The holidays are a time of family bonding, reflection and the occasional extra helping of dessert. A time of year that brings together so many of the values and virtues of volunteerism. With so many ways to get involved, how can schools, nonprofits and companies encourage seasonal volunteering?
Promote the Benefits of Volunteering
Whether it is morning announcements on campus or an all company email, promoting the benefits of volunteerism can be a great way to create active seasonal volunteers. Here are a few special reasons to highlight for the holidays.
Work Off Dessert
Who doesn’t love an extra helping of dessert at Thanksgiving? Then an extra helping the day after? And someone has to test the cookies before they go to the office party. Oprah.com reports volunteering can help you Burn Calories While Racking Up Karma Points!
Embrace Togetherness
Volunteering is a great way to embrace family togetherness. Family volunteer opportunities can focus on family virtues like volunteering at the local food pantry. Seasonal volunteering is an incredible way to bring families together, teach the virtues of giving back and still provide a mental break from some awkward holiday conversations.
Spread Holiday Cheer
Caroling is a great option for those with great voices but volunteering is available to everyone! Plus, the holidays can be an especially lonely time for people who are home bound or do not have love ones to share the season. Volunteering can be especially impactful during the holiday season.
Make it Easy to Find Meaningful Opportunities
Volunteering starts with a drive to give time. It often ends when the potential volunteer is discouraged by not knowing where to get involved. Here are a few ideas to make it easy for your volunteers and their families to find seasonal volunteer opportunities.
Embrace National Movements
Giving Tuesday is not just about money. GivingTuesday.org has special features to encourage volunteerism. Volunteers can leverage these free resources from GivingTuesday.org to find seasonal volunteer opportunities near me.
Leverage Expert Sites
No need to recreate the wheel! VolunteerMatch.org has 4.5 million volunteer opportunities across the country. Students, employees and families can narrow down community service opportunities by location, age appropriateness, cause areas and more.
Show How Volunteering Can Happen at Home
There are so many lessons that are gained from walking onto a volunteer site. But for families choosing to involve elderly family members or young children, here are a few great examples of volunteering from home.
Volunteering over the holidays can be a great way to reconnect with the community, re-charge the batteries and return to the classroom/office ready for a new year. And don’t forget to have your seasonal volunteers submit their hours for service learning or corporate social responsibility reporting. If that is a challenge for your organization, please reach out to learn how MobileServe makes the process of volunteer hour management easy.
