Re: Volunteers

Shane wrote:

Go to www.volunteermatch.org <http://www.volunteermatch.org/>
and see what is involved in registering your community garden with this
group. It seems to be working well for us for the short time we have been
using it. Has anybody else had experience with this group? How has it
worked?

We have used VolunterMatch.org for about 5 years now and I personally *ADORE* it. I started the Perennial Garden Volunteers when a SSE colleague told me that he had a stressed professional weeding his garden for stress relief -- I didn't have anyone in mind, I just tossed the "volunteer opportunity" on VolunteerMatch.org and now we have long-term, adult volunteers coming on Tuesday nights from 5:30 pm to dusk to "do what needs done" for the entire garden.

We've also received groups for our Spring and Fall Work Days by listing them on VolunteerMatch.org and quite a number of youth looking for community service opportunities -- they are used to searching the Web, they need volunteer time, so they find us much easier online.

You'll get MANY more inquiries than actual volunteers, so have a standard e-mail response ready that invites them to visit the garden, an address to put into VolunteerMatch.org, a bit about the opportunity you posted and an invitation to e-mail you for more info. I get lots of nibbles in the winter when we're not actually in season and most of those people don't actually ever show up, but it's decent PR and at least it educates people about what community gardens are all about.

Are there other orgs. that are similar I have missed?

Regional United Ways have websites for volunteering - it's worth being listed, but I haven't found them as useful overall as VolunteerMatch.org. It does help smooth things when you actually need something from United Way to be listed there, though!

If anyone else has any other sites/organizations, do let us all know! Now that the freeze is here, I have time to let everyone know about us! ;-D

Dorene


Dorene Pasekoff, Coordinator
St. John's United Church of Christ Organic Community Garden

A mission of
St. John's United Church of Christ, 315 Gay Street, Phoenixville, PA  19460


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