True of False? Humans communicate more effectively through stories.

Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Jennifer Aaker and her Power of Social Technology students help with the answer! Look for cameos from Kiva co-founder Jessica Jackley, MCHammer, Robert Scoble, Pixar’s Oren Jacobs, and indie filmmaker Justine Jacobs.

We’re thrilled to kickoff TwentyTen with exciting news – we start production today on a new Volunteer Nation video podcast series, Volunteer Nation: Social Media + Innovation Convergence, produced in partnership with the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Our focus is on General Atlantic Professor of Marketing Jennifer Aaker’s Power of Social Technology (PoST) course and her MBA students as they explore how to leverage the incredible power of new social technology to effectively create social good.

The podcast series is comprised of five, four‐minute episodes, each featuring interviews with select PoST project teams and guest speakers. Throughout the winter academic quarter, we’ll be exploring all facets of social good, social media, and social innovation successes and challenges. The podcast series will be distributed starting in late January on VolunteerNation.tv, YouTube, and iTunes and excerpts will be available on the Center’s Social Innovations Conversations audio podcast channel (www.sic.conversationsnetwork.org).

We’re thrilled to announce that Volunteer Nation has been selected for the San Francisco Film Society’s fiscal sponsorship program. This enables foundations, grantmakers, and individuals to provide tax deductible donations to the project. From the SFFS site:

The program is run by former staff members of Film Arts Foundation, which enjoyed an excellent reputation over three decades as one of the finest fiscal sponsoring organizations in the country. Numerous funding sources put considerable trust in the program and many Film Arts fiscal sponsorship projects went on to considerable acclaim, including winning Academy Awards. The Film Society is now the keeper of that fine legacy and brings an organization-wide dedication to the stewardship of all its Fiscal Sponsorship projects.

To make a donation to Volunteer Nation via SFFS, simply click here.

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Volunteer of the Week, Ryan Kolynych

Ryan is one with water – whether swimming through it or surfing on it. He swam competitively in high school, including a heat against a new kid on the scene named Michael Phelps. Ryan went on to All-American Honorable Mention swimming honors at Emory University in Atlanta. Despite the high level of athletic competition and challenging academic curriculum, Ryan took the time to share his passion for swimming with others:

I coached a Special Olympics team as a service project. We helped train the kids, get them ready for meets … just had a good time …. It was cool to see the smile on their faces when they’re just swimming around.

After graduation, Ryan headed west to the Pacific and the amazing surfing around San Francisco. We met Ryan at one of his favorite surf spots – Ocean Beach. He’d noticed an online post about a beach clean-up sponsored by the local Surfrider Foundation chapter.

Representing 50,000 members and over 70 local chapters in the US alone, the Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s oceans, waves and beaches for all people. The beach clean-up Ryan participated in was one of 600 clean-ups that Surfrider chapters across the country have held recently.

I’ve surfed this beach a couple of times. I definitely noticed it was kind’ve dirty … It’s pretty ridiculous how many cigarette butts you pick up on the beach … You’d think there wouldn’t be that many, but there are a ton.

Anticipating heavy summer beach traffic, the San Francisco Surfrider Chapter is hosting another beach clean-up at two different spots on Ryan’s Ocean Beach this Sunday July 5. If you’re not in the area or out of town for the holiday, find a local Surfrider chapter to get involved.

As a reminder, to find other volunteer opportunities or to register your own volunteer project, visit the new government site, Serve.gov. If you haven’t yet, see Ryan in action cleaning Ocean Beach along with several other incredible volunteers in our Season One trailer.

In August 2006 Minister Crystal Yarlott was practicing what she preaches to her Unity Church of Traverse City congregation – she was donating her time and talents to the community. On a volunteer shift at the local Cherryland Humane Society, she noticed one of the dogs, Armstrong, was limping. She asked the staff and was told he simply wasn’t getting enough exercise; the shelter had such a large volume that the pets weren’t walked or played with regularly. And an idea began to take shape:

I love animals and animals have always made a difference in my life. … I happened to mention [the need for dog-walking] to another member of the church, Sue Schwartz, who was retired. … Now, under her organization, volunteers walk dogs six days a week.

The dogwalking program, informally dubbed Armstrong’s Walkers for Unity, is only one way volunteers contribute at the society. Others come in to groom the animals, or to pet and play with the cats. But it’s the dogs that brings in Crystal, Sue, and 90+ volunteer canine walkers, six days a week for several hours at a time.

I do it because animals I think teach us how to love imperfect human beings. … We also learn so much about yourself when you volunteer. There are so many surprises that you can never expect. … I also get to take the calmness that I’m learning to have with animals and I translate that with people.

To sign up for a national animal volunteer database, visit the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. If you have the opportunity to visit northern Michigan and the beautiful Traverse City area stop by the Cherryland Humane Society and if you can’t adopt a pet, join Crystal and walk a dog or two.

Volunteer of the Week, Vaka T.

Vaka Taimani is living a childhood dream – he’s riding in large, shiny red trucks, helping people out of threatening situations, all while wearing a cool uniform. Vaka’s a volunteer firefighter for the Felton (CA) Fire Protection District (FFPD), and he’s actively training to turn his volunteer passion into a full-time vocation.

We met Vaka at the immaculate Felton firehouse, just a block from downtown, and a mere eight miles from the coastal city of Santa Cruz. He was participating in a monthly training session and stayed late to chat. We quickly learned that Vaka’s glad he started his firefighting career as a volunteer, and that he hopes to bring the volunteer spirit with him as a professional firefighter:

We volunteer to do this, it’s out of passion and want … it’s nice to be able to do something that means more to me personally than just it being a 9 to 5.

The title of Vaka’s blog, Faith Life Soul, represents his core beliefs and summarizes his quiet but driven demeanor. Like many of his peers, he’s given countless hours to Felton Fire and the community. Since getting accepted to FFPD early in 2007, he’s thrown himself into the rigorous firefighting certification and training process while juggling family responsibilities:

When I first got on, I spent months of my own personal time down here, I just wanted to learn everything, and its really paid off …. I know that I need to balance my family life with this work life but in a sense, it feels like this volunteering is part of family as well.

Like most departments, Felton Fire is first responder for medical emergencies, and given its location at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, FFPD also runs the region’s Large Animal Rescue program. In the middle of it all, Tongan Vaka handles each new situation with a consistent desire to serve others.

You can see Vaka in our Season One Trailer, and if things are quiet in Felton, he may be online in the Twitterverse.