If you are reading this, you have been enticed to click on this link. Thank you for that.
Because US Servas is 100% powered by our volunteers, we are always interested in working with our members who can give back, if even a small way, for a few hours. The pay is terrible (none), but you will have fabulous working partners, and you can work from the comfort of your own home.
Our goal this year is to grow our membership substantially. We want more members with diversity of age, culture and color. We want our website to be welcoming, and easy to navigate (see article in April 2025 issue). We can really use help from younger tech-savvy members, especially in the following areas:
Tech Support Volunteer:
We could use your help: we’re seeking a tech support volunteer for approximately 8-12 hours per month. Required skills:
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Proficiency in MS365 suite including SharePoint. This includes designing/editing SharePoint pages, Office forms.
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Proficiency in MS Power Automate. Creating and modifying flows, including Flows that ingest data from MS Office forms, transfer form data into a SharePoint table (existing or one you create), generate emails.
Open Doors Newsletter:
Open Doors is our monthly newsletter. It is quite an undertaking for the small, two-member team currently doing the legwork. If you have some creative and/or publications related skills we can really use your help. Here are some specific tasks
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Test Readers (est. 1 to 2 hrs./mo.): Volunteers will receive a [DRAFT] version of Open Doors. Their tasks would be to open the email, look for odd things like weird layout & alignment, typos, font inconsistencies, etc. The they should click on every "... more" link and every photo to see if they open the correct photo or article. This task needs to be done promptly so that we can release the newsletter ASAP
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Content Editors (est. 3 to 4 hrs./mo.): We have an excellent copy editor in Deirdre Marlowe. It is always useful to have extra eyes to fix typos, grammar, spelling, readability, etc., but we also need people to analyze, interpret, and compose content. Often, we will get simply a poster about an event, or email about something that needs to be read, understood for intent, and written into an American English article. Links in the poster or email should be followed to glean insights and photos for use in the newsletter.
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News & Event Gleaner (est. 3-4 hrs./mo.): Search Servas International website for events posted for international activities. Write American English versions of any writeups found. Include appropriate links for registering or additional information. Also locate graphics to accompany the article.
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Photo Editor (est. 4 to 6 hrs./mo.): Find/compose/create non-copyrighted photos and graphics to accompany articles. Crop and fix up, (color balance, contrast, sharpness, etc.) member-supplied photos. Resize for optimum newsletter use.
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Website Blog Editor (est. 4 hrs./mo.): Upload articles to website blog pages. Format text, insert photos & graphics, add alt.-text to all graphics. This involves a learning curve to become familiar with Wild Apricot's (our web host) blog software.
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Email Template Designer (est. 6 hrs./mo.): This is graphic design work that requires learning Wild Apricot's email template editing software (we have documentation on this). Arrange photos and text in a pleasing way, add links to blog articles and photos, add alternate text to photos for visually impaired readers.
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Acrobat PDF Editor (est. 3-4 hrs./mo.): Create a PDF version of the newsletter using Screen-shot images of the email version. Add links to all blog articles and photos.
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Publications Administrator (est. 3-4 hrs./mo.): Set up Folder and Issue Tracker spreadsheet for each new Issue. Update status of articles in tracker. Communicate with other members of the team to keep things moving along.
Interested? If you might be interested in helping with any of the above tasks (or other work) simply e-mail volunteercoordination@usservas.org.
