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Using "Virtual Volunteering"

Virtual Volunteering enables anyone to contribute time and expertise to nonprofit organizations, schools, government offices and other agencies that utilize volunteer services, without ever leaving their home or office. It also enables such agencies to expand the benefits of their volunteer programs, by allowing for more volunteers to participate, and by involving volunteers in new areas.

Impact Online defines two distinct forms of Virtual Volunteering:

  • 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

  • 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.)

Impact Online will initially work directly with 5 - 10 organizations to help them develop effective and ongoing Virtual Volunteering programs, and to help Impact Online detail first hand the realities of setting up and maintaining such a program, such as volunteer screening, monitoring, and recognition, as well as how look for assignments within an organization that could be handled by a volunteer via online technologies.

If your organization uses volunteers "offline" to promote your agency's mission (tutoring clients, staffing a crisis line, support groups, etc.), and you think your organization could also use such people online, you should apply to become an Impact Online affiliate in our Virtual Volunteering program.

Does Your Organization Already
Utilize Virtual Volunteering?
Then We Want to Hear From You!

Online Resources for Volunteer Managers

Impact Online is compiling resources to help organizations find and utilize volunteers via online technologies.

Some information has already been compiled, using experiences from various volunteer managers. These files will be updated and added to frequently, as we work with more nonprofit organizations who are utilizing online technologies as part of their volunteer programs:

Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute Impact Online's Virtual Volunteering information without charge for non-commercial or educational purposes if the information is kept intact and without alteration, and is credited to:

Copyright © 1997 Impact Online, Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.