One Brick

One Brick was founded in San Francisco in December, 2001 with the goal of providing an easy way to get involved and volunteer.

The founding team, Dave Shefferman, Charlotte Rayne and Brian Gee met while volunteering at the San Francisco Food Bank in June 2001. The trio recognized that while many non-profits have the need for volunteers, and many people are interested in volunteering, there are very few organizations that make the volunteer experience convenient and can sustain continued commitment from its volunteers. A new approach was necessary to build a sustainable volunteer pool to support these organizations.

With this in mind, the team set out to understand the motivations and barriers to getting involved in community service, and built an organization that addresses these issues and makes volunteering easy: One Brick.

Every One Brick project we arrange is treated as a stand-alone event. Our 'commitment-free volunteering' allows people to choose when they volunteer, rather than having to make commitments for a certain number of volunteer hours, or agree to be available every week at a specific time. This flexibility makes volunteering convenient and provides opportunities to help when time and schedule commitments allow. This keeps volunteering from being a chore, but rather makes it an easy and enjoyable choice.