| The Tennessee Community Resource Board has existed since 1985 when the state legislature created a Volunteer Advisory Board to help recruit and direct volunteer activities at Tennessee prisons. Recognizing the contribution that the community can make to the rehabilitation of inmates beyond merely volunteering in prison, the board was incorporated in 1997as a charitable organization under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. |
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This structure made it possible for the board to actively solicit charitable donations and to take advantage of other resources available to the non-profit community in promoting its cause. With a growing emphasis on prisoner reentry, the scope of the board’s responsibilities was expanded in 2000 to include volunteer activities supporting community supervision as well as institutional confinement. |
| Along with its new scope of responsibilities the board took on a new name as the Tennessee Volunteer Resource Board and in 2002 the board assumed its current name and scope of responsibilities. [link to legislation]
The TCRB coordinates with the Department of Corrections and the Board of Probation and Parole to involve community volunteers in work that improves the incarceration experience for state inmates throughout and that reduces failures during their difficult transition from prison to the community.
By preserving the connection that prisoners have to their communities and by establishing new connections when they come home, volunteer activities coordinated by the TCRB help men and women who have been incarcerated rebuild their lives and accept the responsibilities of civil society.
Serving under the TCRB is a network of local chapters that coordinate volunteer activities in prisons and the community. The board’s current strategic plan emphasizes the importance of these local chapters, noting that as they prosper so too does the organization as a whole. This plan calls for establishing appropriate structures for managing a widening base of local chapters, (2) developing tangible resources to assist them in their work, and (3) properly aligning them with the strategies of the TCRB which emphasizes effective prisoner reentry as a goal.
[link to strategic plan] |
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