Changes for Serve.gov website

Request for OMB Approval – Serve.gov

On Wednesday, May 20, 2009, Mrs. Obama will meet with at least 400 organizations and ask them to organize projects and volunteers to meet needs in our country in four key issue areas:  Education, Energy/Environment, Health, and Economic Opportunity.  To facilitate maximum visibility of opportunities for individuals to participate in and for organizations to maximize participation in their projects, Mrs. Obama will ask people to utilize Serve.gov to register projects and to learn about opportunities.  This call will be amplified through out the summer and particularly over then next month by the President, First Lady and Cabinet Secretaries.  Serve.gov will become the entry point for those activities and the call to service.

You requested a document describing the changes on Serve.gov from the Day of Service Project Registration Form. This document identifies the changes between the two forms.

To register a project, respondents must register their organizations by creating a user name and password (and confirm the password) so that they can access their account later.

Two additional fields for the “Your Organization” page are: 

• address

• zip code

Two additional fields for the “Your Contact Information” page are:

• fax

• address

In the ‘Project’ fields, (now called ‘Opportunity’):

• project name is now called opportunity name

• a required field for zip code has been added

For this submission, we are requesting approval for questions added to Serve.gov to improve the information collection. Many of these items were included by projects as part of their narrative descriptions, but adding them as separate questions adds additional usability and functionality.

The following fields were added so that project could be searched by when they occur. 

• Opportunity Start date (click on calendar)

• Opportunity End date (click on calendar)

• Time periods

• Pick from the following:  all day; morning, afternoon, evening; or custom time slots which you fill in

• Opportunity Availability Days:  check boxes for Monday – Sunday

The following fields were added to provide more information about the project opportunities and are optional:

• check off box to indicate if lunch will be provided to volunteers

• check off box to indicate if child care will be provided for volunteers

• check off boxes for type of opportunity were added to match other search engines.  Those service types are:  Animals, Arts & Culture, Children & Youth, Civic & Community, Education/Tech, Faith-based, Health, Human Services, Hurricane Relief/Recovery, Public Safety

Included in the OIRA submission in ROCIS are new screenshots of the Serve.gov web page incorporating the questions identified in this document.