A Net for Volunteers

By Michele Orecklin

When Ami Dar first started using the Internet in 1993, he had a narcissistic reaction. "I thought, Someone has invented something just for me," recalls Dar, founder of Action Without Borders. The selfishness, however, was in service only to the most charitable of pursuits. The Israeli-born Dar, 44, had been looking for a way to connect nonprofit organizations from around the globe to volunteers eager to donate their time. "I was obsessed with the notion that you have a world rife with problems," says Dar, "but you also have ideas and resources and people with free time and good intentions, and there had to be a way to bring these things together."

Action Without Borders launched its website, idealist.org in 1996. Today 45,000 nonprofit and charitable organizations worldwide are registered on the site, which is translated into English, French and Spanish. It gets 35,000 visitors a day, primarily from young volunteers eager to go anywhere from Mississippi to Uganda. The group also organizes conferences and nonprofit-career workshops. The site is free, and users can browse opportunities by location or mission. Dar says any organization can register, with a few exceptions: "No violence, no illegal action, no rules against people based on who they are. In short, no hate." By Michele Orecklin