Where & Who to Volunteer With?

By: Volunteer Success

If you are a high school student, both formal and informal volunteering may count towards community service hours for high school graduation - check with your school or guidance counsellor

  • Formal volunteering takes place with a charity, non-profit or community organization (including at your own school!)
  • Informal volunteering can be done in your own neighbourhood: for example, assisting seniors with shovelling walkways and driveways, garden care, or carrying groceries; unpaid babysitting or dog-walking; collecting food for a food bank; organizing a park clean-up in your community. Remember that this work must be unpaid!
  • What doesn’t count towards community service hours:
    • working for free in a business
    • doing a school co-op
    • any paid job
  • While these are still great activities to discover your skills and interests, they don’t count as volunteer work and won’t count towards your high school diploma
  • Location, location, location! If the volunteer opportunity isn’t virtual, check the address of the opportunity in advance to make sure that it is accessible to you (walkable or by transit) before you apply!

Next, go to When to Volunteer?

Also check out:

How to Find the Right Volunteer Opportunity

How to Apply for Volunteer Roles

How-to Tips for Interviewing and Email Communications

How-to Tips for Applying for Unadvertised Volunteer Opportunities

How-to Tips for Working in the Volunteer Role

How to Troubleshoot Problems in Your Volunteer Role

How to Get a Reference and/or Paid Role!


Also read…

Welcome message from Volunteer Success

By: Brian Prosserman

The reason why we decided to launch this exciting initiative

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By: Steve Armstrong

If ever a group regularly took the blame for the state of the non-profit sector it is Boards of Directors. One can barely read anything published about charities and non-profits without reading something disheartening about Boards of Directors. You likely have heard the litany of things that Boards of Directors are blamed for. To hear that you have to wonder if each and every Board of Directors is in dire need of board development assistance and by extension that each and every individual board members is at fault? I certainly do not believe that in is fair to place the full burden of this issue at the feet of Board members, but clearly, the degree of dissatisfaction people have with their board experience is trying to tell us something – that the system of “non-profit governance” as we know it is not working.

Volunteer Success Announces the Launch of the Offers by Volunteers Feature

By: Volunteer Success

Volunteer Success is proud to announce the launch of Offers by Volunteers Feature on our website! Beyond simply applying to volunteer opportunities posted by organizations, our Offers feature allows volunteers to make an offer of a skill, talent or time which will be promoted to organizations. Organizations interested in the volunteer offer can easily contact the volunteer through our website.