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Includes national organizations that are based in this region.

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Arizona Pioneers' Home Volunteers Association
http://aztec.asu.edu/azph/azpioneertoc.html
This organization in Prescott, Arizona was one of the VV Projects Affiliates, and our web site features a very detailed profile of this organization and how it has involved online volunteers.

 
Austin Freenet
This organization in Austin, Texas was one of the VV Projects Affiliates, and our web site features a very detailed profile of this organization and how it has involved online volunteers.

 
Cyberspace Seniors/InterAge CyberPals Classroom Project
http://aztec.asu.edu/cyberspaceseniors/CSS01.html
This pilot project based in Tucson, Arizona brought together teachers, students and seniors to engage in "Curriculum and Casual Correspondence" via e-mail. "I send weekly e-mail reports to the adults and also manage a discussion roster in which the adults express their thoughts about the Programs successes and failures," says the project director, Martha Gore. "I keep in close touch with the adults to make sure they understand how important their contributions are in the lives of these students, some of whom come from rather sad home environments."

 
Electronic Emissary Project
http://emissary.ots.utexas.edu/emissary/
A very successful, well-documented, nationally recognized online mentoring program, based at the University of Texas at Austin. The Project helps teachers locate volunteers for purposes of arranging curriculum-based, electronic exchanges between their students and online mentors; offers a secured, supervised e-mail-based systems for student and mentor interactions; documents school-based online mentoring programs around the U.S.; and offers a great deal of advice for educators interested in setting up school-based programs. We refer to their best practices frequently on the Virtual Volunteering Project site.

 
Four Directions Electronic Mentoring Project
http://www.tapr.org/4d/
All schools in this project serve Native American children, and many are located in remote, rural areas. The Project links volunteer on-line mentors with 4D Native American students and their teachers, to collaborate to complete learning projects of mutual interest. The Project acts as a "matching service" that helps teachers locate volunteers for purposes of arranging curriculum-based, electronic exchanges between their students and online mentors. This program, based at the University of Texas at Austin, works in connection with the Electronic Emissary Project (see above).

 
Girlstart (formerly SmartGrrls)
http://www.girlstart.org
This nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas was one of the VV Projects Affiliates, and our web site features a very detailed profile of this organization and how it has involved online volunteers, including information on its virtual "Take Our Daughters to Work" Day.

 
Haskell University / Santa Clara Day School E-Mail Mentoring Project
Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, this project focused on bringing together Native American elementary-school kids in Espanola, New Mexico with college students attending Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, via the Internet. The class chatted once a week with Haskell education majors studying mulit-media technology in the classroom. Initial exchanges involved informal talks about musical tastes, favorite hobbies, etc. Later, the class worked with Haskell mentors on collaborative projects. The project was part of on integrating Native American culture and technology ">4Directions, which focuses on integrating Native American culture and technology .

 
HerDomain.Org
http://www.herdomain.org
Austin, Texas
This nonprofit group works to encourage and support women in Austin who embrace the culture and technology of the Internet as a vehicle for creative and professional pursuits. Members meet online via their own private listserv and monthly in face-to-face meetings "to find jobs, find employees, compare notes on their respective trades, and learn from each other in an unintimidating environment." Members of HerDomain frequently volunteer online for various community-focused groups.

 
Internet Technical Group
http://www.sandia.gov/itg/index.html
Albuquerque, New Mexico
ITG has created a community for professionals from industry, academia and government organizations who share a common interest in Internet technologies and related behavioral phenomena. "From the guys who put so much work into setting [the group] up, to those who run the listserv and those who created and run the ITG web site, the newsletter, the job section, and many more," ITG relies heavily on online volunteers, all "busy professionals in the industry who have given up some of their time to make it [ITG] work." The group is affiliated with Sandia National Laboratories, operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by the Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Co.

 
Knowbility, Inc.
http://www.knowbility.org
A national nonprofit organization based in Texas and born out of the collaborative effort that was AIR-Austin, a web design contest that helps educate the high-tech community about making Web sites and other online technologies fully accessible to people with disabilities. The onsite volunteer efforts for AIR-Austin were coordinated primarily via the Internet, and the nonprofit promotes virtual volunteering as a way to help youth with disabilities learn high-tech skills and other skills for the work place.

 
Mentor Program and PEPHE-Talk by the
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA)
Health Education Training Centers Alliance of Texas (HETCAT)
http://hetcat.uthscsa.edu/Tele000.html
A pilot project that worked to improve health career awareness among ninth grade students, through telementoring. Goals with mentees: to improve students' English, math and science proficiency, and to ensure that students have sufficient information to consider careers in health. Mentors were students from UTHSCSA, who submitted an online mentor application to program staff and went through an interview and training session. Mentors were responsible for communicating with the student at least 2-3 times per week throughout the spring 1999 academic period. Mentors agreed to be a positive role model; encourage their students to excel in math and science; use appropriate grammar and effective communication skills; encourage their students to use the Internet as a resource; and correspond with the student's teacher and program staff. The HETCAT Mentor Program staff matched students and mentors based on a set of specific needs, common career interests, academic studies, and hobbies. Students and mentors worked on projects that were integrated into the classroom curriculum. The web site includes information on this program, guidelines used for teachers, mentors and mentees, as well as background information on the importance and roles of mentors.

 
National Association of Purchasing Management
http://www.napm.org/Education/legacy/1998conf/gary/tsld009.htm
Tempe, Arizona
This association presented information about on recruiting, retaining, and recognizing volunteers, and an overview of how online volunteers can help, at their 1999 Annual International Purchasing Conference. The presentation advocated that members involve online volunteers to: conduct online research, gathering information on upcoming legislation affecting purchasing, prepare information for chapter Web sites, provide online mentoring to new members via e-mail, and participate in committee sessions online.

 
Sanchez Elementary School Online Mentoring Program
http://www.serviceleader.org/vv/direct/sanchez.html
In cooperation with the Virtual Volunteering Project, this pilot program brings together online mentors from all over the U.S. with fourth graders at this elementary school in Austin, Texas. Online activities focus primarily on reading and writing, and on establishing a positive, trusting relationship between online adult volunteers and the students. The program also hopes to increase positive feelings about technology from the point of view of all participants -- students, teachers, mentors and parents. "Mentoring is connection -- it brings people together. Mentors give, but also receiving something in return. This can also be said about the Internet: Cyberspace is connection -- it brings people together. Internet users both give and take online. We hope that this program will provide all participants, mentors and youth alike, with meaningful human connections." Mentors have been screened via reference checks and online applications; all e-mails from adults are read by a program director before being forwarded to the students, and no "real" e-mail addresses are used (to insure there's no way to communicate outside the program's password-protected interactive web site). Teachers communicate with mentors regularly to suggest topics of discussion with the students, and incorporate the writing of e-mails to mentors into the student's class work and computer lab time. The project was designed adhering to the VV Projects suggestions for initial first steps for those considering setting up a direct contact service component involving online volunteers, and our suggested online safety standards. With additional funding, the online materials used by this program to screen and train mentors, which were based on a variety of resources and other online mentoring programs, will be shared via the Virtual Volunteering Project web site in early 2001.

 
TxServe
http://www.txserve.org
This Texas-serving organization based in Austin was one of the VV Projects Affiliates, and our web site features a very detailed profile of this organization and how it has involved online volunteers.

 
United Way - Austin Capitol Area
http://www.uway-austin.org
Austin, Texas
This United Way branch began involving their first online volunteer, a veteran volunteer from the VV Project, in February 1999 to develop online forms for their Web site. Based on this very positive experience, the agency hopes to expand its involvement of online volunteers to help various agencies they serve in the coming months.

 
Virtual Volunteering Project
http://www.serviceleader.org/vv/
National organization based in Austin, Texas
Yes, that's right -- we not only promote the idea of virtual volunteering, we also involve online volunteers ourselves. Read how more than 100 online volunteers have contributed to our project to date here on our Web site.