Database to help non-profits find volunteers

WAUPACA – A new database in Waupaca aims to connect volunteers to non-profit organizations and increase volunteer opportunities throughout the area.
Laura Colbert, Director of Parks and Recreation, talked of the new volunteer database at the Feb. 17 meeting where she said the database has been a community collaborative project.
“We have been working behind the scenes to develop some sort of volunteer database for the Waupaca area because it doesn’t really exist,” Colbert said. “There is a Volunteer Fox Cities, there’s Volunteer Brown County but we wanted something more specific to us.”
Colbert said they have been working with Volunteer Fox Cities to create a web page specific to Waupaca.
Colbert said they have also been notifying local non-profits to start getting their information within the database to get a catalog of organizations ready to start gathering volunteers.

Once they get the non-profit and volunteer opportunities loaded into the web page, the site will then act as a match maker.
If someone wants to work with seniors, they can input that information into the web site and it will come back with places you can volunteer with senior citizens.
Colbert said two recent events to sign up non-profits yielded about 30 different organizations being signed up for the new Volunteer Waupaca database.
There will be a community-wide volunteer day May 16, with more information to come in the following months.
“The goal is to engage residents, raise awareness, and help get more volunteers connected and signed up through the web site,” Colbert said.
The Volunteer Waupaca web site is not live yet, but volunteers can still get signed up through the Volunteer Fox Cities site.
Colbert said they can filter the volunteers by county from the Fox Cities page and start building the database once the page officially launches.
Colbert said there will be more information coming in the near future.
To sign up through the Volunteer Fox Cities page volunteers can go to www.volunteerfoxcities.org.