Communities In Action

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.