000 volunteer opportunities.
“Without SHARE everybody would be trying to figure out where they can share their impact and SHARE makes it a one-stop shop for everybody to look at what is it I want to do for an organization,” Gardner said.
SHARE has also expanded to seven other communities across the country.
Contact Michelle at mboudin@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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