Last month, President Obama announced United We Serve, a nationwide service initiative meant to help meet the growing social needs of the nation. This initiative is intended not only to expand the base of volunteers for existing organizations but also to encourage individual citizens to develop their own service projects in conjunction with friends, family, and other members of the community.
United We Serve will include an initial 81 days of service, from June 22 to September 11, which will be commemorated as a National Day of Service and Remembrance. To help facilitate this service initiative, the administration has a created a new web site, Serve.gov, to function as a comprehensive clearinghouse of volunteer opportunities in the U.S. Managed by the Corporation for National and Community Service, Serve.gov gives individual citizens the ability to find local service opportunities by keyword or location or to start their own projects using the helpful toolkits provided at the site.
Organizations seeking volunteers can also register their projects and sign up volunteers using the site.
Looking for more resources to help in creating or managing a volunteer program? The following organizations and web sites offer information and/or assistance for nonprofits using volunteers:
- VolunteerMatch
- Corporation for National & Community Service
- Idealist.org
- Hands On Atlanta
For more books, articles, and other resources related to volunteering and volunteer management, try searching the Catalog of Nonprofit Literature (CNL), the Center's bibliographic database, for the subjects "Voluntarism" or "Voluntarism--management". A listing of recommended resources can also be found in our resource list on voluntarism.
Stephen Sherman, Reference Librarian, Foundation Center-Atlanta
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