The Benevity Community’s Big List of Volunteer Ideas

This is a list of volunteer ideas crowdsourced by your peers in the Benevity Community. Please continue to build this resource for one another by replying to this post with your own ideas!

Awareness Dates

We've added emojis to callout specific volunteer opportunities that align with key awareness days:

🌎 Earth Day (March)
♀ International Women's Day (March)
🐤 National Child & Youth Mental Health Day (May)
🌱 Mental Health Month + Week (May)
🍴Hunger Action Month (July)
🎗️ Veterans Day (September)
📘 International Literacy Day (September)
🌱 World Suicide Prevention Day (September)
🌱 Mental Illness Awareness Day + Week (October)
💞 World Cancer Day (November)
🐤 Universal Children’s Day (November)

In-Person Volunteering

• Kynd Kits by Project Helping - Volunteer projects in a box, find everything.
  you need to do a meaningful project for someone in need is delivered right to your door. 🌎
• Little Free Library Build - Be a catalyst for building community, inspiring readers, and expanding book access for all through a global network of volunteer-led Little Free Library book-exchange boxes. 📘
• Wine to Water - Filter Builds engage participants as volunteers in a meaningful, impactful team-building experience that leads to the empowerment of communities around the globe through the power of clean water. 🌎
• Clean the World - Assemble hygiene kits. 🌎
• Never Ever Give Up (Jessie Rees Foundation) - Make JoyJars for kids actively fighting cancer. 💞
• Foster Love - offers many opportunities to get involved through bike building, skateboard building, STEM kits, birthday boxes and duffle bags.
• Hospital Art - involves patients and volunteers worldwide to create colourful, soothing artwork donated to hospitals to help soften the often stressful hospital experience.
• The Pack Shack - Pack meals for neighbours in need in the US and around the world. 🍴
• [CHICAGO] Pack and Learn Care Projects - United Way of Metro Chicago🌎, Girls on the Run♀ 🐤
• [CHICAGO] Feed6 is a great food packing event they bring to your office.🍴
• [UK] Creating Adventures - the nonprofit helps mentally and physically disadvantaged adults in the community.
• [UK] Wheel for All - inclusive cycling
• Build-A-Kit Back 2 School America📘 🐤
• Rebuilding Together - repair & replace parts of homes instead of new builds. Cleaning up yards, re-building a fence or painting a house. Volunteers get to know home owner too and feel the impact they are having with their time.
• Hampton Roads Urban Agriculture - Community Farm that grows produce & donates back to food pantries or food banks. Allows a Family friendly activity where employees can bring their children and help to build structures, plant and paint rock gardens. 🌎
• A Better Life Foundation- provide a restaurant experience for those who can't afford it. Employees cook and serve. 🍴
• Rise Against Hunger - various initiatives to fight hunger. 🐤🍴
• The Happy Hope Foundation - help pack “Happy Hope Bags” 🐤
• Operation Homefront 🎗️

Volunteering for Remote Workers

• Clean Up - clean up kits and gear. Cause contact: donnaadam@cleanupgiveback.org. 🌎
• Kynd Kits by Project Helping - Volunteer projects in a box, find everything.
  you need to do a meaningful project for someone in need is delivered right to your door.
• Clean Planet Project - Self directed litter picking with opportunity to submit photos to see the cumulative impact. 🌎
• Cards for Hospitalized Kids - “We provided a table at a recent company happy hour to write letters and everyone loved it!” 💞
• Happy Hope Foundation - packing “Happy Hope Bags” 🐤
• Letters to Strangers - letter writing to support mental health 🌱

Virtual Volunteering

• Be My Eyes - help make the world more accessible for blind and low-vision people.
• MapSwipe - a tool that allows volunteers to swipe through satellite imagery and identify populated areas so that they can be mapped by humanitarian organizations.
• Smithsonian Transcription Center - By volunteering virtually with the Smithsonian Transcription Center, the community can help make Smithsonian collections more accessible by transcribing historic documents.
• The Cornell Lab's Citizen Science Projects- Hundreds of thousands of people around the world contribute bird observations to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology each year, gathering data on a scale once unimaginable. Scientists use these data to reveal how birds are affected by habitat loss, pollution, disease, climate, and other environmental changes and inform conservation plans and key actions to protect birds and habitats. There are multiple projects, most of which take just a few minutes a day. 🌎
• World's Largest Pet Walk Fundraising
• Kynd Kits by Project Helping - Volunteer projects in a box, find everything.
  you need to do a meaningful project for someone in need is delivered right to your door.
• Zooniverse- Zooniverse gives people of all ages and backgrounds the chance to participate in real research with over 50 active online citizen science projects.
• Love for our Elders- Make an elder smile today! Send a letter to an elder around the world.
• Soldier's Angels - Soldiers’ Angels has a wide range of virtual volunteer opportunities in all 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, and 24 countries abroad.🎗️
• Virtual read-athon - paired employees with students to read for an hour over Zoom. Created shifts over various timezones. 📘
• Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef (via WeHero)- Participants will help label tens of thousands of images brought back from hundreds of reefs across its 2,300km stretch. 🌎
• Points of Light - list of virtual volunteer opportunities.
• Lemontree - impact-focused team building events for new hire orientations, executive leadership conferences, and corporate service days for 25+ partners. They offer 1-hr virtual sessions where volunteers connect individuals/households directly with local pantries and food banks.🍴
• Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team - humanitarian action and community development through open digital mapping.
• Zero Waste - learning about how to eliminate waste 🌎
• Feeding America - food insecurity 🍴
• Step Up - Letter Writing vol-op to support young girls ♀📘
• Foster Love  🐤
• Fleece & Thank you  🐤
• MATTER - Matterbox Program 🍴🐤
• Project Glimmer ♀
• Learning Ally 🐤📘
• Project Sunshine  🐤💞
• Hands On Bay Area 
• Flowers for Ann  🎗️
• Operation Gratitude 🎗️
• No Child Hungry  🍴🐤
• Comfort Bears in a Catastrophe 🐤
• Blankets and Bear Hugs 🐤
• Happy Hope Foundation - packing “Happy Hope Bags” 🐤
• Letters to Strangers - letter writing to support mental health 🌱
• St.Jude Children’s Research Hospital - letter writing for children facing cancer 💞🐤

Low/No Budget Cost Options

• Dog Treats for Local Animal Shelters - employees get their own ingredients, one person hosts over zoom and plays chef for the day to direct everyone how to make dog treats and then organize how to get them to a local animal shelter.
• Dog and Cat Toys can also be made from old T-Shirts or rags in people's homes vs ordering the kits to make them.
• Operation Gratitude- letter writing to troops 🎗️
• Letters Against Isolation for Seniors - has lower cost kits (about $3 per) 🎗️
• Classroom Central - Teachers can shop but you can also provide encouraging notes. Also can help with flashcards. 📘 🐤
• Story Pirates - about $1k estimated. Employees go online to read stories written by kids and then they all write encouraging notes for the children to continue writing. 📘 🐤
• Cardz for Kidz 📘 🐤
• Brighten A Day - nonprofit dedicated to combating isolation and spreading joy through simple actions. https://www.brighten-a-day.org/volunteer/
• Library of Congress - help transcribe Library of Congress documents 📘

Environmental Opportunities

• Project Bee - STEM and Science specifically - it's a ship to home & virtual workshop 🌎
• Project Helping - has environmental kit 🌎
• Beach clean-ups offered through aquariums 🌎
• Planting Trees
• Taking out the Digital Trash - clearing out inbox / cloud / hard drive to reduce carbon footprint. 🌎
• Environmental lunch and learns - Leave no Trace in Colorado went over the 7 principles of leaving no trace and how to be a great steward of the environment. 🌎
• Ecochallenge.org - they create online challenges to build sustainable habits and they also host virtual discussion groups tied to reading material around sustainability. Different than traditional volunteering, but a great way to engage many employees with little cost. 🌎

Acts of Goodness

• Buy items from Amazon and create kits for local groups
• Trash Talk! - simply pick up trash in your local area while listening to a meeting or connect with a co-worker to catch up and pick up trash around your office.

Volunteer Partners

• Give to Get - provides a number of volunteering solutions for virtual, in-person and events
• Impact 4 Good
• Visit.org
• Goodera
• WeHero
• MatterBox- (US only) offers in-person, hybrid or virtual opportunities
• Pack and Learn Care Projects (United Way)
• Give a Hand
• Taproot for Skills based Vol Ops - connects volunteers with nonprofits to share their professional skills and expertise.