Volunteerism Fulfills Community Service and Individual Needs

Just try volunteerism till you find your true love. Assuming you didn’t come to this page because you were assigned to community service by a court or because you were required to do service learning for high school or college, it should be all about the love. You can do something to make your own community better, and a multitude of worthwhile causes deserve your attention.

Neighborhood associations and communities rely on volunteers to meet critical needs. If you’re engaged in community development work in a neighborhood, consider whether teams of volunteers can perform the many tasks you’d like to assign an executive director, if only you had the money to hire one.

Questions to Ask Before Deciding Where to Serve

Before you start surfing the Web, making phone calls, and visiting actual work sites, consider which you like best:

• Manual labor with visible results

• Working with people (and if so, whether and how soon results must be apparent)

• Collaborating with others to bring about social or economic change

• A low-stress, low-thinking activity where simply your presence makes a difference

• Opportunities to express your values and beliefs

A second category of consideration is what group, geographic area, or virtual territory you want to consider your community. Is it closer to:

• Your geographic area (define the limits)

• Your school or school district

• An interest or hobby group

• Your political affiliation or a group that works toward a cause you believe in

Be clear about your motivation. Are you doing this because:

• You have an obligation

• You think it will advance your career or your opportunity to be admitted to a good school or receive a college scholarship

• You want something to brag about

• You have a genuine feeling of wanting to be of service, even if it involves personal sacrifice

• You’re bored and need something to do

• You want to meet potential friends or romantic interests

• You’re unemployed and need to show experience in something where you really have none

• You want to try out a new role to see how you would like it

Consider also your capabilities:

• How much time can you give? Regularly or in spurts? Can you be predictable or must it be spur-of-the-moment? Do you go out of town frequently?

• What are your physical or energy limitations?

• Are there certain kinds of situations that cause you so much emotional distress you would be ineffective?

• Must your surroundings be pleasant? How about your co-workers or co-volunteers?

• Do you want to tie your volunteer activities to a cause you support financially?

• Are the tasks the types of work in which you usually succeed?

• Are the hours, days, location, and any clothing or preparation requirements likely to fit into your lifestyle? If not, are you sure you are willing to change your routine?

• If you are under 21, can you check into any age requirements before you go there and embarrass yourself? Get on your phone and check it out. I just don’t want you to be discouraged from ever trying community service again if someone puts you down.

Your local United Way, YMCA, library, neighborhood organization, city hall, or place of worship may be able to give you more than enough ideas from which to choose. See our special tips on and for senior citizen volunteers. And for summer programs for teens, check back here for a new page in the spring.

Or if you do everything on-line, just search for your city name plus volunteers. In addition, there are a number of great national and international listings on-line, including:

-VolunteerMatch, a major site,

-Roots and Shoots (a program of the Jane Goodall Institute and therefore animal and human service-oriented),

-idealist.org (which includes many other resources for cause-oriented people such as people attracted to this site),

-servenet.org (especially aimed at youth),

-Network for Good (includes the cool and no doubt motivating feature of allowing you to record your volunteer hours on-line), and

-another all-purpose site to help you find the right community service opportunity

Two governmental listings are a site that lists natural and cultural resource opportunities for 12 federal agencies, and the Obama Administration initiative, Corporation for National and Community Service.

If you are a young person and you need to understand the process of planning your own community service event, a key resource for you might be Project Plan-It.

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