The premise of Worthy Wednesday is simple: I’ll explain why I find a site Google Reader-Worthy, and hopefully introduce readers to a useful resource in the process.*

Today’s Worthy Wednesday site: VolunteerMatch.org.

Freelance writing can be a lonely and thankless job.  Most of us are stuck in the house all day, tappity tapping away on the keyboard with nary a soul for company. It’s no wonder we want to escape our tiny offices and get out once in awhile. Unfortunately, doing what we really want to do (world travel, bar crawl) is a bit cost prohibitive due to the fact that freelancing can also be, at times, a bit of a financially insecure job, too.

 So how does our intrepid freelance writing heroine reconcile her need for company with her equally important need to save money? She volunteers!

Volunteering is good for you and good for the community, and certainly it is something you should do out of the goodness of your humanity-loving heart. The fact that it serves to get you some company and, sometimes, a free lunch, is just a fringe benefit.

If you are serious about networking, volunteering can also be a golden opportunity. Find a local organization that needs your special skills – grant writing comes immediately to mind – and volunteer them. Yes it’s a lot of work and yes you aren’t getting paid, but you are getting valuable experience, potentially helping a lot of people who need it, and making connections that can benefit you in the future.

At VolunteerMatch.org, organizations can post specific volunteering opportunities.  To use the site effectively, specify exactly what types of volunteer job you are looking for, either by searching with keywords or choosing a specific industry or type of work. You can choose from about 20 categories, from social justice to youth services to the environment and more.  You then designate how far from home you are willing to travel to do your good deeds and then pop the search results into your RSS feeder. 

Every so often, new opportunities will pop up in your reader and you can decide if the opportunity is right for you.  I like the VolunteerMatch format because it allows smaller organizations you may not have heard of to post their volunteer opportunities. If you are worried about volunteering with someone you’d never heard of, the social networking aspect of the site allows people to warn each other if an opportunity seems fake or if the organization has a bad reputation.

I really recommend dropping VolunteerMatch into your feed reader instead of periodically checking the site, because sometimes we get so busy that we forget about our volunteering, and then a fun, enlightening or engaging volunteer job passes us by.  With VolunteerMatch in my feed reader, I found an interesting one-day opportunity to type resumes for women transitioning from welfare to jobs, and I’ll be heading across town later this month to lend a hand.

*For the approximately 75% of you that do not embrace your Google Reader or other RSS feed reader, these things basically allow you to plug in a web address (not all addresses, but many) and then, while you are off writing, or working, or playing, they collect all the new posts that cropped up on that site while you were gone. This makes it a breeze to come back and read all your regular blogs, news outlets and even Craigslist categories without missing a thing.  One again, I will shamelessly suggest that you try it now by plugging address http://blog.jennescalona.com. In to your Google reader or other RSS feed reader of choice.

For more on this topic:

[Worthy Wednesday] Lifehacker.com