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A technical assistance volunteer is a person who provides support to staff members or other volunteers (such as help with building a web site or researching program information) rather than an organization's clients (such as mentoring young people).

Volunteers that provide technical assistance are usually easier to manage than volunteers who work with clients on an organization's behalf. Staff members work directly with such volunteers and oversee their activities directly, and these volunteers do not work with anyone outside of the organization. Usually, such volunteers do not undergo the rigorous screening of volunteers who work with clients (criminal background checks), so it's easier for an organization to involve technical assistance volunteers.

Involving technical assistance volunteers virtually is an excellent place to start if you are looking to introduce virtual volunteering to your organization.

Technical assistance volunteers can be involved via the Internet to help an organization:

• conduct online research to find information to use in a organization's upcoming grant proposal or newsletter, or to find out about a particular government program that is affecting an organization's clients;
• answer an agency's questions regarding human resource or management issues;
• design an agency's newsletter or brochure, or copy editing a publication or proposal;
• prepare information for a Web site;
• write the first draft or part of a grant proposal;
• register an organization's World Wide Web home page and other appropriate pages with Web search engines

Before you start looking for such volunteers:

• Make sure your organization is ready to involve volunteers virtually.

• Make sure that everyone at your organization understands the concept of virtual volunteering and has bought into the idea: they are all supportive of the agency's efforts to find and involve such people. Also encourage everyone to explore ways to utilize such off-site volunteers.

• Everyone who will work with volunteers virtually should already know the do's and don'ts of working with traditional volunteers. If a person has never worked with volunteers before, it's not a good idea to start them out with working with off-site volunteers.

• Consider how you will screen such volunteers. Your screening process should be similar to the one you use for on-site volunteers. Discuss the person's motivation for and interest in volunteering in general as well as volunteering for your organization, how the person heard about the agency, what is the person's availability, the person's strengths, desires, and apprehensions regarding volunteering, etc. You may require them to provide you with professional references as well. Even though they will be working via email (and, perhaps, fax), you may want to talk to them over the phone before accepting them as a volunteer and giving them a volunteer assignment. Some organizations ask for a list of references from volunteers who want to work remotely via their home or work computers. Others require such potential volunteers to attend one on-site, face-to-face orientation.