Grassroots.org

Oh, what a little press can do. Thanks to a featured article on Monster.com last week, we added over 50 new volunteers to our volunteer web design program. The increased volunteer interest is good news for us and great news for the organizations in need of a volunteer to help them build capacity with a new website!

The article, titled "Online Volunteering: A Win-Win for Techies, Nonprofits", outlines some of the reasons why people decide to volunteer their web design skills:

Techies often volunteer to further their careers and to contribute to a worthy cause. Virtual volunteering makes it possible to do both without the hassle of trying to fit an onsite volunteer position into an already-hectic schedule. Plus, volunteering online gives you access to:
*A broader set of opportunities, making it more likely you'll find a position that requires your skills and matches your goals
*A wider choice of groups, letting you find one that matches your interests

If you aren’t convinced that volunteering your web design skills virtually is worthwhile, read the Monster article! We hope you’ll be enticed to join the growing family of Grassroots.org volunteers.

Ready to sign up? Visit Volunteer.Grassroots.org today!

The Hope for Henry Foundation works to ensure quality of life care for children with serious illnesses in hospitals in Washington, DC, Minneapolis, New Jersey, Philadelphia and St. Louis.

A diagnosis of leukemia, lymphoma or neuroblastoma significantly disrupts a child's quality of life. Instead of spending time in school, camp or sports activities, these children spend much of their time in the hospital seeking life-saving treatment and just waiting to get better. Hope for Henry provides children with high quality gifts like iPods, digital cameras, portable DVD players and XM satellite radios to provide hours of entertainment and break the monotony of the hospital stay.

Hope for Henry needs a volunteer's help in implementing an online gift registry for their organization's website. If you have the knowledge or expertise to setup a gift registry, please contact Allen and Laura.

Thanks for your help!

As a new Americorps CTC VISTA member, this week I (along with Alice!) attended a 3-day orientation in Boston to kick off our awesome year of service.

Along with the 33 other CTC VISTAs serving all over the country, I learned the history of Americorps VISTA (which has been around since the 60s) and more specifically the CTC program and how it adds community media and technology to the equation for positive social change. We discussed how we can help our home-sites with "capacity-building"; the great non-profit buzzword that reflects the importance of sustaining our work to benefit the non-profits we serve even after we're gone. There I go again. "Sustainability" is another noteworthy term we heard a lot about this week.

In addition to sharing websites, books and other useful resources, each VISTA offered personal advice and relevant anecdotes that could aid the group. I was lucky enough to meet another VISTA who is from the same neighborhood in New York that I just moved to! So now that I know which grocery stores are in my area, I can worry about other important non-profit things . This trend of sharing resources and experiences will continue throughout the year. Each member will be writing online field reports to keep the group as well as our VISTA Leaders updated.

The orientation answered all of my questions about what to expect as a VISTA and it calmed my "new job" nerves to see how many people were in a very similar situation. I am excited to learn what my new friends will accomplish this year and to share with them my accomplishments with Grassroots.org!