Here's how you can create a lasting legacy in community outreach as a retiring late career professional.

Actively seek opportunities to mentor younger professionals or volunteers within the community. Share your experiences, insights, and lessons learned to help them navigate their own paths more effectively. As a mentor, you can help shape their approaches and attitudes, ensuring that your values and methods continue to influence the community.

As my "fourth quarter" goal of building into younger leaders, I'm using my experience and education to teach online courses in Organizational Leadership at a university.

Accept requests for informational interviews. A great way to help people get started in professional relationship-building. And, the learning goes both ways.

One thing I’ve found helpful is pretty simple. It’s about relationship building and showing up as your true self. It starts within you first. Make a commitment to yourself to be open and willing to share your lessons learned while giving space and time for others to be heard That combination is like liquid gold. You build your brand quickly and word gets around that you are of value, can be trusted, and are sincere. And they will come…

Absolutely agree with this one! Based on one’s capacity to do so it’s important to stay connected to the generations coming after us as much as we can. Sharing knowledge and experiences helps maintain institutional and community memory.

One very important thing is to be available to share insights about the field and help others get clarity. It is not often easy to understand how a field works from the outside, so holding discussions and helping newcomers find where they fit is critical to their success. It also helps ensure sustainability so the work continues and new voices are added.

Use your experience to curate meaningful volunteer programs that cater to community needs. Design them with the community, instead of for them.

You might consider setting up a volunteer program that addresses a particular community need you're passionate about. This can be a powerful way to extend your influence, as these programs continue to serve the community and grow independently of your direct involvement.

I utterly agree with this. There are few tasks more satisfying and more important than sharing our experience of community engagement, community development and voluntary leadership. It is more than a process of spelling out what worked for us in our day. We must be unafraid of talking about what didn't work for us and why. Advising, future generations in these sectors means accepting that we didn't get everything right and forewarning them why etc is very beneficial!

Use your expertise to influence local or even national policies that affect the community. Participating in policy discussions or advisory boards can allow you to shape frameworks that will govern community projects long into the future.

A strong network can amplify your impact. Introduce community leaders to each other, facilitate partnerships, and encourage collaborations that can continue your work. Maintaining and expanding your network even in retirement can lead to new initiatives being born from your connections.