DAV Community Impact Day is April 4 this year, and the conversations I’ve had with so many of you have me excited for the great work you have planned. we hope you’re excited, too.

Last year, we shared four tips on how you can make your volunteer event shine (it’s a good one to re-read). This time, I want to talk about what you should do after your Community Impact Day event—because what you do next can positively shape your chapter or department’s future.

The volunteer event you host will likely create interest in DAV’s mission and inspire some people to want to do more. If you use that momentum and offer more volunteer opportunities throughout the year, you’ll start to see a community form around these events.

This is DAV Community Impact Day’s third year, and we’re hearing about it bringing visible change and revitalization to chapters around the country:

  • Members of Chapter 1 in Honolulu did buddy checks for Community Impact Day, which led to a dramatic increase in veterans coming to their monthly meetings.
  • After giving their meeting hall a facelift, members and friends of Chapter 66 and its Auxiliary unit in Hammonton, New Jersey, now host veteran service events in their space several times a month. Previously, it was rarely used.
  • Members of Chapter 16 in Longwood, Florida, and its nearby Auxiliary unit have continued monthly visits to veterans in Orlando-area nursing homes after they started during Community Impact Day in 2023. These are veterans who had not had many visitors or connections to other veterans in quite a while.

(If you have an example of how Community Impact Day has influenced ongoing volunteer efforts in your area, please share that story with us at [email protected].)

The purpose of asking people to pledge at least an hour of their time to serve veterans is to show that it doesn’t take a lot of time to make a difference in a veteran’s life. Simple acts of service can change someone’s outlook in an instant.

We want this to inspire people to volunteer more—to come into our community to offer up their time and talents to do even more for ill and injured veterans. It’s the idea that one act of service can ripple out into something much bigger.

So, as you plan your department or chapter’s Community Impact Day event for this year, also start thinking about what’s next. What do you want your local veteran community to look like? And how can you use volunteerism to get there?

Use the answers to those questions to create opportunities for people to stay involved with DAV.

As always, thank you for all you do for DAV. You continue to raise the bar of what serving veterans looks like, and I’m grateful for your efforts.