For Organizations Already Utilizing Virtual Volunteering

Is Your Organization Already Utilizing Virtual Volunteering?

Impact Online has heard from a few organizations already creating volunteer activities that can be completed over the Internet. We would like to hear from others.

If your organization is already involving volunteers via the Internet, please complete the following quetionnaire. Impact Online will use your data to help other nonprofits build their own virtual volunteering programs. A representative from Impact Online will also contact you after your submission to tell you more about our Virtual Volunteering program and how we can share learnings with your organization (this can take up to three weeks for the initial contact, so please be patient).

Please do not complete this form if your organization is not utilizing volunteers offsite via their home or work computers. To find out how your organization can use the Internet to find and involve volunteers, please see our other related pages.

If your browser doesn't support forms, save this Web page as a text file, write in your answers in the text file, then copy the questions and answers and paste them into an email; send this email to jayne@impactonline.org.

Your Organization's Name:

Your Organization's City:

State/Province:

Country:

Your Organization's Geographic Service Area
(name the city, county, state or other region you serve):

Your Name

Your Position

Daytime Telephone Number:

Email Address:

Your Organizaton's Web Site Address:
(if your organization has one)

What is Your Role in Working with Volunteers at Your Organization?

Impact Online defines two distinct forms of Virtual Volunteering. One form is Technical assistance provided by volunteers online to requesting agencies. This would include volunteers -- students, professionals, retirees and others -- who work offsite:

conducting online research to find information to use in a organization's upcoming grant proposal or newsletter, or to find out about a particular government program that is affecting an organization's clients.
answering a nonprofit's questions regarding human resource or management issues
designing a nonprofit's newsletter or brochure, or copy editing a publication or proposal
translating a document into or from another language
preparing information for a World Wide Web site
registering an organization's World Wide Web home page and other appropriate pages with Web search engines

Approximately how many of your volunteers provide such technical assistance?

Please describe the kinds of activities these volunteers provide to your organization:

Impact Online defines the other form of Virtual Volunteering as Direct contact between a volunteer and a client / recipient of service. For example, a volunteer, via e-mail or a chat room, could:

electronically "visit" with someone who is homebound, in a hospital or a rest home
provide online mentoring and instruction to clients (help students with homework questions, or help prison inmates with studies or programs)
help with language instruction (help people learning English)
provide support to clients (kids electronically "visiting" kids in a hospital, support group members providing advice to each other, people answering questions and providing information via an email hot-line, etc.)

Approximately How Many of Your Volunteers provide such Direct contact between a volunteer and a client / recipient of service?

Please describe the kinds of volunteer activities these volunteers provide to your organization:

How did you find and screen the volunteers you use via the Internet?

How do you supervise and recognize/reward online volunteers for their contributions?

Please add any other comments you would like to send to Impact Online:

Note: when you "submit", your information is automatically sent to Impact Online via email.

Online Resources for Volunteer Managers

Impact Online has created the following resources to help organizations find and use volunteers via the Internet. Some of the resources deal with both onsite and offsite volunteers. This information has been compiled using experiences from volunteer managers, as well as input from organizations already doing virtual volunteering activities. These files will be updated frequently, as we work with more nonprofit organizations who are utilizing the Internet as part of their volunteer programs: