New York Cares meets pressing community needs by mobilizing caring New Yorkers in volunteer service.

Description:
New York Cares enables thousands of caring, concerned New Yorkers to provide hands-on volunteer service to our city's most vulnerable residents.

All our volunteer projects are team-based and flexibly scheduled. We embrace virtually every volunteer interest: homelessness, hunger, kids, education, seniors and the elderly, HIV/AIDS, the environment, urban renewal, and more.

Volunteering with New York Cares
You'll find volunteering for New York Cares easy, fun, and rewarding. Our projects offer hands-on, direct involvement. Our team-based approach eliminates lengthy screening and training, inflexible hours, and other obstacles to effective volunteering. Team Leaders provide professional organization and give teams direction; as a team member, you can serve once a week, once a month, or from time to time-on an enormous variety of short- and long-term projects.

Calendar Projects and Annual Events
New York Cares coordinates two major types of projects: Calendar Projects and Annual Events.

Calendar Projects: 365 days a year, our Calendar Projects bring thousands of volunteers to serve on hundreds of flexibly scheduled projects: feeding the hungry, spending time with seniors, educating and mentoring young people, cleaning schools, revitalizing gardens, and much more. These year-round projects form the core of the New York Cares experience. If you'd like to volunteer to serve on Calendar Projects, just attend a one-time, one-hour orientation. Then, using our Web site, sign up for any one (or more!) of the hundreds of projects we coordinate.

Annual Events: To help out on a one-time basis and make a big difference, why not come to one of our four Annual Events? On Hands On New York Day and New York Cares Day, and in the Winter Wishes Program and the New York Cares Coat Drive, you can have a fun and rewarding volunteer experience and get to know New York Cares. No orientation is required for these events!

Community Grapevine
You may also want to visit the Community Grapevine for a listing of great volunteer opportunities that fall outside New York Cares' group project guidelines.

History:
In 1987, a group of friends were eager to tackle the social problems of New York City. Like many other caring New Yorkers with demanding work schedules, they searched in vain for an organization offering flexible, hands-on volunteer opportunities. Finding none, they decided to form a new organization, with a new and unique approach: New York Cares.

This approach involves offering professional-quality volunteer organizing to a wide range of social service agencies, schools, and environmental groups - New York Cares "Project Partners." The approach is team-based; hands-on (no stuffing envelopes!); and, because projects are coordinated by trained, committed volunteer Team Leaders, easy to fit into busy schedules.

New York Cares Today
One of the most rapidly growing volunteer organizations in New York City, New York Cares now has a full-time staff of 60 and a corps of more than 43,000 volunteers. With affiliates in more than 50 cities, New York Cares also serves as a model for "Hands On" organizations throughout the United States.

Contact person: Cathy Hertz, Director, Volunteer Relations, (212) 228-5000, (email)
Office fax number: (212) 228-6414

Address:

214 West 29th Street, 5th Floor New York, NY 10001 (See a map)