By B.J. Roche

Into every volunteer's life a little ridiculously tedious project does fall. They couldn't pay you to do this, right? Well, they're not. So the faster you can get it done, the better for all involved. Here are some typical projects and some tech solutions, all free and easy to use.

You need to schedule a meeting. For 12 over-booked people. Let's stipulate that there should be a circle of hell where these types of meetings take place. But if you must, try doodle.com to get everyone's schedule and save several rounds of phone calls. Managing a videoconference across time zones? Try the World Clock Meeting Planner.

You need to send out an e-mail that recipients will actually open and read. Try MailChimp, which enables you to send out a nice-looking e-mail to up to 500 recipients for free.

You want to survey membership about an issue. Try Survey Monkey or Zoomerang, which enables you to ask questions and gather results quickly and accurately in an easy-to-read format. (And while you're at it, take my survey!)

You want to have a single place for your group to connect online, but you want it to be private. Try Yahoo groups.  All users need a Yahoo account, and you can establish a list of users. This keeps the site open to your members but private to others.

You are working on a document with those 12 very busy people. Another hell circle. But. Try Google Docs, or a wiki, which is a user-generated site. People can post information and updates, and collaborate in real time. Check out pbworks, which offers free and premium wiki services.

You want to share links, audio, video, what-have-you with a private group. Drop.io is the place. Try Portaportal if you just want to share links. Portaportal is particularly useful if you've got a lot of projects going and want different folders for your links. You set up account and others can log in as guests using your username.

You want to set up your own blog or simple website. Try
blogger. com , which is probably the easiest, or Wordpress. Or Google sites.

You know you need to get back to work, but you can't stop listening to the latest Mel Gibson rant. Get yourself to LeechBlock, which according to its developers....

...is a simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.