Rebuilding Together works to ensure that as many of those families as possible do not have to make these difficult choices. Each local program sets its own goals. Some affiliates provide emergency year-round services in addition to the major rehabilitation projects they undertake on National Rebuilding Day. Some affiliates choose to do significant work preserving and revitalizing non-profit facilities. In 2001, each affiliate will rehabilitate from three to 400 houses and non-profit facilities.
Some affiliates organize their work in a one-day blitz while others work over several weekends.
The unskilled volunteers join with skilled tradespeople, painting, cleaning, and weatherizing and doing carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work. Homeowners must be low-income and elderly, disabled, or families with children, and unable to do the work themselves. The site selection process takes place locally, within broad national guidelines. Criteria differ slightly from affiliate to affiliate. Individual families are referred through neighborhood associations, churches, synagogues, community organizations, and service groups, or by self-referral.