L.A. Works’ Service Leadership Staffing Program
Our Annual
Volunteer coordination and engagement are specialized skills.
We just made it staffable.
L.A. Works has been mobilizing volunteers across Los Angeles for 35 years. Now, through Service Leadership Staffing, the trained volunteer-management professionals we've worked alongside, vetted, and would vouch for are available to your nonprofit on a per-project basis.
WHO WE ARE
For 35 years, L.A. Works has been the volunteer action center for Los Angeles — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit connecting Angelenos to the organizations doing the real work in our communities. We mobilized more than 175,000 volunteer hours in 2025 alone. That work, repeated across hundreds of partner nonprofits, taught us two things we've never forgotten.
First: volunteer programs don't fail because Angelenos won't show up. They fail because coordinating the people who do show up is a real, specialized job and almost no one is staffed for it.
Second: along the way, we've come to know the people who run that job exceptionally well. The team leads who can rally a hundred strangers into a coordinated workforce by 9 a.m. The event supervisors who handle the chaos with grace. The volunteer trainers who turn a Saturday orientation into a retention engine. We've trained these people. We've worked alongside them on our own programs. We can vouch for them.
Service Leadership Staffing is how we're making them available to your nonprofit.
THE PROBLEM
Your volunteers are ready. Your team is buried.
It's the same pattern across nearly every nonprofit we partner with. Mission grows sharper. Demand grows louder. The volunteers who want to help keep showing up. But staff capacity to mobilize them stays exactly the same. So, programs get smaller. Events get harder. Volunteer retention drops. Mission work suffers in quiet ways most nonprofits never name out loud.
"We don't need more volunteers. We need someone to run the day so my team can actually do their job." — A nonprofit executive director, every single week.
The four ways volunteer programs stall:
Staff Burden
Coordination eats the hours your team needs for mission work.
Event Quality
Without trained leadership on site, volunteers disengage and the day runs long.
Retention
A disorganized first experience is often the last— one bad day can undo months of effort spent recruiting.
The Ceiling
Every new program hits the same coordination wall. You can't scale what you can't staff.
THE SOLUTION
A staffing service built for one specific skill: running volunteers well.
Service Leadership Staffing is not a general staffing agency. We don't place office temps or warehouse labor. We place a specific, hard-to-find skill: trained, mission-aligned, volunteer-management professionals who know how to make a service day go right.
These aren't generalists with a clipboard. They're Event Supervisors who've coordinated 200-volunteer corporate days. Team Leads who've structured entire service sites. Volunteer Trainers who've designed onboarding curricula that actually stick. Every Service Leader on our roster came to us through the volunteer ecosystem and most have worked alongside the L.A. Works staff on our own programs. They were hired, trained, and employed by us before being placed with you.
A generic staffing agency can't screen for what you need. Reading a room of 100 first-time volunteers. Redirecting a station when supplies run short. Leading a team without making it feel like leading. These are real skills, and they're our entire business. We specialize because volunteer management deserves a specialist.
HOW IT WORKS
1 / Tell us your scope.
The form below is five fields and takes two minutes. Event date, expected volunteers, type of help, anything we should know. If you don't have all the details yet, that's fine.
2 / Receive your quote.
Within 3 to 5 business days, you'll have a written quote, a draft Scope of Work, and a clear next step. No cost. No obligation.
3 / Sign and start.
Sign the master Service Agreement and your SOW. We match the right Service Leader to your scope, brief them, and they show up ready. Most placements are on-site within 2 to 3 weeks of signing.
ROLES
Tell us what you need. We'll match the right Service Leader from the right role. Every hourly rate is fully loaded with training, screening, employment compliance, insurance, coordinator support, and ongoing oversight are all already included. Nothing else to buy. Nothing hidden.
Roles we offer:
Administrative Support —Office tasks, data entry, registrations, admin coordination, and back-end logistics.
Support Labor — Check-in tables, set-up and breakdown, volunteer staging, and event-day execution.
Team Lead —On-site volunteer group management. Directs small teams, manages zones or stations.
Event Supervisor / Planner — Large events with 100 or more volunteers. Run-of-show, timeline, and on-site leadership.
Program Coordinator — Ongoing program coordination across multiple events or longer engagements.
Volunteer Recruiter — Outreach, recruitment, sign-up management, and pre-event volunteer engagement.
Volunteer Trainer — Onboarding and training design. Curriculum, orientation, and skill-building delivery.
What's included:
Trained, vetted W-2 employee. Payroll, taxes, workers' compensation, insurance, coordinator support, reporting, background checks where required.
What's not included:
Retainers. Minimums. Setup fees. Per-event surcharges. Long-term contracts. Surprise charges of any kind.
How you pay:
Hours worked, billed after the engagement, and a 15% placement fee is added to the hourly rate. That is the entire pricing structure.
WHY L.A. WORKS
We've been doing this work for 35 years.
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Nonprofit DNA. Same constraints, same culture, same mission. We share your world. We don't sell to it.
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Volunteer expertise. Volunteer mobilization is our core business, not a service line we added. We know what makes a service day succeed or fail because we have run hundreds of them ourselves.
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Built-in systems. CRM tracking, invoicing, compliance documentation, and impact reporting are baked in. You get clean documentation back, every time.
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No lock-in. Start with one event. Let the quality of the work earn the relationship.
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Mission alignment. Every dollar you spend strengthens L.A.'s nonprofit ecosystem. Your partnership is part of something bigger than a transaction.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions partners actually ask.
Q. We have a tight budget. Is this really for us?
A. Our model is built for nonprofits, not corporations. You only pay for hours actually worked. No retainers, no minimums, no surprise fees. One well-run event with a trained Service Leader often pays for itself in volunteer retention alone.
Q. What if the Service Leader isn't a good fit?
A. Your L.A. Works coordinator is available throughout every engagement. If a concern arises during a placement, we address it then, not after. Our Scope of Work sets expectations clearly so misalignment is rare. If a replacement is needed, we identify one.
Q. We've tried staffing agencies before. How is this different?
A. We're not a staffing agency. We're a nonprofit that specifically trains and places volunteer-management professionals — a skill set no general agency screens for. And every dollar you spend supports our broader mission rather than a private company's margins.
Q. Who is the Service Leader actually employed by?
A. L.A. Works. Every Service Leader is a W-2 employee of L.A. Works — not your organization, and not an independent contractor. We handle payroll, taxes, workers' compensation, and all employment compliance. You direct the work; we handle the employment.
Q. How quickly can a placement happen?
A. Most placements fill within 2 to 3 weeks of signed agreement, depending on role complexity, volume, and any specialized clearances required. Larger engagements may need more lead time. We'll surface that during scoping.
Q. Do we need to commit to a long-term contract?
A. No. The master Service Agreement governs the partnership; individual Statements of Work govern each placement. Start with one event. Add more when you're ready. There's no minimum.
JOIN OUR WORKFORCE
Real wages. Real training. Real impact.
Volunteer management is a real, professional skill, but the people who are great at it are often the same people who've been doing it for free. We're trying to change that.
What's in it for you:
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Real wages for a real skill set. No more volunteering your professional time for free.
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W-2 employment, not 1099. We handle taxes, workers' compensation, and all employment compliance.
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Training and coaching. We invest in growing your skill set. You leave better than you came.
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Flexible schedule. Pick the shifts that fit your life.
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A service leadership staffing specialist who has your back.
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A pathway into nonprofit careers. Our goal is for our Service Leaders to be hired permanently by the nonprofits they serve.
Bring your whole self to good work.
Tell us about you. Upload your resume and anything else you want us to see. Aissa reviews every application personally and gets back to qualified candidates within one week.W-2 employment. $43 to $94 per hour. Training included. Real pathway to nonprofit careers.