TechMission Launches Online Christian Volunteer Opportunity Directory
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
January 9, 2007
(AgapePress) - - A new website is providing a comprehensive directory of volunteer opportunities for Christians. Launched by the Boston, Massachusetts-based nonprofit social service organization TechMission, the Christianvolunteering.org site offers a listing of volunteer opportunities in a number of areas that are waiting to be filled in various major U.S. cities. Theresa Musante, the organization's volunteer network coordinator, says the service the Christianvolunteering.org website provides has been popular. "TechMission has been around for six or seven years," she says, "but we wanted to have a website that could help people to find Christian volunteering opportunities."
A number of secular websites exist that serve a similar volunteer-opportunity matching function, Musante notes; however, she says, "there aren't a lot of Christian organizations that list on those." Recognizing the need for such a directory for the Christian community, the TechMission staff member says, "we wanted to just create a space for people to be able to list volunteers and to find them."
The online directory is as useful for churches and ministries as for individuals looking for places to serve. Christian organizations can register on the website and then list their available volunteer positions, while those looking to become volunteers can search opportunities by zip code, ministry areas, or other search keys.
"We are always telling other people about this that might be interested in volunteering," Musante explains, "and so a volunteer will go onto the website and search for something that is ... in an area that they're interested in, maybe using a skill that they have." In most cases, the user can search the directory "by whatever they're interested in," she says, "and they can find an opportunity that they like and e-mail the [contact] person."
In fact, Musante points out, just this past holiday season, hundreds of people -- many of them college students home on Christmas break -- used Christianvolunteering.org's web-based volunteer directory to find ways to give of their time and abilities. This online resource, she points out, is the first major Internet site to match volunteers with Christian volunteer service opportunities.
According to Christianvolunteering.org, recent U.S. Department of Labor statistics indicate that faith-based volunteers represented more than 34.8 percent of America's volunteers in 2005. Combined with the number of Christian volunteers around the globe, the website notes, this makes Christian volunteers the largest volunteer community in the world.
