Part 1: How Churches are Using Community

Volunteer and Job Web Portals

What are Community Volunteering & Job Portal Websites?

Community Volunteering Portal:◦ Provides an online directory of volunteer opportunities for

your church members to serve your city (Rescue Missions, Soup Kitchens, After-School Program, Tutoring, etc.)

Job Portal◦ Provides church members with site to find and post jobs

How is this different from internal church volunteering?◦ Outside ministry partners might post volunteer

opportunities◦ Might want to integrate with city-wide ministry volunteer

directories◦ Might want “public” volunteer opportunities to encourage

non-church members to volunteer (tutoring, etc.)

When Are Community Volunteering & Jobs Web Portals Useful

Volunteer Portal: When you have many church members that you want to connect with many community volunteer opportunities

Job Portal: When you have many people in your church who could post jobs for other church members

Examples of Megachurch Community Volunteering and Jobs Websites Willow Creek

◦ Built own volunteering website with 186 volunteer opportunities placing thousands of volunteers

◦ www.willowcreek.org/volunteer Meet the Need

◦ Provides custom volunteer websites with 1,000+ opportunities to The Crossing, Van Dyke Church, Bell Shoals, Baptist Metropolitan Ministries and Dallas Baptist Association

◦ Imports data from ChristianVolunteering.org’s API Needs Met / Job Connection

◦ Provides custom job websites to Willow Creek, Destiny Metro, Second Baptist Church (Houston), Career Solutions, The Chapel & Resurrection Life Church

◦ Imports data from ChristianVolunteering.org API ChristianVolunteering.org

◦ Provides 10,000+ Christian volunteer opportunities and 5,000+ Christian jobs to hundreds of churches to build into their existing websites either using templates or their Christian Social Graph API

Sample Site Designed by Willow Creek

Sample Site Designed by Willow Creek

Sample Site Designed by Meet the Need

Sample Site Designed by Meet the Need

Sample Job Site Designed by Needs Met

Sample Job Site Designed by Needs Met

Options for Creating Church Community Volunteer and Job Websites

1. Build your own site and find the volunteer opportunities and jobs and populated it yourself (Willow Creek)

◦ Cost: $10k-50k

2. Partner with Needs Met or Meet the Need to build custom website (they can help populate it with ChristianVolunteering.org and other data)

◦ Cost: $200-$600 startup + customizations

3. Have existing church website developer build section of existing website and populate it with ChristianVolunteering.org data

◦ Cost: Whatever your website developer charges (API and templates are free)

Who is TechMission & ChristianVolunteering.org

TechMission is an evangelical Christian nonprofit parachurch organization founded in 2000◦See more at: www.techmission.org

ChristianVolunteering.org is the primary online program of TechMission◦TechMission manages Web portal with 1.4 million

unique annual visitors across our website to connect churches and parachurches with the poor

2011 Budget: $1.8 million◦Funded primarily through grants & earned income◦Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability

Member

TechMission Partners

ChristianVolunteering.org Partnership Options

1. Use ChristianVolutunteering.org’s template system◦ Summary: put your church website header and footer on a

turnkey volunteering and jobs website for your church◦ Pros: Quick and low effort, provides a list of volunteer opps

and ministries in your area to start with◦ Cons: Less flexibility than API

2. Use ChristianVolunteering.org’s Christian Social Graph API

◦ Summary: you can import ChristianVolunteering RSS feed data on volunteer opportunities, jobs and ministries into you website and customize it

◦ Pros: most flexibility and provides a list of volunteer opps, jobs and ministries in your area to start with

◦ Cons: may require significant web development

Click for Part 2: How to Create a Church Community Volunteering Website Use ChristianVolunteering.org Free Template System

Click for Part 3: How to use the ChristianVolunteering.org API