Probably the best searchable list of religious communities
It’s good to know that one’s work has contributed to the benefit of the Church. Years ago, working with the Institute on Religious Life (IRL), I was assigned to take the organization’s small, static-page website and make it larger and more of service to both vocation directors and people looking for vocations. It was a challenge, and an enjoyable one.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) recently ranked the IRL’s website as the third-best in offering online vocation services.
Back in the early 2000’s we put into effect several novel projects. One was putting more than 200 religious communities on an online database. One of the reasons we wanted to do it was to relieve the office of phone calls asking about religious communities.
The website was an immediate hit. The website service, now known as Vocation Search, is one of the best searchable database of religious communities in English. Another project that I oversaw was the online catalog, and also the online retreat. All projects were based on a database that made it easy to download important information.
A few years ago, the IRL’s website was getting thousands of visits each month, and it is probably getting more today. See if your community is listed on the Institute on Religious Life’s Vocation Search. If it’s not, contact me.
