Online Volunteers: Sources of Information

Friends Across the Divide

Written by Martin Kimeldorf, a high-school teacher in the North Thurston school district in Lacey, Wash., this 52-page electronic book

describes the Grandfriends Project Online, which he founded to pair his students with senior citizens in an online letter-writing program. The book discusses how to recruit senior-citizen participants, provides examples of letter-writing topics, and offers tips for sustaining letter-writing projects. It also includes the program’s guidelines for privacy and safety and samples of the “letters of agreement” participants have to sign. The book, subtitled “Creating Community and Learning Opportunities One E-Mail at a Time,” costs $4.95 and is available at http://www.energizeinc.com.

International Telementor Center

Over the past six years, the center, located in Fort Collins, Colo., has matched more than 8,000 students in eight countries with online mentors who work at the corporations that donate to the center. Its Web site features a mentor handbook and descriptions of the academic projects that the students are working on with their mentors. Go to http://www.telementor.org.

The National Mentoring Partnership

Based in Alexandria, Va., this organization promotes mentoring efforts and offers assistance to organizations that run them. The partnership is developing a National E-Mentoring Clearinghouse that will provide information about what works and what doesn’t in online mentoring programs. Go to http://www.mentoring.org.

Netaid.org: Online Volunteering

A joint venture of Cisco Systems, the United Nations Development Programme, and United Nations Volunteers, Netaid.org posts on its Web site virtual-volunteering opportunities with charities in developing countries. Go to http://app-netaid.netlojix.com/OV.

The Virtual Volunteering Guidebook

Written by Susan J. Ellis, a volunteer-management consultant, and Jayne Cravens, former manager of the Virtual Volunteering Project, this 133-page electronic book, available free online, explains how to recruit, manage, and evaluate volunteers who do their charity work on the Internet. It also includes a chapter on how nonprofit organizations can involve people with disabilities in their online volunteer programs. Go to http://www.energizeinc.com/art/elecbooks.html.

Virtual Volunteering Project

A project of the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin, this Web site discusses how nonprofit organizations can take advantage of volunteers who complete their tasks online. The site includes examples of how charities are working with such volunteers, information on how to start an online volunteer program, and advice for prospective virtual volunteers. Go to http://www.serviceleader.org/vv.

VolunteerMatch: VirtualVolunteering

VolunteerMatch, in San Francisco, is an Internet-based service that allows users to search for volunteer opportunities. It currently includes more than 1,700 online opportunities for volunteering among its 25,000 listings. Go to http://www.volunteermatch.org/virtual.