Blog submitted by Brenda Tringali, NAPOCares Committee Chair

As a Professional Organizer, I’m honored and grateful to be a member of NAPO (National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals). NAPO strongly believes in leveraging our unique position to give back to our communities.

In 2003, NAPO established the “Get Organized Week” Community Service Project Program, where NAPO members held events to promote organizing in their communities. The success of the program led NAPO to officially proclaim January as Get Organized (GO) Month in 2005. Today, NAPO’s Professional Organizers and Productivity Specialists from across the country continue to host community events to help individuals, families, businesses and organizations bring time management, organization, storage solutions and productivity into their lives and start the year with systems and solutions to improve efficiency long-term.

I’d like to take a minute to highlight just a few of the bigger ways that NAPO members and/or chapters have donated their time, treasures or talents during GO Month in past years.  Individuals and Chapters have:

• partnered with a local nonprofit to host a free shred event
• partnered with a local retailer to host free organization workshops and drop-off sites for donations, recycling and free shredding!
• teamed up with their local Small Business Development Center to help small business owners learn the basics of organizing their finances, their email, and their workspaces and how hiring a professional organizer can help their business
• hosted a Messy Room Makeover contest and thanks to the efforts of 8 organizers from one chapter, a children’s playroom was transformed in just 5 hours
• provided organizing services at a safe haven for young pregnant and parenting mothers in need
• helped the administrative offices of a not-for-profit organization in scanning and purging numerous files
  worked 1-on-1 with staff at a nonprofit with multiple locations. The organizers helped them maximize workspace and create new systems for organization in each office. In addition, they led a virtual training session to teach staff how to organize database information which allowed the sharing of resources between all offices.

I can’t wait to hear what exciting results GO Month yields in January 2018!

The good news is that NAPO members give back to their communities the 11 other months of the year as well… but most times with limited recognition. That’s where NAPOCares comes in. This year NAPOCares kicked off on October 1 and going forward, this initiative will have no end date!  The goal?  To spread the word on social media that NAPO and its members care about our communities, and to show how we give back to our communities each and every day by sharing our time, talents or treasures.

If you’re a NAPO member, multi-person business or Chapter giving back, make sure you post your efforts on social media with the hashtags #NAPOCares & #NAPONatl. Photos are a plus, but not required.

Whether you’re a NAPO member or not, please help by sharing these social media posts whenever you see them to help us spread the word that NAPO members give back to our communities all year long! Our goal is to show the world that NAPO Cares!

Brenda Tringali is the owner of At Your Fingertips Organizing. She provides personal and professional organizing services to clients in the Myrtle Beach, SC area & “virtually” anywhere. Drawing from her 30 years of Human Resources/Staffing experience, she also assists organizations with HR projects as well. In addition to being the Chair of the NAPOCares Committee, Brenda is also Director at Large for NAPO’s Virtual Chapter.