May 12, 2006 — On every third Saturday of the month, dozens of Fort Wayne, Indiana, residents show up at 9 a.m. to devote three hours of their time to help a neighbor. A community-based Web site called NeighborLink Fort Wayne (http://www.nlfw.org) makes the connections between people in need and hundreds of people willing to assist them.

Although recent trends show that the fastest growth in Internet usage is among social networking sites, NeighborLink’s brand of connection has little in common with such popular sites as MySpace, Blogger, or Facebook. In fact, the Fort Wayne site appears to be one of the first in the nation to connect local volunteers to people needing help.

NeighborLink was founded in 2002 as a nonprofit by a pastor and two active lay leaders in another church. The organization’s mission is to promote “practical neighbor-to-neighbor expressions of God’s love.” Typical projects include cleaning a disabled man’s apartment, repairing a car, painting a house or cleaning up an overgrown yard.

But some are just one-to-one. A volunteer recalls agreeing to take an elderly widow to lunch: “and so I met Helen, my new 90-plus friend, who has been such a joy to have a meal and conversation with.”

Individuals and social service agencies can post requests on the site, but a request becomes an active “project” only after one of the trained “coaches” agrees to manage it. At that point, the project becomes visible on the Web site to all viewers, and volunteers can sign up. The coach coordinates all the arrangements, including supplies, and is responsible for making the project a positive experience for the volunteers.

Susan Osborne, the only paid staff member of the nonprofit, counts 725 volunteers who have been active this year, along with another 70 to 90 coaches. Her role began as a part-time job, “but it just took off like wildfire,” she says, and the job turned full time after one year.

The nonprofit is eager to share its Web site with other organizations. “NeighborLink Fort Wayne is a tool anybody can use to mobilize anything,” says Osborne. Several churches, for example, jointly sponsor a major day of outdoor projects each summer, while Taylor University used the site to organize students for 50 projects on Martin Luther King Day. The local United Way will begin using NeighborLink this year. In each instance, the sponsoring organization gets to brand its own event.

Co-founder John Barce, a partner in a major Fort Wayne law firm, says the organization hired a Web site developer to create the one-of-a-kind site. He would love to see more imitators. “If other communities want to do similar projects,” he says, “we’ll make a site license available at no cost.”