Volunteer Houston (Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston)

Mission

Volunteer Houston connects individuals, groups, and companies with nonprofit agencies to transform the Greater Houston community for good through volunteerism.

TO COMMUNITY LEADERS:

Volunteer Houston has an agreement with Harris County OHSEM to operate a Volunteer Reception Center (VRC) when it's activated by county authorities in response to a disaster. A Volunteer Reception Center (VRC) is both a short and long-term solution for disaster volunteer management. It serves to connect primarily spontaneous, unaffiliated volunteers with urgent volunteer needs in response to a disaster, but it is open to all organizations and all volunteers in the Gulf Coast Region (13 counties).
However, we will always activate a virtual VRC first, whether or not it's activated by Harris County. Volunteer Houston is the ONLY web-based volunteer portal serving the Texas Gulf Coast Region. So, why should we promote a virtual VRC? Why just one virtual VRC for the entire Houston metro area? You are probably familiar with the saying “a rising tide lifts all boats”? In this case, each of your organizations is the tide! The more we work together, the more likely we will collectively meet the needs of all those boats – i.e the disaster survivors. Consider these 3 goals:

GOAL #1 | More volunteer responses for participating agencies.
GOAL #2 | Faster and more complete response to survivors.
GOAL #3 | Less confusion and frustration for all!

Ultimately, our wish for the greater Houston area is that organizations that are open to spontaneous volunteers after a disaster use a central portal to promote their volunteer opportunities which would - in turn - justify a request to local media stations to promote a single portal for disaster volunteer opportunities for all local disasters. Every year, every disaster, same volunteer portal – www.volunteerhou.org/vrc.
This level of consistency - organizations posting their disaster volunteer needs in a single location COMBINED WITH local media stations promoting the same volunteer portal every year for every disaster - will eventually, over time, result in more organized/streamlined spontaneous volunteer management for the entire community, for local nonprofits, and for the disaster survivors.

OUR WORK

As a lead organization in both the Harris County Long-Term Recovery Committee and the Texas Gulf Coast Region VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Assisting in Disaster) Volunteer Houston has been tasked (2022) with coordinating change management for the collective use of the Crisis Cleanup (CC) platform among our fellow disaster response organizations. We are enlisting the creator of the Crisis Cleanup platform to educate us about the many necessary improvements they have made to the platform, hosting a Listening Tour with local organizations to understand their needs, concerns, and questions about the platform, and will coordinate organizations’ commitments to utilize the platform as it’s intended as our community responds to the next disaster. If the Crisis Cleanup platform is activated in Houston, Volunteer Houston takes the lead on recruiting, vetting, training and scheduling remote phone bank volunteers for the hotline.
Volunteer Houston has an agreement with Harris County OHSEM to operate a Volunteer Reception Center (VRC) when it's activated by county authorities in response to a disaster.

We will always activate a virtual VRC first, whether or not it's activated by the county, which serves all 13 counties in our service area. We have recruited and trained volunteers from the HC LTRC Volunteer Management workgroup to staff a physical VRC location, and we have 7 extra-extra large heavy duty storage bins filled with necessary supplies to stand a physical VRC up - office supplies, signage, communications gear, etc.
After Winter Storm Uri 2021 VH recruited, vetted, trained, and scheduled remote volunteers to staff the Crisis Cleanup hotline. Afterward, we utilized those same 50 volunteers to support Connective in following up with survivors via phone call to assist them in completing their online housing assistance application.

TO VOLUNTEERS

www.volunteerhou.org/vrc