Do you volunteer in your town?

Yes I volunteer every week at several organizations.
I work at our local museum several hours a week, work a couple of days a month at our food pantry, I also volunteer at our school regularly.
I help with church projects and other community and county wide projects.

You could check with any of the local community organizations, and see if they need some help. It’s nice if you can find something that you are really interested in.

I do. I take tickets at our monthly Indie Flim club movie; I will sit at the polls (for the Dems.) tomorrow from 12:00 to 3:00 to check off voters and compile list of those to be phoned, nagged and offered a ride to the polls: I spend several hours most Monday afternoons with a nice woman who can’t go out in the sun or be near electrical current. We played four hand piano by candle light.

I have tutored in EFL and worked as a volunteer at our local historical society. Here it is easy. Hang out at the post office, gossip at the country store or read the local weekly paper.

If I were younger and stronger, I would volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.

No, I do not

I am a volunteer advocate at the REACH Center, which is a hotline for rape crisis, suicide, domestic violence and child sexual abuse.

Yes.

@ItalianPrincess1217, the Humane Societies are (almost) always in need of people to help out, whether it be with administrative duties, dog walking, or cat socializing.

Plus, you get to play with animals. How awesome is that?

If you don’t have regular time openings, however (i.e., every other weekend), it might be a better idea to foster an animal.

HSs often have animals that need to get away from their kennels to recuperate—kennel cough and URIs (upper respiratory infection) are very common, and only take 2–3 weeks of recuperation and medication to get an animal well enough to be adopted out.

If amputees and injured animals don’t gross you out, animals that have recently been operated on also need someone to take care of them for a few weeks, to help them build their strength back up and lavish love on them.

Some shelters also have animals that get freaked out by being cooped up in a kennel (who could blame them?) and send these animals out to calm the f**k down. These animals (usually dogs) stay with you, and potential adopters visit your home to see if it’s a match or not.

My mom and I have fostered many times, and our animals always get URIs or kennel cough. Always. So if you decide to do it, make sure you ask for medication right away.

I’m sure I’m forgetting some things; make sure you attend classes and/or orientation if you decide to foster or help at your local HS.

@evegrimm Love that idea! I’m quite the animal lover. But I have 2 dogs of my own? Would that effect my ability to foster other animals?

Yes. I volunteer with our local Philharmonic and with a program called Read to Succeed that helps children of low SES improve their reading skills.

I’d look at schools and nonprofits around your area – these places have much more of a workload than they can handle, if only from the common assumption that they don’t take as much energy & finess to run (when in fact, they take just as much of these things as corporate organizations). Some of these organizations thrive on volunteers and would die without them. By taking this step you’d be making a huge difference to someone (even if ‘someone’ happens to be the overworked fundraising & development staff director).

I can’t imagine a nonprofit place misusing your help since they can’t exactly make you do anything (ie- you can tell them ‘no thanks, I’m not comfortable with this’ at any time.) However, I can see how you would want to avoid this situation altogether. Reading an organization’s mission is a great way to get a feel for how they present themselves. Also, remember that you can usually opt to volunteer for one or two events; you don’t have to commit your entire year right off the bat.

As for specific places… If you regularly attend a nonprofit organzation’s events, you might talk to them. There’s a possibility you might get some kind of discount, even. If you don’t, there’s a couple umbrella organizations out there that can help you find places. United Way is one of them—I know they had some bad press a couple years ago, but from what I understand that incident is over.

sorry if this doesn’t make fantastic coherent sense… i just woke up from a nap

@ItalianPrincess1217, it depends on the size of your house, your commitment level, and what kind of animals you’d like to foster.

For instance, if you have a room that is used irregularly, you can keep a dog in there and away from your dogs, so that there is less chance of “migratory” (ha, ha) kennel cough. If you want to foster a cat, it’s not as big of a deal, because a cat’s “kennel cough” (URI) isn’t transferable to a dog, but if your dogs don’t like cats, that could be an issue.

As for the commitment level, if you foster a dog, to keep the possibility of kennel cough transfer down, it’s a good idea to have a separate set of clothes for the “foster dog room” and for the rest of your house.

I can give you more ideas, but I think the mods would prefer it in a PM!

Yes. I’m a volunteer Team Leader with New York Cares. What’s great about this organization is that volunteers can tailor their participation to the level of commitment that they are able to give, so a person can volunteer as much or as little of their time to a plethora of agencies and other places that need help in our city.

I should add that I’d be in deep doo doo without the volunteers at our local animal shelter. They cut Milo’s nails once a month for a $10.00 donation (tax-deductible). Milo would turn me into hamburger before he’d let a clipper get near his delicate paws.

I voluenteer with the 4-H club in my community. I just recently worked a loooonnggg day at the food stand that is their main fundraiser for the year. I spent over a decade involved with the club on both the regular and collegiate levels and now I spend time doing what I wish people had done when I was coming through.

I also do a lot with the local primary school.

My husband & I are both on city committees. I do A LOT of volunteering at church. I’m on three committees, one of which is the funeral committee where I help serve & furnish for all funeral lunches.

I used to do a lot of physical volunteer work, where I would go to the various locations and help. Now I have to limit my volunteer work to sending donations, giving to the various drives that come by my house, and letting everyone know about the online services that provide charity donations just for using their site, such as thehungersite.com and freerice.com and goodsearch.com

We volunteer. We started by volunteering in our cultural community because it was fun. Then we got to know others in the community by volunteering through them and when they would have events etc.. we would volunteer there as well. In addition to this I volunteered through my University practicum which hooks students up with volunteer work for class credit. So that gave me a more eclectic volunteer experience. Also we see ads in the paper and get suggestions from friends. Hubby loves environmental work so we’ve done some great stuff with that too.

What I suggest is think of who you want to help. Then look in the local newspaper or google or the local chamber of commerce to see where you can volunteer that would meet your interests. I find volunteering at local places vs. huge-name places is more rewarding to me personally. But volunteering anywhere is great!

I volunteer all the time. I go down to the local homeless shelter, and I do some tutoring, there with the children. I also help make dinner there once a week.

I will be helping to plant 60 trees in our village this weekend.

There is so much to be done.

I am a full-time volunteer for the American Red Cross, I have been voluntering with them since 1996 (full time for the last 4 years). I found them by word of mouth (I worked for a non-profit, and attended some similar meetings as ARC staff).

A good place to start is volunteermatch.org, I would say pick somethig that you feel passionate about or are interested in and find a corosponding oppertunity, nice thing is you can allways quit if its not a good match.