Welcome to The Jericho Road Project!

The Jericho Road Project bridges communities by matching the professional talents of volunteers with the needs of community-based nonprofit organizations and businesses to promote community development, strengthen social services, and enrich the lives of volunteers.

We believe that a powerful community of nonprofit organizations--including homeless shelters, food kitchens, arts, youth and environmental organizations, afterschool programs, small business development and home ownership programs--is a gateway to enhancing the quality of life in any city, but especially in cities with low-income populations.

The problem? Those same nonprofits that are entrusted with protecting a city's quality of life and helping others are very often in need of great help themselves! Many nonprofit organizations have over-extended staff and little time or resources to identify, let alone take on, critical strategic and operational challenges that will allow them to sustain and improve their services.

The solution? Skills-based volunteers! Skills-based volunteers are a powerful, abundant and free resource that can help nonprofit organizations achieve their goals. Skills-based volunteers include board development specialists, strategic planners, business developers, lawyers, accountants, marketing and design professionals, IT specialists, fundraisers, project managers, editors and others.

The Jericho Road Project is unique in that it harnesses the expertise of skills based volunteers to build the strength of a community of nonprofit organizations in order to enhance the quality of life in an underserved city. Jericho Road's model therefore includes:

• Targeting nonprofit communities with similar challenges in small to mid-sized cities for greater impact;
• Having a dedicated program director in each city we serve and thus get to know our clients very well;
• Engaging volunteers from corporate, faith and other communities;
• Utilizing our proven "7 Step Collaboration" model to ensure a great match, project management and a rewarding outcome for both the volunteer and client.
• Building the capacity of our nonprofit clients over time through multiple engagements often driven by an organizational improvement plan.
• Measuring impact through evaluations and by periodically assessing organizational capacity.

Replicating our model: The Jericho Road Project has been replicating its success in other small cities in Massachusetts, seeking to create a network of nearby sites that share volunteers, knowledge, tools and resources for greater efficiency and impact. In 2003 Jericho Road Lowell was launched bridging the resources of greater Concord, MA, with the needs of Lowell; in 2005, Jericho Road Lawrence was launched, matching the resources of greater North Andover, MA, with the needs of Lawrence. In June 2009, Jericho Road Worcester was established, linking Worcester resources to Worcester nonprofits.

Crossing state boundaries for the first time, Jericho Road Pasadena, our latest site, was opened in June 2010 in Pasadena, California.

Since our launch in early 2003, our volunteers and our corporate partners have served over 60 Lowell nonprofit organizations and 30 Lawrence organizations and small businesses through our core program of skills-based volunteering.

Meet some of our volunteers and clients in our Jericho Road Project video, where they talk about the impact of a Jericho Road project on their organization and themselves!