Civic & Community Engagement

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Civic and Community Engagement » Community Resource Awareness

Why It's Important

Community resource awareness is essential to a healthy community. Local AAA’s play a vital and important role in providing a clearinghouse of information on services for older adults. AAA’s are a gateway to learning about volunteer opportunities. However, on a community wide basis, civic and community engagement opportunities can be difficult to find. There is a demand among potential volunteers who have been unable to find volunteer opportunities despite their own searches. Awareness of matching portals and other opportunities is key to increasing volunteerism.

See Data By: Richmond MSA | Virginia | National

How Richmond Is Doing

Awareness of community resources on volunteering is very low (ODP CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, 2009)
Richmond-based agency with the greatest aided awareness is Connect Richmond at only 23 percent (ODP CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, 2009)

Use of Resources to Find Volunteers, Richmond MSA
Used to find volunteer opportunities	Gen Y & X	Boomers	Silent
Word of mouth or personal invitation	56%	58%	51%
Website	40%	28%	13%
Agency-specific sources	11%	11%	16%
Volunteer matching portal	8%	5%	4%

(ODP CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, 2009)

Awareness and use of community resources on volunteering is very low. Less than one in four are aware of matching portals, and less than one in ten has used one.

(ODP CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, 2009)

How Virginia Is Doing

Content coming.

How the U.S. Is Doing

According to a 2007 VolunteerMatch.com survey, over 70% of nonprofits surveyed agreed that the increased availability of skilled volunteers would be helpful to their volunteer program. Online volunteer recruiting tools such as VolunteerMatch.com provide non-profits with a powerful tool for to expand their volunteer recruiting capacity. Among nonprofit users: