With three months until the 2024 Virginia Volunteerism Summit, we invite you to get to know one of this year's Keynote Speakers for the all-virtual event, Breauna Dorelus! Now the founder and Chief Cause Consultant at Connecting the Cause, a consultancy dedicated to dismantling harmful volunteer practices implemented by organizations and volunteers specifically towards Black communities, Breauna started her career as an AmeriCorps member and spent 10+ years in various volunteer management roles in humanitarian aid efforts, refugee resettlement and ministry. She believes in community inclusion in all aspects of the volunteer process, and has dedicated her work to ensuring that service is centered around co-dreaming and not harmful charity. Keep reading to learn more about her work...

Serve Virginia: Briefly describe how you first got involved in service and volunteerism.

Breauna Dorelus: I first got involved in service and volunteerism through my family’s communal connections to neighbors, friends, and our faith. Because of my mother and father’s deep connection to seeing people thrive, they had always been in places where they created care and provided support. My dad grew fresh produce and used his farming, listening, and growing skills to share with others. My mother, a now-retired educator, always had a magnetic field of joy, learning, and possibility.

Through those two examples, I was positioned to understand community desires, be inspired to be a part of change, and think about the community as an ecosystem of care. I also specifically remember having the opportunity to volunteer at an orphanage in Honduras in college, and I had a profoundly moving experience that later propelled me into the profession of leading volunteers. It also made me have many questions about the nonprofit space that I had not yet confronted. It was the moment that etched my career and also a moment where I started to think differently about service.

Where do you see exciting innovations taking place in the service and volunteerism sector?

I am unsure if these would be called “innovations” from a sector standard. Still, there are some real examples of nonprofits centering community in more intentional and impactful ways that will allow us to move towards a more just future where care is at the center of the work. For me, innovation in this work means disconnecting from colonization to reclaim true community.

I think that nonprofits like Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities understand what it means to bake equity into their volunteer and employee onboarding and have developed equity-based tools to support instances of oppression in all its forms. They continue to press in and think about all the ways white supremacy culture shows up in the work.

Innovation also reminds me of Rosie’s Place. They intentionally reimagine volunteer hours and how they can alleviate data barriers for neighbors and community members who want to serve. I think about the United Way of King County and how they have intentionally supported Black and brown leadership through the Peer Network, which is a convening space and a time to connect with the lived experience of others and share resources and thought leadership. Lastly, I recently had a conversation with O’Neil Hesson and SiSi Encarnacion of The SERUN Foundation in Dallas, Texas, where they have an intentional process for onboarding white volunteers to mitigate harm from white saviorism.

What is one piece of advice or a mantra that has informed your work?

I do this work, but this is not my work to own or hoard. When I feel like the sole person to make the change, I’ve become disconnected and need to remember the truth. There are so many co-dreamers and Black and brown humans dedicated to ensuring that we dismantle white supremacy culture in nonprofit and philanthropic spaces. Whenever I feel like I’m in this alone, or the needle isn’t moving, I remember that change is happening all over and that I must tap into my joy and my village to keep my heart full.

What is one reading recommendation you’d like to share, and why?

I am finishing up Building a Pro-Black World: Moving Beyond DE&I Work and Creating Spaces for Black People to Thrive. This book is giving me life in so many ways. It’s reminding me that the end of white supremacy in nonprofit spaces is not just calling it out, but it is an intentional rebuilding and reimagining of a world for pro-Blackness. It communicates what it is, the necessity of it, and how it calls forward liberation.

Want to learn more from Breauna Dorelus? Buy your early bird tickets for the 2024 Virginia Volunteerism Summit, available through March 9, at servevirginia.org/summit.