No, neither for you nor for the charities we serve. Workdays are funded by donors and event sponsors.
None at all. Every workday has jobs at every skill level, so experienced hands take the skilled tasks while everyone else carries, holds, paints, packs, and learns. The team leader matches you to a job when you arrive.
Fill in the form on the event page. It takes about thirty seconds and asks your name, your cell, your email, and how many people you are bringing. The page confirms your spot as soon as you submit it, and we text the start time and the address before the day.
Texting still works if you prefer it. Send the event keyword, or just VOLUNTEER, and your name to (205) 538-1061, and a person will answer. We only text about volunteer events, and you can text STOP at any time.
Please do, whether that is friends, family, a small group, coworkers, or a team. The signup form asks how many people you are bringing, so put the number in and we will scope enough work. One signup covers all of you and we do not need everybody's names.
If you want something to send them, the invite page has messages you can copy. If your company wants a workday built around its own team, that is a sponsored day.
Every workday has a real capacity, because past a certain headcount people end up standing around holding nothing. When one fills, the form puts you on the waitlist and says so on the screen. People drop out, and we work down the list in the order people joined it, so a waitlist place is usually worth taking. You are also first in line when the next date opens.
Closed-toe shoes and clothes that can get dirty. Bring work gloves if you own a pair, and we carry extras for everyone who does not. Tools, materials, and water are provided, and each event page lists anything unusual.
At family-friendly events, yes. Kids 12 and up are welcome alongside a parent or guardian, and each event page says whether that day is family-friendly. A parent or guardian signs the waiver for anyone under 18, and a coach's or a relative's signature does not count. Power tools are for adults only.
Almost certainly, because every workday has lighter jobs such as check-in, water runs, sorting, and painting at ground level. Put it in the notes box when you sign up and the team leader will have the right job waiting for you.
We make the call early and text everyone who signed up by 7:00 on the morning of the event. If a day gets rained out we reschedule it, and you will be the first to know the new date.
Workdays run a morning and wrap up by early afternoon. Come for all of it if you can, and if you need to leave early, tell the team leader when you arrive so the work plan accounts for it.
The team leader checks you in, you sign a standard volunteer waiver, and you get a name tag and a job. We go over the plan for the day together, and at the end we gather up, look at what we built, and thank each other properly.
Most of our workdays are at somebody's house, and the people who live there did not ask to have their address on the internet next to a description of what is broken about it. We text the address to everyone who signs up. Workdays at a public site such as a school, a church, or a community garden do list the address on the event page, and so does a workday whose address the partner has already announced.
Short answer: yes.
The longer answer is that we do not think a church is a private thing you hold on the inside and practice for an hour on Sunday. A church is closer to a city. It is a way of living together in public, with streets and neighbors and work in it, and it is visible to anyone walking past. Calling that a religion makes it sound smaller than it is.
If that is right, then a Saturday spent framing a ramp for someone who cannot get out their own back door is not charity bolted onto the side of a church. It is the same life, carried a few blocks further. The table on Sunday and the circular saw on Saturday belong to the same week.
It is also why this is built to bring congregations together rather than to grow any one of them. Right now that is one church. It ought to be more.
None of that is a hedge. We think this actually works. A city gets remade the way a house does, slowly, by people who keep turning up with tools, and we are not waiting to be lifted out of Birmingham at the last minute while it burns. We expect it repaired, block by block, over more years than any of us will be here for. A ramp is a small piece of that, and so is a sewing table, a box of diapers, and a deck that holds weight again.
Immanuel Volunteers is a program of the Northside Initiative, an Alabama nonprofit serving Birmingham's Northside neighborhoods. Workdays are led by trained volunteer team leaders, and you can become one.