Tracy Groenewegen
Every year Spark presents the Spark Outstanding Pro Bono Award at the Volunteer Manitoba Volunteer Awards Gala. We look forward to this day every year because it gives us a chance to recognize some of our volunteers and the impact their pro bono work has on the community, as well as celebrate volunteerism in Manitoba.
From now until awards night, we are celebrating the nominees for the Spark Outstanding Pro Bono Award, and their contributions to their community through a series of volunteer profiles.
Today we are profiling Award nominee Tracy Groenewegen!
Tracy is nominated for her evaluation work with Osborne Village Resource Centre (OVRC), a “nonprofit pre-employment resource centre dedicated to assisting clients on their journey to finding meaningful employment.”
Tracy approached Spark in 2017 wanting to donate her evaluation skills because she “believes in pro bono work…It’s a way to use [her] knowledge and skills to give back to the community. [She] knows that nonprofits generally don’t have the resources for external evaluation services, so the availability of pro bono resources is essential for these organizations.”
In 2023, OVRC reached out to Spark because they wanted to improve the surveys their clients fill out before and after they complete services. “The purpose of the pre-service delivery survey was to gather information to determine the exact needs of our clients…the post-service delivery survey examined if we met each client’s specific needs or if we need to look at making changes in our service delivery.”
With Tracy extensive knowledge and experience in research and evaluation she was perfect for the project.
Tracey began by meeting with Keith Robinson, the Executive Director of OVRC, to get a sense of the project. Next, she met with “each staff member to determine what information they would like from the surveys.”
Once Tracy gathered all the necessary research she set out to designing the surveys.
Once the surveys were complete she set the centre up with a provider that would host the surveys. Finally, Tracy trained Keith on “how to create data from the survey results and ensured that everything worked correctly.”
On the impact for OVRC, Keith said “the result of Tracy’s work will allow us to determine if we clearly understand our client’s needs as they move forward toward securing meaningful employment or career change.” Furthermore, “we can also validate our services to our provincial funder to ensure they clearly understand the community’s needs and how OVRC is making a positive impact.”
At the end of the match Keith reflected that “our community needs more people like Tracy; her example has set the standard for me as I give my time to the community. I will strive to be as caring and thorough as I volunteer in my church and community roles due to watching and learning from Tracy.”
Thank you Tracy for your amazing evaluation work!
For more volunteer profiles check out Danielle Harvey-Wilson, Sheila Young, Kelly Thibodeau, Margo Powell, Evgeniya Lapanov, Melanie Houde, and Amanda Minuk and David Gut, and Sumegha Gupta!
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