From accreditation to continuous improvement: How Service Enterprise reaccreditation is strengthening Aster Aging
For Aster Aging, volunteers are not simply an addition to its programs. They are part of how the organization delivers services, builds relationships and reaches thousands of older adults across the East Valley. The Mesa-based nonprofit has served older adults for 47 years and today reaches more than 7,500 seniors each year through senior centers, Meals on Wheels, outreach and social services and programs that connect older adults with volunteers who can help them access essential appointments and resources.
Supporting that work are more than 300 volunteers each year. “There’s no adequate way to imagine the programs that Aster Aging delivers without volunteers,” said Jacob Newman, communications and development manager at Aster Aging. “Every morning when we open up, volunteers are at the front desk of the Senior Center answering the phone. They’re serving coffee in our cafe. They’re driving meals across the community to older, homebound seniors. Volunteers are driving seniors to essential medical appointments. And they’re doing a whole lot more than that.”
That level of volunteer involvement requires systems for training, supervision, recognition and evaluation that allow volunteers to contribute meaningfully while supporting the organization’s mission. That is one reason Aster Aging has continued its involvement with Service Enterprise, a program of the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation that helps organizations strategically integrate volunteers throughout their operations.
After becoming one of the early Arizona organizations to participate in Service Enterprise accreditation in 2019-2020, Aster Aging has continued using the framework as part of its approach to volunteer engagement. Most recently, the organization completed the Service Enterprise diagnostic as part of its reaccreditation process, an opportunity not simply to maintain its accreditation, but to examine how its volunteer practices have evolved and where they can continue to improve.
Measuring progress through reaccreditation
Aster Aging’s overall Service Enterprise diagnostic score increased from 75% in 2023 to 83% in 2026. The organization improved across all 12 Service Enterprise characteristics, with 10 now falling within the highest-performing range. But for Aster Aging, the process creates an opportunity for staff and leadership to revisit systems that may already be working and ask whether they can work better. “I’m excited for this opportunity to get everyone on the same page and dig into each program area,” said Deborah Schaus, Chief Executive Officer of Aster Aging. “Based on feedback from our supervisors team, this process gives us a chance to fully update our volunteer service descriptions and onboarding process, so our volunteer engagement systems are stronger and more consistent across the organization.”
For Newman, who has participated in the reaccreditation process, that intentional reflection is one of its most valuable components. “It’s been really energizing to sit down with our supervisors and, you know, we have this robust set of tools from the SE process, but really it comes down to this question of, like, what does great volunteerism look like? What does success look like for the volunteer program?” Newman said.
Those conversations turn reaccreditation into more than an evaluation. They give staff across different programs an opportunity to consider what successful volunteer engagement means in their own areas and how those experiences connect to broader organizational goals.
Moving from participation to intentional engagement
Newman emphasized the importance of Service Enterprise in strengthening Aster Aging’s approach to volunteer engagement. “We did that very intentionally because it’s very important to us to be on the cutting edge of working with volunteers, giving them a strong experience and ensuring that they maximize our mission,” Newman said.
Since its initial accreditation, Newman said volunteerism has become part of the organization’s strategic planning process. Service Enterprise has encouraged Aster Aging to use data to better understand changes in volunteerism, strengthen staff training around working with volunteers and develop more intentional approaches to recognizing their contributions.
One example is the implementation of a volunteer appreciation event. The organization also recognizes volunteers through newsletters, social media and other opportunities throughout the year. Reaccreditation provides an opportunity to revisit those practices.
Bob Dowd, chair of Aster Aging’s board of directors, participated in both the organization’s original accreditation and its reaccreditation. From his perspective, periodically returning to the Service Enterprise framework helps the organization evaluate whether its practices remain aligned with its goals. “It’s always good to make sure that we’re still on track with what we’re trying to do,” Dowd said.
The process has also exposed Aster Aging to practices used by other nonprofits. “Again, it helps us focus. It helps with the reliance on how important training is,” Dowd said. “The tracking reports and various tracking methods were very helpful. We had some in place, but we learned some new ones. I think sharing the information from other nonprofits with best practices is very, very big because everybody puts their head down and tries to work. And every once in a while, somebody else has a really good idea.”
What intentional volunteer engagement looks like
The effects of those systems become visible in individual volunteer experiences. Newman points to the growth of group and corporate volunteering as one area where Aster Aging has learned how intentional engagement can create deeper relationships.
One volunteer initially came to Aster Aging through her employer, a bank, to help serve lunch. Over time, she became more comfortable with the organization and eventually took responsibility for planning her company’s volunteer experiences. Her relationship with Aster Aging’s participants also grew.
For Newman, that example illustrates why volunteer management involves more than finding people to complete particular tasks. Creating meaningful experiences can encourage volunteers to return, take on greater responsibility and develop relationships with the people an organization serves.
That is especially significant at Aster Aging because volunteers are embedded throughout the organization. “Volunteerism does not look one way at Aster Aging,” Newman said. “We have volunteers integrated into every part of what we do. Volunteers are in our kitchen. Like I said, they’re answering the phone, they’re running classes, they’re driving meals.”
Strengthening capacity while serving older adults
The ability to sustain that volunteer network also has implications for Aster Aging’s organizational capacity. Dowd said volunteers allow the nonprofit to direct more of its resources toward programs and services rather than attempting to staff every function volunteers currently support. “We rely on them to do so many of the different services that if we had to pay employees to do, we would wind up limiting some of our services,” Dowd said.
Aster Aging works with older adults who may have limited opportunities for social interaction. Volunteers delivering meals, providing transportation or working at a senior center can become part of the social connections that help older adults remain engaged with their communities.
“The number one issue with the elderly is isolation,” Dowd said. “So they need to have some social contact. In a lot of cases, we are the only social contact they have.” That makes the quality and sustainability of volunteer engagement directly connected to the experience of the people Aster Aging serves.
Service Enterprise accreditation also provides an external way of demonstrating that commitment. Dowd said the designation has been recognized in conversations with funders.
“With our SE certification, grantors ask about things like that and what you’re involved in,” Dowd said. “And we can cite that we’ve been SE certified for years now. It’s recognized and I think that’s helped us gain some grant money to help us with our mission.”
Reaccreditation as a starting point
Completing reaccreditation does not mean Aster Aging’s work on volunteer engagement is finished. The process has helped identify what comes next.
With more than 70 standards across different areas of Service Enterprise, Newman sees the framework as a way to transform the broad goal of “improving volunteerism” into concrete actions the organization can pursue over the next several years. “I think what it does is it helps solidify the abstract idea of improving volunteerism just with some really concrete next steps for us,” Newman said.
For nonprofits that have previously completed Service Enterprise accreditation, Aster Aging’s experience demonstrates the value of returning to the process. Reaccreditation provides an opportunity to measure progress, reconsider existing practices and identify new areas for improvement as organizations, volunteers and communities change.
For Aster Aging, reaccreditation reflects that philosophy of continuous improvement. Its higher diagnostic score offers one measure of progress, but the larger impact can be found in the systems behind those numbers: stronger conversations among staff, more intentional volunteer experiences and a renewed examination of how hundreds of volunteers contribute to the organization’s mission.
As Aster Aging looks toward the next three years before another reaccreditation, Service Enterprise provides a framework for continuing to ask how volunteer engagement can become stronger.
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