By Dane Anderson, Staff Writer

Thanks to Eanes school district parent and management consultant Karen Bantuveris, doing good just got a whole lot easier.

The Eanes Elementary School mom has set up a free Web site, VolunteerSpot.com that helps take the hassle out of volunteering. The site allows parents and other busy people to organize an event, sign up to help, keep activities organized and even see who else is participating in each event. VolunteerSpot.com e-mails notifications to remind everyone what they have signed up to do and when.

“The site saves people time and makes their volunteer time so much more productive,” Bantuveris said. “One e-mail and it’s all taken care of. A few clicks and you are all set up. It simplifies the frustrating process that used to take phone call after phone call.”

She said the new site and its software also bring new parents into the volunteer process, those who are otherwise too busy to be able to commit to time-consuming volunteer projects.

Bantuveris started VolunteerSpot after she became frustrated over the time she lost and the problems she encountered when she tried to volunteer in activities for herself and her daughter – things like school events, swim meets and Girl Scout cookie sales. 

“I was one of those PTA working moms,” she said. I got completely frustrated with all the e-mails on my Blackberry and all the phone calls I got when trying to organize things. I talked my local elementary school PTA into purchasing software to simplify the process and then found out there wasn’t any.”

Once again, necessity became the mother of invention for Bantuveris. She launched VolunteerSpot last year and piloted it at Eanes Elementary School. She said the parent Pony Express has taken off, growing virally and by word of mouth. The site currently serves more than 50,000 volunteers involved in projects in 40 U.S. states and Canada, with heavy clusters in Seattle, New York City and Chicago.

The site rambled through its normal share of glitches in its early stages.

“Software development is software development,” Bantuvres said. “We were lucky to pilot the program in our own backyard. Volunteers in this community were incredibly helpful, offering lots and lots of suggestions for additional uses. We ran it at Eanes Elementary School and before we knew it, Forest Trail was using it to organize Muffin Morning; Rollingwood, Lost Creek and several other swim teams picked it up, and St. John Neumann Catholic Church had it running to organize vacation bible school.

Bantuveris is happy with the success of the site, but not completely surprised.

“Give a useful tool to people looking for it, and it works,” she said. “It’s not like we’re inventing soap. People want to be involved with their kids, and we make it easier.”

The management guru turned software maven wants to see VolunteerSpot grow even bigger. 

“We want it to be in every school in every community,” she said. 

With events organized on the site corralling between 20 and 400 volunteers apiece, the possibility for continued viral growth looks good. 

To learn more about the site, take a live tour or watch an instructional video, visit VolunteerSpot.com.