Desperately Seeking Volunteer Opportunities...
© Lisa Stambaugh
Volunteer Listing Sites
Volunteer listing sites provide an inventory of the opportunities available to volunteers – but it’s entirely up to you to match yourself with the opportunity, contact the non-profit organization, and get the activity lined up. In other words, it’s a very passive implementation, and you have some homework to do, to find what you want.
Volunteer listing sites come in several flavors. Guidestar ( http://www.guidestar.org ), lists all 501-c-3 organizations which are registered with the government. While they don’t explicitly list current volunteer opportunities, you can use that site to search for, and locate, non-profit organizations that address specific needs in your town or neighborhood. Of course, you are then free to contact these organizations on your own, or go to the organization’s website to see if they list volunteer opportunities there.
Idealist ( http://www.idealist.org ) lists a large array of internationally-based opportunities, which you can search on a geographic basis. Idealist, as well as other sites, allows you to enter personal profile information, and then receive e-mail updates when volunteer opportunities matching your profile are posted. Idealist has a comprehensive search menu, which allows you to specify locale, skills, language requirements, volunteer ages, and days you want to volunteer. So if you know just what you’re after, this can be the tool for you.
If you’d rather search for a single opportunity that is part of a program, you can try Make a Difference Day ( http://www.usaweekend.com/diffday ), which coordinates volunteers with projects on a specific date. Each October, USA Weekend sponsors Make A Difference Day. The web site includes a database of volunteer opportunities that are scheduled each fall – from raking leaves and cleaning up parks, to reading books to visually impaired children and renovating a former crack house into a women’s shelter.
Volunteer Solutions ( http://www.volunteersolutions.org ) is a Boston-based nonprofit hosting a database of volunteer opportunities in selected cities in the U.S. (Austin, Boston, Detroit, Omaha, San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles). This site is easy to use: just enter one of about 20 metropolitan areas, and search for opportunities. A quick look for items in my local area (San Francisco) showed over 70 matches, including requests for everything from bread bakers and classroom volunteers to translators and “cat socializers” (working with the Humane Society).
Go To Page: 1 2
