No. This is an important distinction. WARMLINE.ORG seeks to be a centralized hub of information for the public to find WARMLINES, for WARMLINES to be found, and to provide articles, webinars, and research about WARMLINES. At WARMLNES.ORG volunteers make what we call SURVEY calls to Warmlines across the country to make sure the information in our directory is accurate and up-to-date.
Volunteers for WARMLINE.ORG are assigned a number of WARMLINES to call and SURVEY. The number of WARMLINES a volunteer is assigned is based upon how much volunteer time they commit to. We expect each call to take about 20 minutes. So, if a volunteer committed to 2 hours, we would assign them 6 SURVEY calls (6 SURVEYS x 20 minutes each = 2 hours).
A SURVEY is what we, at WARMLINE.ORG, call the process of contacting a WARMLINE to verify that the information we have in our directory database is accurate and up-to-date. A SURVEY takes about 20 minutes and consists of about a dozen short questions regarding such things as hours of operation, whether they take out-of-state calls, and languages spoken, for example.
Volunteers sign into their personal Dashboard where they can see the WARMLINES SURVEYS that they have been assigned. Each Warmline directory listing has an online form which is pre-populated with all of the data for that WARMLINE. The Volunteer then reviews the existing directory listing information to see what might be missing or needs to be added to the listing. Then they call the WARMLINE to make sure our listing information is still up-to-date and to add any missing information.
No. No special accreditation, certification, or training is necessary. Doing SURVEYS to Warmlines is a relatively straightforward and easy role of database administration. And we provide a Dashboard with online forms which means you don't have to do any type of programming or database work.