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 500 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 led by a designated House Captain, who provides the organization necessary for the effort.

General volunteers are the main force of our program. Today over 4000 come from hundreds of 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 organize the efforts of the house captains assigned to each of the houses for the group. It takes about 10 to 20 general volunteers for each house that is adopted. Since this is a one-day effort, it is necessary to have plenty of volunteers to divide up the work to get it completed by the end of the day. We don't want to let our homeowners down at the last minute.