For all of those Volunteering and service-oriented groups out there - I would like to talk a little bit about what I have done with the VOL web services.  The best part about all of this, is that it is entirely FREE to us.

The only real expense for any kind of nonprofit or organization is a hosting fee with a local webhost - for the VOL that means hosting through FirstVa.  For online web hosting, look to GoDaddy.com - they provide great hosting packages that anyone can get for around $5/mo.

Once you have that online host space, you need a domain - in other words, you need an address to build you new web presence at.  Our virtual 'address' here is thevol.org - that's the website address that you typed in to get here to read this article!

Now that you have a Host and a Domain, you need to build your online presence with a web page.  There are a variety of way to do this, and many of them can be VERY expensive.  For the VOL, I used Joomla! - its what we techy people call a CMS (content Management Service) that does more than just create a webpage - it provides all the tools you need to easily get up and running, and stay updated.  The great part about Joomla! is that it is developed by the Open-Source community, which makes it FREE to use.  However, if you find yourself adopting it for use, then I would suggest giving a donation to Joomla! so they can continue to afford to offer this great software to us.

After your web presence has been taken care of, organizations need further things to help them excel technologically with their members.  To accomplish this with the VOL, I used Google Apps - a suite of online software that is personalized and tailored to your domain.  This way, you can give your members and director a professional Email address @yourdomain.org - that keeps things professional when coordinating events and tracking inter-organization mail.  In addition to Email, Google Apps provides a system-wide calendar service, and a document collaboration tool to allow your members and committees to schedule and work virtually - saving time and money when trying to accomplish a goal.  Oh, by the way, did I mention that Google Apps were FREE?

There are several other services that the VOL employs for various purposes, and I would be more than happy to discuss them with you - you can reach me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Happy VOL-unteering!