Kerrie,
Your experience is SO typical! And most people who want to volunteer are not nearly as industrious as you. Volunteering for an organization should be VERY easy to do-NOT the actual tasks, but finding and connecting with the organization. Ultimately, it is because there are so many silos in the nonprofit community and so there isn't a combined effort to be a resource to the community. Any city or town that can bring the nonprofit community together to provide integrated services will also have the benefit of connecting with more volunteers.

i am working VERY HARD on that in Chicago right now.

And if I can help you find volunteer opportunities, let me know. You can check your local Helping Hands Network site or Idealist dot org. In Chicago we have onebrick dot org too. And many communities have other organizations as well. Happy to help if you want.

I just tweeted about this, but would LOVE you to list Chicago COUNTs: A NetSquared Camp. I thought of the idea a year ago, and Net Squared is now partnering with me on it. I have great support in the tech and nonprofit communities in Chicago. Here is the EventBrite link (website soon to come) http://chicagocounts.eventbrite.com/

Thank you so much...I hope you will be able to post this conference as well.

Tricia,

I am just thrilled to see a post like this that takes volunteering to an entirely new level...much more sophisticated!

Now if we can only get organizations to realize the importance of this and adopt it to their other list of best practices!!!

Thank you!

Once I tasted organic strawberries, there was no going back...they taste like REAL STRAWBERRIES. And it was all down hill from there. We now have an organic garden and eat some pretty incredible food!

Thanks for the great post!

I read your blog somewhat regularly...but you are so right on that sometimes it is difficult to ingest. Keep writing the truth and with very real descriptions.

FYI, I have a daughter who is a senior in high school. She wants to go into environmental studies, perhaps to work with animals...but certainly to deal with environmental issues and sustainability. You would most certainly be one of her heroes if she met you. A few weeks ago, she said that she can't even think about the BP oil spill...it is so awful she would just have to kill herself. Of course we discussed suicide and she was VERY clear that was not really what she meant. But I totally got her point...it is so much more awful than our brains can comprehend...glad to know she is impacted so profoundly!

Thanks for the great post...keep writing 'em.