Forty Years of Service
Our organization was created to run an RSVP program for the City of Cleveland. This program was aimed at serving people 55 and above. When we first started, in 1972, we were managed by the City’s Department of Health. As we grew, we decided to become an independent nonprofit organization, and Retired & Senior Volunteer Program of Greater Cleveland was founded in February 1979.
Eventually, we expanded our activities beyond volunteer recruitment and placement. In the early 1990s, we began mobilizing volunteers to serve children in Cleveland schools. This initiative became the Cleveland chapter of the national Experience Corps tutoring program, which now works in 13 schools.
We also developed an amateur theater troupe, The RSVP Players, which performs to audiences of seniors. Over the years, our RSVP program grew. By the early 2000s, we had more than 3,000 volunteers and over 150 partner nonprofits. We realized, however, that we needed to bring in younger volunteers in order to better meet the community’s needs. We opened our doors to volunteers under age 55 beginning in 2007.
To better explain our work, we changed the agency's name in August 2009 to ‘Greater Cleveland Volunteers’.
We are very proud of our long history of serving Cleveland and of promoting civic engagement.
