Volunteers can help a number of organizations for missing people and their families.

In 2010, the National Crime Information Center recorded almost 700,000 missing people in the United States. Nonprofit organizations across the country are vital for raising awareness of missing people and for helping to find these people. There are a number of different organizations in the United States that rely on volunteers to support their work for missing people and their families.

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

    The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is a nonprofit organization that helps find and support missing children. The NCMEC has been operational since 1984. It provides information and resources to law enforcement, parents, children and professionals in the field. The NCMEC relies on volunteers in a number of ways, and there are opportunities for volunteers to get involved as much or as little as they want. Volunteering for the NCMEC involves individuals putting up posters for missing children in local communities, persuading website owners to put links from their websites to the NCMEC website, and helping out in NCMEC offices across the country with photo distribution, case management and public affairs.

National Missing and Unidentified Persons System

    National Missing and Unidentified Persons System is a system run by the U.S. Department of Justice to help communities deal with unresolved missing person cases, as well as the matter of trying to identify the remains of so-far unidentified people. NamUs asks people to volunteer for them to raise awareness of missing people and to encourage local organizations and law enforcement to use the NamUs databases for missing people. Volunteers are urged to spread the word about the NamUs database so that more missing people are found and identified, which could involve talking to local officials or contacting local newspapers. NamUs also needs volunteers for the forensic services section, to support agencies that do not have adequate forensic services. Volunteers for this role must be board-certified anthropologists or board-certified odontologists.

Let's Bring Them Home

    Let's Bring Them Home is a nonprofit organization that provides safety education for adults and children, and provides resources for families with missing loved ones. LBTH relies on volunteers to be advocates for the organization either in their local communities or to be in communication with local politicians. Volunteers who become community leaders are asked to communicate with the local media and state representatives on behalf of LBTH, ultimately to raise awareness of missing individuals. Volunteers who become political advocates are asked to contact their local senators by phone, email and letter to urge them to give more support to missing people and their families.

Search and Rescue Dog Organizations

    There are a number of volunteer organizations across the United States that offer a service to help find missing people with the use of trained dogs. Search and rescue dog organizations, such as Alaska Search and Rescue Dogs and California Rescue Dog Association, are used when there is a missing person who is thought to be in a defined geographical area. Volunteers are needed to train dogs on an ongoing basis and to go out on search and rescue deployments when there is a missing person. Volunteers need to be able to commit to training sessions as frequently as two or three times a week, regardless of the weather, plus be able to go out on search and rescue missions with little notice.

By Summer Sartori, eHow Contributor

Source: ehow.com