Volunteer Opportunities

“Everyone can be great because anyone can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. … You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

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Benefits of Volunteering

Perhaps the first and biggest benefit people get from volunteering is the satisfaction of incorporating service into their lives and making a difference in their community and country. The intangible benefits alone—such as pride, satisfaction and accomplishment—are worthwhile reasons to serve. In addition, when we share our time and talents, we:

• Solve problems
• Strengthen communities
• Improve lives
• Connect to others
• Transform our own lives

Over the past two decades we have also seen a growing body of research that indicates volunteering provides individual health benefits in addition to social benefits. This research, which is presented by the Corporation for National Service in a PDF report titled “The Health Benefits of Volunteering: A Review of Recent Research,” has established a strong relationship between volunteering and health: those who volunteer have lower mortality rates, greater functional ability, and lower rates of depression later in life than those who do not volunteer. 

Comparisons of the health benefits of volunteering for different age groups have also shown that older volunteers are the most likely to receive greater benefits from volunteering, whether because they are more likely to face higher incidence of illness or because volunteering provides them with physical and social activity and a sense of purpose at a time when their social roles are changing. Some of these findings also indicate that volunteers who devote a “considerable” amount of time to volunteer activities (about 100 hours per year) are most likely to exhibit positive health outcomes.

I’ve listed here a few organizations where you can volunteer in your local community, national community and even global community, there are even virtual volunteer opportunities available.  I encourage you to please take a few moments to consider helping others, it doesn’t take a lot of your time to reach out and make a difference in someone else’s life.

Corporation for National and Community Service

Volunteering in America

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed more than 170 years ago, a defining characteristic of the American people is their commitment to service.

Today, the ethic remains strong, as across our nation Americans of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities are donating their time and talents to schools, churches, hospitals, and local nonprofits in an effort to improve their communities and serve a purpose greater than themselves. They are beautifying schools and neighborhoods, building homes, cleaning up after disasters, mentoring students, donating professional services, coaching youth sports teams, holding benefit fundraisers, and much, much more. These actions are critically important because volunteering today is a necessary aspect of meeting many of the needs facing our nation.

Live United (United Way)

Advancing the Common Good: Creating Opportunities for a Better Life for All

Everyone deserves opportunities to have a good life: a quality education that leads to a stable job, enough income to support a family through retirement, and good health.

Advancing the common good is less about helping one person at a time and more about changing systems to help all of us. We are all connected and interdependent. We all win when a child succeeds in school, when families are financially stable, when people are healthy.

United Way’s goal is to create long-lasting changes by addressing the underlying causes of these problems. Living united means being a part of the change. It takes everyone in the community working together to create a brighter future. GIVE. ADVOCATE. VOLUNTEER. LIVE UNITED. 

Underneath everything we are, underneath everything we do, we are all people.  Connected, Interdependent, United.  And when we reach out a hand to one, we influence the condition of all. That’s what it means to LIVE UNITED.

American Red Cross

Since its founding in 1881 by visionary leader Clara Barton, the American Red Cross has been the nation’s premier emergency response organization. As part of a worldwide movement that offers neutral humanitarian care to the victims of war, the American Red Cross distinguishes itself by also aiding victims of devastating natural disasters. Over the years, the organization has expanded its services, always with the aim of preventing and relieving suffering.

Today, in addition to domestic disaster relief, the American Red Cross offers compassionate services in five other areas: community services that help the needy; support and comfort for military members and their families; the collection, processing and distribution of lifesaving blood and blood products; educational programs that promote health and safety; and international relief and development programs.

The American Red Cross is where people mobilize to help their neighbors—across the street, across the country, and across the world—in emergencies. Each year, in communities large and small, victims of some 70,000 disasters turn to neighbors familiar and new—the more than half a million volunteers and 35,000 employees of the Red Cross. Through over 700 locally supported chapters, more than 15 million people gain the skills they need to prepare for and respond to emergencies in their homes, communities and world.

Some four million people give blood—the gift of life—through the Red Cross, making it the largest supplier of blood and blood products in the United States. And the Red Cross helps thousands of U.S. service members separated from their families by military duty stay connected. As part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, a global network of 186 national societies, the Red Cross helps restore hope and dignity to the world’s most vulnerable people.  

An average of 91 cents of every dollar the Red Cross spends is invested in humanitarian services and programs.

The Red Cross is not a government agency; it relies on donations of time, money, and blood to do its work.

Cross-Cultural Solutions

Behind our commitment to international volunteer work is a philosophy that provides the focus for our organization. This philosophy consists of a vision, a mission by which we can achieve that vision, and a set of core values that define how we approach everything we do:

Our Vision is of a world where people value cultures different from their own, are aware of global issues, and are empowered to effect positive change.

Our Mission is to operate volunteer programs around the world in partnership with sustainable community initiatives, bringing people together to work side-by-side while sharing perspectives and fostering cultural understanding.  We are an international not-for-profit organization with no political or religious affiliations.

Our Values are:

• Shared Humanity 

When people of different cultures have an opportunity to connect there comes an understanding of our shared humanity.

• Respect 

We accept, appreciate and respect that people know and understand what is appropriate for their own communities.

• Integrity  

We commit to ensuring the safety, flexibility, professionalism, transparency and excellence of our programs.

The Peace Corps

The Peace Corps traces its roots and mission to 1960, when then Senator John F. Kennedy challenged students at the University of Michigan to serve their country in the cause of peace by living and working in developing countries. From that inspiration grew an agency of the federal government devoted to world peace and friendship.

The Peace Corps’ mission has three simple goals:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Since 1961, more than 195,000 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in 139 host countries to work on issues ranging from AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation.

Today’s Peace Corps is more vital than ever, working in emerging and essential areas such as information technology and business development, and committing more than 1,000 new Volunteers as a part of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Peace Corps Volunteers continue to help countless individuals who want to build a better life for themselves, their children, and their communities.

VolunteerMatch - Where Volunteering Begins

 The Power of Imagination

What if, somewhere on the internet, there was a community of people who believed in the power of volunteering to enrich our lives and the world around us?

What if, somewhere on the internet, millions of good people and good causes could come together to form relationships that serve us all?

What if, somewhere on the internet, technology was being used to advance the values and partnerships that strengthen our civil society?

The Power of Hard Work

Community

VolunteerMatch is about people. We are a community that believes in the power of volunteering to enrich our lives and the world around us. We believe that in order to be strong, a community must be constantly evolving, increasingly active and evermore diverse. We are proud to be supporting a community that grew to over six million users in 2008.

Relationships

VolunteerMatch is about relationships. We are a service that brings good people and good causes together. We believe that the health of our community can be measured by the relationships formed between volunteers and the nonprofits they serve. Our aim is to build services that overcome the barriers that keep volunteers and nonprofits from finding each other, working together, and developing strong relationships.

Partnerships

VolunteerMatch is about cooperation. We are a network that is only as strong as the partnerships that support it. None of us can build a community alone. We take partnerships seriously and seek to work with nonprofit, business and governmental leaders committed to building stronger relationships with their constituents around volunteering and service.

Tracy L. Speights

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