What is the purpose of this system?

About 1.2 million New Yorkers are forced to use one of the City’s more than 1,200 emergency food pantries and soup kitchens some time during the year. Despite the massive number of people these agencies serve, most have extraordinarily small budgets and must rely heavily on volunteers. This system is specifically designed to address this issue by meeting the needs of both Emergency Feeding Programs (EFPs) and volunteers.

Volunteer match will assist your agency in securing the volunteers it may need throughout the year. Recognizing that your agency operates all year round, as well as during the holidays, we want to give volunteers the ability to easily and conveniently seek out volunteer opportunities 365 days a year.

And because we greatly value the time, expertise and commitment of all our volunteers, we designed the website to enable volunteers to be matched with your agency as your needs arise and to make it easier for volunteers to find opportunities to serve that are more closely aligned with their time constraints, geographical preferences, group sizes and skills.

Why do I need to sign in/register?

Registering and/or signing in will allow your agency to add all your events (up to a years worth) into the database, along with the number of volunteers you will need for each event, and the tasks you will need them to perform. Your agency will also be able to access the system with your own unique identity to view information and/or make changes and additions to your agency’s information, while keeping that information private from others.

What is NYCCAH’s Privacy Policy?

Your personal information will always remain private within NYCCAH. Your information will never be shared with a third party for the purposes of solicitation or communications.

How will I know when a volunteer signs up for an opportunity with our agency?

When a volunteer signs up for an opportunity at your agency, both you and the volunteer will receive an email confirmation indicating the name and phone number of that volunteer who has signed up for that opportunity at your agency. It will also confirm the exact date and time that the volunteer is needed.

What is the Policy for Volunteers Under the Age of 18?

In considering how much to use and/or limit the volunteer tasks of young people, feeding programs must decide for themselves how to best balance their desire to educate young people about hunger and build an ethic of service with their concrete need to efficiently perform crucial tasks and ensure program safety and order.

In general, we find that most food programs prohibit volunteers under the age of 13, even if they have adult supervision, due to both concerns for the safety of the youth and the reality that volunteers below the age of 13 often need more extra time to train and supervise, consequently hosting them actually makes it more difficult for the feeding program to do its job. For parents who want to engage children younger than 13 in anti-hunger volunteer activities, we suggest that they contact Neal Flowerman, NYCCAH’s Coordinator of Volunteer Programs (nflowerman@nyccah.org, 212-825-0028, ext. 210) to discuss ways that such children can be involved in a neighborhood food drive and/or an age-specific educational activity.

For young people between the ages of 12 - 18, food programs often require on-site adult supervision at all times; large groups in that age range should have more than one adult supervisor.

If your food program has different policies related to the participation of young people, you should specify those policies in your event listings posted in this system.