119. Do Something More Podcast Turns 3! Service, Kindness & Giving Back Tips

Celebrate a special milestone with the Do Something More Podcast! 🎉 This week marks three incredible years of inspiring stories, meaningful service, and everyday people doing good in their communities.

In this anniversary episode, I’m highlighting some of the most powerful advice shared by past guests. As my listeners might know, at the end of each episode, I usually ask my guests for general advice and encouragement for how people can serve, volunteer, and give back—and today, I’ve gathered six of those impactful insights into one uplifting and practical conversation.

Whether you’re looking for simple ways to serve, how to get involved with meaningful volunteer opportunities, or motivation for how YOU can make a difference, this episode will leave you feeling inspired and empowered to take action.

It’s also a heartfelt reminder of the amazing guests who have been part of this journey—regular people who are truly making a difference in big and small ways.

Thank you for being part of the Do Something More Podcast community! I’m so grateful you’re here and hope these episodes continue to bring encouragement, purpose, and inspiration to your life.

Links mentioned in the epsidode:

Ashlee Taylor with ‘The Refuge Utah’ and Empowering Survivors of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault

Mckell Draper and Being a Service Missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Holly Christensen with 'The Magic Yarn Project' and Making Fun Character Wigs for Children Experiencing Hair Loss from Cancer Treatments

‘Turtle Shelter Project’ and Bringing Warmth and Hope to Homeless Individuals with Handmade and High Tech Vests (with Founder and Executive Director, Jen Spencer)

Spreading Encouragement and Inspiration Through Motivational Running (with @runnerguywithasign Ben Lyne)

‘Thanksgiving Heroes’ and Bringing Thanksgiving Dinner to Families Facing Food Insecurity (with Founder, Rob Adams)

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Transcript

Melissa: The Do Something More podcast is celebrating a birthday this week,

and so once again, I decided to highlight some of the nonprofits that we featured here and reshare the good advice that they have to give on getting involved on service and contributing to the organizations in your community that are making a difference.

This is a shorter episode, but it's very inspiring.

Welcome to the Do Something More podcast,

the show all about service, where we highlight the helpers who inspire us all to do something more.

If you're passionate about nonprofits or looking for simple ways to volunteer and give back to the causes that matter to you,

this is the podcast for you.

I'm your host, Melissa Draper.

Stick around and I'll show you all the many ways anyone can truly make a difference in our world today.

Welcome to this episode of the Do Something More podcast, and this is a Happy Birthday episode.

The podcast turns three years old this week. I can hardly believe that it's been three years of highlighting nonprofits, sharing the good that so many are doing in their communities, and hopefully inspiring you with ways that you can make a difference in your own circle, in your own neighborhoods and where you live.

So today I decided to highlight six different nonprofits again and just reshare some of the good advice that these people had to share.

So if you've been listening to the podcast, you may know that at the end of each episode, I like to ask my guests to just give general advice and encouragement.

And one of the reasons I do that is, number one, we have listeners from all over, all over the United States and all over the world.

And so I want to make what we're learning and talking about in the episode applicable to anyone that might listen.

And. And the other reason I do that is I want to show just truly how simple and doable it can be to break down different ideas of what others are doing and apply them to you and use them in ways that work for you to serve in your own community and in the ways that you feel inspired to do so.

I have six of these nonprofits that we've featured in the last couple of years,

and I'm going to be sharing these quotes and this advice that they had to give.

And each of these quotes are less than a minute. They're not huge, they're not very long,

but they're very eloquent, very inspiring,

and I think you will really enjoy just revisiting back to back in this episode. Usually each episode we're diving in really deep to one nonprofit, one idea, one thought,

but this one, you can get these ideas back to back to back. And I really love sometimes being able to have that overall view of, of the good that we're highlighting here on the podcast.

So first, before we get into that,

because this is a Happy Birthday episode,

I want to put here at the very beginning that the best birthday gift you could give the podcast is to leave a five star rating and especially a review wherever you listen to this podcast.

It especially helps on Apple or Spotify. But wherever you can listen and leave a rating and and a review,

I appreciate each one of those. The podcast has slowly been growing, especially these last few months. We've gotten a lot more downloads and visitors and people listening in.

And I really want the reviews and ratings to start reflecting all the good people I know that are listening to this podcast and hopefully getting good information and learning from it as well.

All right, let's get into these quotes that I have to share with you today.

So the first one comes from, from Ashley Taylor.

Ashley is the Executive director of the Refuge Utah. At the refuge they assist victims and survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.

And I loved this great reminder from her that when you want to help an organization, a non profit or another organization doing good in your community,

maybe it's donations, maybe it's volunteer work, whatever it might be,

there is an important question that you should always ask first before you start going about organizing the good that you want to do.

Here it is in our first quote.

Ashlee: So reach out, find the local organization that is in your community and see what they need. Sometimes volunteers are needed. Sometimes like you said, donations are needed. Sometimes that monetary support is huge, can make a huge impact in making sure that they can provide more services to more individuals.

So just reaching out and seeing what they need, I know that makes the biggest impact. When we have people reach out and say what are you in need of right now?

And we can give them, it changes, right? So ask that. We can say, yeah, right now we have a need for this, but then in two months we have a totally different need.

So just having those individuals that want to get involved reach out and see what the need is at the time.

Melissa: My next quote comes from Mikel Draper.

Mikel is my niece. She's one of the family members I featured here on the podcast in the last three years.

And when I had her on, she was doing a service mission for our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

So basically for 18 months she set aside her normal young adult life and instead spent each day doing service for many different organizations in her community.

So through her service mission,

she really experienced the day in and day out parts of service, the hard parts of it, the good parts of it.

And so I really loved and wanted to reshare what she had to share on her episode of what the True Meaning is in Finding Joy in Serving.

Mckell: I think the main thing that is just the greatest about the service mission is the joy that I feel serving others.

And there's a lot of days that are just really kind of dull,

which I think we all experience that in our lives and it's not something amazing every day.

And people talk about the joy of service and I agree. But it's not like every day I'm having this very joyful feeling of experiencing and just like yes, this is so amazing,

which I think generally,

it generally just makes me feel good. I look back on myself before the mission and I am so much happier and so much more at peace and have more love in my heart and understanding for other people.

Melissa: This next sound bite is a great reminder from Holly Christensen. Holly is the founder and president of the Magic Yarn Project.

Their nonprofit organizes groups of people who help make friends, fun character wigs and beanies out of yarn for children experiencing hair loss because of cancer treatments or other conditions.

And Holly has seen every type of person from all walks of life step in to help make these wigs. And so I think she was the perfect person to give this reminder that truly anyone can make a difference.

We do not have to see that there are any limitations in who we are.

We can step in and help. Whether it's with an organization like hers or somewhere else in our community.

Holly: You don't have to be anything amazing or have all the knowledge to be able to make a difference. You can be an inmate in prison, you can be a 90 year old grandma,

you can be a nurse, or you can be someone who's 10 years old and you can come and make a difference in the life of someone who's having a hard time.

Melissa: This next quote comes from Jen Spencer.

Jen spent 20 years as a meth addict and has also experienced homelessness and from those experiences she ended up founding and leading her non profit the Turtle Shelter Project where through organized service events they create and distribute services specialized vests to the homeless community to help them stay warm in the winter.

Jen's story and the honesty she shares with it is inspiring.

I thought it was especially valid to hear her share how many times the difficult things we walk through can become a catalyst for helping others.

Jen: But I firmly believe that like especially when Times are tough. There is something important that you're being taught that is for your good, but not only for your good. I believe that it's preparing you for the ability to help somebody else later down the road who may be where you are now.

And that's been what's really been a help for me, and not just for me,

my mental health. It's helped me even in my recovery. This service that I'm involved when with absolutely keeps me sober and it keeps me going and it keeps me wanting to,

to keep trying because I just know all these people that are out there. I used to be them.

And I really feel like we go through things for a reason,

to help people later on.

Melissa: This next clip comes from Ben Line.

Ben is a runner and for several years now he goes on regular runs in his community.

While holding a sign that says I believe in you,

Ben kept having the thought to start what he does now for over two years before he finally had the courage to act on it.

And the feedback he's received since then has been tremendous.

So I really wanted to share this reminder from him about having the courage to act on the good thoughts that come our way.

Ben: When you have a good thought to do something good, like you just do it, no matter how inconvenient or weird it is.

Melissa: Oh, true.

Rob: Right.

Ben: As long as it's legal.

Rob: Right.

Ben: It's a good thing.

And, and something great comes from it. And it's, it's always very, you know, it's not in a way that you expect, it's just very unexpected. But it's.

If we can tune into those good thoughts, like just act on them. And the more you act on them, the more you pay attention, you'll notice, the more you'll have.

And you just tap into that and amazing things happen. It's, it's just, it's an awesome thing.

Melissa: This last quote comes from Rob Adams.

Rob is the founder of Thanksgiving Heroes, a non profit that rallies over a thousand volunteers and hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to deliver full Thanksgiving meals to more than 3,500 families facing food insecurity.

Rob's advice here is a huge call to action,

reminding everyone that the money and especially the time you have to give is very much needed.

Rob: The people that are active in our community are fully tapped out.

We are in a spot of need that we've never been in before.

And so the people that I'm looking for are those that have never, never thought, well, I'm needed. And my message is, you are so very needed. Right now, you don't know what your 5 or $10 donation could do.

You could change a life by getting off the couch and coming down and delivering these meals because it's easy to think somebody else will take care of it. But the truth is, is that we need you.

We need you to show up and feel that in your heart. And so that's the miracle I'm praying for this year, is to really activate those who have never felt a call.

Melissa: So there it is. Six incredible quotes and reminders from six of the guests that we've had on this show. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed listening to that as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

It's always a great reminder for me, especially of the incredible guests we've had on our podcast. I am so grateful for each one of them being willing to come on and share about the good that they are doing so others can feel inspired to do the same.

And if you want to listen to any of the episodes I featured here today, I will have links to all of them in the show notes.

You can go and listen to the good that they are doing and learn more about their nonprofits.

And again, I'm going to give one final reminder. The best birthday present that you can give the Do Something More podcast this week as it celebrates three years of being a podcast is to leave a five star rating and especially a review.

I would so appreciate each one of those.

And as always, I hope this week that you can find a way to do something more to help lift, inspire,

or make a difference.