How to help
Retrouvaille of Arizona has no paid staff. Every weekend, every follow up session and every phone call answered at ten at night is volunteer work, paid for by people who give what they can. There are three ways to be one of them.
Serve a weekend, write prayer letters, host a post session, or take a community role.
02Send a gift by Zelle to a registered 501(c)(3). It funds the couples who cannot pay.
03Costs you nothing. Fry's donates a share of what you already spend on groceries.
Give your time
Most roles are filled by couples who have been through a Retrouvaille weekend and the sessions that follow. That is not a rule about worthiness, it is practical. The program works because the people running it have used the tools on their own marriage.
A few roles are open to anyone who wants to help, including people who have never attended. Prayer, publicity and hosting all need hands more than credentials.
Nobody is asked to have a perfect marriage. Nobody is asked to be a public speaker on day one. Every role has training, a partner and someone who has done it before standing next to you.
On the weekend
These are the roles the couples attending will actually see. Three presenting couples and a priest carry the presentations. Everyone else makes the weekend feel safe from the moment a car pulls in.
Weekend team
One of three couples who tell their own story from the front of the room across the weekend. You write your presentations, rehearse them with the team, and deliver them honestly, including the parts that are hard to say out loud.
This is the role that changes the room. Couples who arrive certain that nobody could understand their marriage hear their own life described by someone standing in front of them. Training and a mentor couple come with the role.
Weekend team
The first faces a couple meets. You handle check in on Friday evening, walk people to their room, answer the nervous questions, and set the tone for the whole weekend in about twenty minutes.
Many couples arrive angry, embarrassed or barely speaking. A calm, unhurried welcome is what keeps some of them from turning around in the parking lot.
Weekend team
The behind the scenes couple who keeps the weekend running so the presenting team can focus on presenting. Meals, materials, the room setup, the schedule, the coffee that never runs out.
You stay largely invisible on purpose. Couples should not be thinking about logistics at any point, and when the role is done well they never do.
Weekend team
You meet cars, carry a bag, point people to the door and say a kind word. A short shift on one Friday evening, and one of the easiest ways to serve a weekend for the first time.
No presentation, no preparation, no long commitment. If you want to help and are not sure where to start, start here.
Around the weekend
A weekend only exists because people found the couples who needed it and kept the community going between dates. These roles do that.
Support
Every couple on a weekend receives letters from people who prayed for them by first name without ever meeting them. You write those letters.
It takes an evening and it lands harder than anyone expects. Couples keep these letters for years. Open to anyone, whether or not you have attended a weekend.
Support
Getting the word to the couples who need it. Parish bulletins, church contacts, flyers in counseling offices, social media, and following up with the parishes that keep saying yes.
Most couples arrive because one person saw something in a bulletin at the right moment. This role creates those moments.
Support
You host the post weekend sessions: securing the space, setting up the room, bringing refreshments, and greeting couples who are three weeks into the hardest work of the program.
The post sessions are where the weekend either takes root or fades. A warm, consistent room is a large part of whether couples keep coming back.
Support
If none of these sound like you, say so when you call. Communities always need drivers, people who can set up a room, someone comfortable on a phone, and couples willing to be a steady presence at post sessions.
Tell us what you are willing to do and we will find the place for it.
Community leadership
Leadership roles are usually filled by couples who have served on weekends first. They carry more of the year and they are the reason a weekend is on the calendar at all.
Runs the Phoenix community. Sets the weekend calendar, builds the teams, chairs the CORE meetings, keeps the community connected to Retrouvaille International, and answers for the whole operation.
A multi year commitment usually taken on by a couple who has served in several other roles first.
Handles registrations and fees, pays the venues, tracks donations, and keeps the books for a 501(c)(3). Also quietly administers the financial assistance that lets couples come who cannot pay.
Suited to someone comfortable with a spreadsheet and careful with other people's money.
Keeps the record. Meeting notes, the community calendar, contact lists, correspondence, and the files that let the next team pick up where this one left off.
Low visibility and high value. Communities that lose this role spend years rebuilding what was in one person's head.
Every couple presenting from the front of a Phoenix weekend once sat in the back of one, certain they had nothing to offer anybody. The community does not need people whose marriages came out perfect. It needs people who remember exactly what the bad years felt like and are willing to say so.
Ready when you are
Tell us what you are open to and how to reach you. It takes about two minutes and it commits you to nothing. Someone from the community follows up, answers your questions, and only then do you decide anything.
Prefer email? Write to phoenix@helpourmarriage.org and say roughly what you have time for.
Give financially
That promise costs something, and donations are what pay for it. Gifts to Retrouvaille of Arizona cover confidential financial assistance for couples who cannot afford the registration fee, along with meeting space, meals, and the materials every couple takes home.
Retrouvaille-Rediscovery of Arizona is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so your gift is tax deductible to the extent the law allows. There is no paid staff, so what you give goes to couples and rooms rather than salaries.
Zelle is the simplest way to send one. It moves bank to bank with no processing fee, which means the full amount lands where you meant it to.
The Zelle address is being set up. Until it is posted here, call 602-254-6723 or write to phoenix@helpourmarriage.org and we will tell you where to send a gift.
Give without spending
Fry's Community Rewards sends a share of what you already spend to a local organization you pick. Link your Fry's Shopper's Card, the one older Arizona shoppers still call the V.I.P. card, to Retrouvaille of Arizona and keep shopping exactly as you do now.
It costs you nothing. You keep your fuel points, your digital coupons and every sale price. Fry's pays out to participating organizations once a year based on the share of spending they brought in, so a handful of families doing this adds up quietly across twelve months.
If you already shop online or clip digital coupons, you have an account already. Sign in with it.
Top left corner of the app.
Then tap Community Rewards.
Select us from the list and add us to Community Rewards.
Scan your Shopper's Card at checkout and a percentage of what you spend comes back to Retrouvaille. Your choice stays on the account until you change it.
Prefer a computer? The same choice can be made from your Fry's account online, under Community Rewards. Stuck on any step? Call 602-254-6723 and someone will walk you through it.
Get involved
Time, money, a grocery card, or a name of a parish that would let us speak. Say which one and someone from the community will get back to you.
602-254-6723