Our Volunteers Make It All Possible!

The volunteers are Christmas In October. Starting with about 100 volunteers in 1984 working on 20 houses, the effort has grown to over 4000 volunteers working on over 400 houses each year today.   The program in Kansas City is one of the largest of several hundred such programs around the country.  For the most part, the volunteers come to Christmas In October in groups from various organizations from throughout the metropolitan area.  Some groups are small and work on a single house. Others are larger and take on multiple houses.  Some volunteers are more skilled than others, and take on more challenging assignments.   There is something for everyone, and we do our best to match up each group of volunteers with a homeowner, whose needs best match their skills. Each group of volunteers assigned to a house is lead by a designated House Captain, who provides the organization necessary for the effort.

The general volunteers are the main force of the program. There are currently over 4000 regular "general" volunteers, coming from a hundred different organizations, including churches, businesses, and other various groups. Each group has a general coordinator, who may also be the House Captain for a small group working on one or two houses. For large groups working on several houses, the coordinator may coordinate the efforts of the house captains assigned to each of the houses assigned to the group. The coordinator is responsible for the general communications with the CIO staff to apply for an assignment and organize the general effort by the group.  It takes about 10 to 20 general volunteers for each of the houses we accept.  Some will support many more volunteers and some will require fewer.  It is important to remember that this is a one day effort, so it is necessary to have plenty of volunteers to divide up the work required and get it completed by the end of the day.  Groups also need to provide for the fact that some volunteers may not be able to participate at the last minute, and there needs to be enough support in reserve to make up for the loss, as the homeowner is depending upon our help.  We don't want to let them down at the last minute.