Last Friday at the Mets vs. Astros game, the Mets and Citi held a special ceremony to present long-time New York Cares Team Leader Sam Fuhr with their Teammates in the Community Award, which honors volunteers who have demonstrated extraordinary service to the city.

Sam definitely fits that bill – he’s volunteered on over 200 projects – from organizing libraries, preparing meals for the disadvantaged, caring for shelter animals, and educating kids about local marine environmental issues.

New York Cares is proud to count Sam among our volunteer ranks, and we’re grateful to our friends at the Mets and Citi for extending such a unique honor to a New Yorker who cares!

Are fame and fortune calling your name? Well, they are now.

We’re scouring the city’s high schools for the next great Picasso in our Students Give Back! Mural Contest. We’ll pick one budding artist to design the signature mural to be painted on New York Cares Day at one lucky NYC public school.

We’ll also feature the top three designs on newyorkcares.org and award the 2nd and 3rd place winners with some special prizes of their own. If you think you can handle all the attention your art will get, apply now. Do you have what it takes?

Since 1989, the New York Cares Coat Drive has collected over 1 million coats for New Yorkers in need – between 70,000 and 80,000 coats each year. A crucial element in making this happen is the availability of donated warehouse space where we receive, sort, and distribute the contributed coats to hundreds of nonprofit agencies.

Unfortunately, the space we’ve used for the past three years is no longer available, so we are now urgently seeking alternative space. The Coat Drive warehouse is the logistics hub for the entire operation. Can you help?

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Are you a dog or cat person? Perhaps you love playing with kids? Does getting your hands dirty make you feel accomplished?

New York Cares is launching a new community on Crowdrise, an online fundraising platform created by actor and activist Edward Norton, that allows you to raise money and awareness for the programs you care about. Join our team and use Facebook, Twitter, and good old-fashion email to ask people you know for a few bucks to support your volunteer work.

Crowdrise offers awesome prizes to the top fundraisers and point earners. Go head to head with Will Farrell and Seth Rogen to compete for an iPad – new laptop anyone? Even better, your efforts will expand our volunteer opportunities, helping more New Yorkers in need.

What are you waiting for? Give it a try!

New York Cares couldn’t have asked for a better group from the inaugural NYC Civic Corps. Since last summer, nine Civic Corps members have help us expand and improve our programs and get new projects off the ground. We would say they will be sorely missed now that their year of service is over – but we’re thrilled that almost all of them will be staying with us as New York Cares Program Managers! So thank you for a fantastic year, and here’s to many more.

Find out more about the NYC Civic Corps program here.

Lots of people were talking about New York Cares this month – check out what they had to say:

• Composer Murray Gold sounds off on MSNBC Giving on his volunteer work with our SAT Prep program, which we’ll start training volunteers for in just a few weeks.
• NY1′s Asa Aarons recommends volunteering with New York Cares as a way of networking during your job search.
• Nonprofit marketing expert Nancy Schwartz guest blogs on VolunteerMatch about how New York Cares approaches volunteer engagement and leadership.
• The Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund awarded $300,000 in grants to six New York City organizations, including New York Cares.

It’s finally here – have you found your paintbrushes yet? Register now for New York Cares Day 2010 and join 7,000 volunteers to paint murals and decorate classrooms, organize libraries, and spruce up playgrounds at over 75 New York City public schools!

The work you put in on New York Cares Day is worth well over $1 million in service to the New York City public school system, and its priceless to the kids who get to come back to their brand, shiny new schools in the fall.

New York Cares Day is an amazing day of service and a critical fundraiser for New York Cares. The $20 registration fee is dedicated towards buying supplies for the event and ensuring that New York Cares’ 11,000 other projects keep running throughout the year.

So, don’t forget to register! You can sign up with friends or colleagues as a team or come on your own. We can’t make you come, but we can guarantee you’ll have an awesome, fulfilling time if you do.

If you’re asked to donate money to New York Cares in a train station or on the street, please don’t do it. If someone approaches you, please let us know by contacting info@newyorkcares.org.

While we rely on donations from caring New Yorkers to do our work, we do not ask youth or other street teams to solicit donations on our behalf. Make a secure online donation to New York Cares instead.

This week we decided to put our summer interns to the test: can they decipher cryptic clues about New York City’s best landmarks while learning about New York Cares’ impact around the city? The answer is: yes!

The six interns kicked off their scavenger hunt at our office, where they received their first clue and headed off to Bank of America, one of New York Cares’ biggest corporate sponsors and the greenest building in New York City.

The interns scavenged and hunted their way through New York Cares project sites – like one of our favorite New York Cares Day murals at P.S. 140 – and city landmarks like Grand Central Terminal and the New York Stock Exchange before finally ending at the American symbol of freedom, justice, and liberty – that’s right, the Statue of Liberty.

All in all, the interns had a blast, and we had fun sending them all over the city. Here’s to a great summer with a very dedicated (and quirky) bunch!

Earlier this week we held a breakfast for our project partners to explore new ways of working with New York Cares. Everyone who attended was eager to start new projects at their organization.

One of the easiest ways we can offer more volunteer opportunities is to expand our programming at each partner agency. It’s a win-win situation for volunteers looking to make a difference and the people that need their help.

That’s why we created a new position to facilitate this kind of growth and offer new resources for our partners. Contact John Jerger, Partner Agency Relations Manager, with any questions about partnership opportunities.