Lifelong Passion for Community Service

Anne Schuster is one of our amazing volunteers, serving as a member of the OCF Southern Willamette Valley GO Kids steering committee and the OCF Southern Willamette Valley Leadership Council. GO Kids, an OCF state-wide initiative led by volunteers, aims to raise awareness about the effects of the opportunity gap and catalyze solutions to close this gap at the local level. 

Anne’s volunteering journey started when she was a high school student in Lincoln, Nebraska where she worked with kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities. When she moved to Corvallis, she brought her passion for volunteering with her.                                                  

Anne has great respect for teachers and the public-school system. She helped in classrooms, as a parent leader in three schools, and served on the board of Corvallis School District for 8 years. In the meantime, she was active in the environmental sustainability, and mental health work which she blended with her passion for education during her time serving as a commissioner for Benton County.

In 2017, an OCF volunteer recruited Anne to the OCF Southern Willamette Valley Leadership Council. “It’s not that I particularly look for opportunities to volunteer but I feel compelled to serve so I can rarely say no if I believe in the cause,” she said. “There is too much need in the world to sit by idly.”

Anne loves connecting with people and bringing them together to solve problems, which is one of the reasons why she loves volunteering with GO Kids, where she has conducted a number of one-on-one interviews with community members, experts and nonprofit staff in an effort to identify opportunities and challenges to close the opportunity gap in her community. 

“It is a joy. You tend to always get more than you give,” Anne said about why she volunteers. “The most powerful experience I have had with OCF is while at the Leadership Conference in 2018. We did a Poverty Simulation. It helped me to understand, in a visceral way, why poverty is so challenging.” 

Anne is one of more than 1,600 local volunteers who provide OCF with personal, in-depth knowledge of community needs across the state. OCF volunteers serve on the board, advisory and leadership councils, and evaluate grant proposals and scholarship applications. Learn more about our volunteers.