Individuals want to volunteer, but they're not sure whom to call, or not sure where to look. Maybe they are worried volunteering would be boring, or that they’d get stuck doing something they wouldn’t enjoy. Maybe they are concerned that they don’t have enough time to truly make a difference.

The idea for Communities In Action sprang from research my organization, ME³, did regarding local volunteer and organization needs, as well as investigating some of the failures of other volunteer program models in volunteer recruiting and retention. ME³ stands for Motivate, Educate, Empower, and Engage. Our goal is to make being an empowered citizen and getting involved in helping the community as easy and fulfilling as possible. That’s what our program, Communities In Action (CIA), is all about. CIA is databank of individuals in Wake County, NC, who have signed up to get involved in helping the community become a brighter, happier place to live for everybody. Individuals who sign up for CIA work with a “CIA Agent”; to identify opportunities to help out that match their skills, interests, and schedules. Meanwhile, the service organizations and charitable efforts they are paired with greatly benefit and get the help they need to make an even bigger difference. Communities in Action is great for individuals who have decided they want to get involved in helping the community somehow. The organization is designed to address all of these issues and more. All individuals have to do is sign up, and tell us a bit about themselves and what they are looking for in their ideal volunteer experience. They tell us when they are available. They tell us if they’d prefer to help out doing an art project, working at a soup kitchen, or being a leader in an exciting new local effort that needs their energy and time. They tell us about their amazing talents and how they’d like to use them to help others. And, if they aren’t up for the volunteer opportunity available for them at any given time, they can tell us no.

We first engaged local organizations in dialogue to assess their greatest volunteer needs. Organizations were then allowed to enroll in CIA to receive our help obtaining volunteers that met the skills and availability needed for their volunteer opportunities. Once we had a database of volunteer opportunities prepared, we opened CIA up to public registration. Within the first two months, over 60 individuals signed up, some of them individuals who had never volunteered before. One thing we struggled with was trying to match volunteers to organizations that had a non-responsive staff. We were forced to re-match our volunteers to other organizations if their first choices would not reply to us. To ensure this would be less likely to happen in the future, we created an "Organization Agreement" form in which organizations signing up to receive volunteers through our program agree to give us timely responses. Because one of the main goals of CIA is to get more non-volunteers to volunteer, we struggled a little with how to evaluate the success of our efforts in this area. But sometimes the answer is the simplest one available: We have set up our volunteer registration forms to ask new individuals signing up to tell us whether or not they had ever volunteered.Individuals in CIA also get opportunities to meet others helping the community at CIA events, and to receive training to improve skills that can greatly help a local cause in crucial ways, such as training in emergency response, charitable fundraising and grant-writing, or building community leadership ability.

If you'd like more information on how to start my project in YOUR area, please leave me a comment!