Starting your Online Volunteering
Being an online or remote volunteer can be a great value to charitable organizations. It's a way for you to use your strengths and training, even your connections, to provide a service that many non profits can't afford. You are essentially becoming the marketing and creative intern for our organization and our success depends on you.
However, online hours are not intended to be the easy way out. It requires creativity, care, and organization. You may also have to ask your court liaison if the judge will accept the remote hours.
You will have to document every task and include screen shots with time stamps. If you are a blogger, you may want to create posts that can serve as a timeline.
This article is an introduction to the needs of our organization, EarthPaint.org. We will continue to update our entire blog, giving you a step by step path to virtual volunteering success.
In 2015 we were hoping to create paying jobs for people with special needs so we started collecting unwanted latex paint. Homeowners would drop off paint and we would teach our teammates how to sort and open cans, and then pour them into 5 gallon buckets, which would be available for people to purchase. Within two weeks we had collected more paint than we could ever process with 4 people.
In 2017 we became our own 501c3 charitable organization and we were now able to collect donations and offer community service opportunities. Oh yeah, by then we were collecting and processing 500 gallons of paint per month. So we took things to the next level.
We opened a 4000 square foot facility designed from the ground up to provide work opportunities to more people with disabilities. We now employ 10 adults with special needs, 2 job coaches and a safety manager. But there is a roadblock, all of our funding come from the paint itself, which is not enough to sustain the organization or its growth, much less the marketing of our products.
Online service hours could be what we need to share our story with the world and encourage people to donate and sustain/grow our program.
We need help with the following and more...
However, online hours are not intended to be the easy way out. It requires creativity, care, and organization. You may also have to ask your court liaison if the judge will accept the remote hours.
You will have to document every task and include screen shots with time stamps. If you are a blogger, you may want to create posts that can serve as a timeline.
This article is an introduction to the needs of our organization, EarthPaint.org. We will continue to update our entire blog, giving you a step by step path to virtual volunteering success.
In 2015 we were hoping to create paying jobs for people with special needs so we started collecting unwanted latex paint. Homeowners would drop off paint and we would teach our teammates how to sort and open cans, and then pour them into 5 gallon buckets, which would be available for people to purchase. Within two weeks we had collected more paint than we could ever process with 4 people.
In 2017 we became our own 501c3 charitable organization and we were now able to collect donations and offer community service opportunities. Oh yeah, by then we were collecting and processing 500 gallons of paint per month. So we took things to the next level.
We opened a 4000 square foot facility designed from the ground up to provide work opportunities to more people with disabilities. We now employ 10 adults with special needs, 2 job coaches and a safety manager. But there is a roadblock, all of our funding come from the paint itself, which is not enough to sustain the organization or its growth, much less the marketing of our products.
Online service hours could be what we need to share our story with the world and encourage people to donate and sustain/grow our program.
We need help with the following and more...
- Sharing our social media and getting people to follow us on facebook, youtube, instagram,, twitter and more.
- Sharing our products available for sale on Amazon and locally around Chicago
- Create marketing content for us that will help people understand what EarthPaint.org is and get them excited about us.
- Introduce our charity to people who can project us to a mass audience.
- Write articles about us that could be printed in national publications or posed on popular websites.
- Create video content that we can use on our Youtube Channel.
- Produce music, jingles, or commercials that we can use to market our products.
- Rewrite these blog posts to be more effective.
- and whatever you can dream of that will draw support for our multiple causes.
Please read our posts to learn how you can use your skills to benefit each other.
Here is a news story about us. This will help you communicate our mission.
