Students as Volunteers

Students as Volunteers

Students choose to volunteer for many reasons. They may be interested in exploring potential careers or building their resume, or giving back to the community by addressing an issue they are passionate about. There are several resources to consider for reaching out to students:

For ongoing volunteer opportunities:

• Volunteer Fairfax's College Link - program offers community organizations a place to list and tag opportunities for students.
• Connect Northern Virginia - This website, developed through leadership from Mason professor Alan Abramson, has a searchable database of every nonprofit organization in the area. 
• Mason Gives Back -This website is designed for students, faculty, staff, alum, student organizations, community organizations and departments to share any upcoming service projects or initiatives you have going on. This is a great way to promote both small and large scale service projects (ex: food drives, blood drives, food packaging events, clean up projects, philanthropic projects, etc.) Community Partners- To share a volunteer opportunity or position, please fill out this form and let us know if you have any additional questions. It may take us up to a week to post your positions. Please contact us at sail@gmu.edu with any questions or concerns you may have! 

For one-time events:

• Write a brief description of the opportunity for SAIL at sail@gmu.edu to post to it’s listserv, facebook and twitter accounts. Because college students utilize social media as regular forms of communication, this outreach is typically more effective than posting fliers.

Outreach to Special Student Populations

You may be interested in reaching out to student groups: fraternities, sororities or one of Mason’s 350 student clubs and organizations.  Mason’s Student Involvement website, http://si.gmu.edu, provides information about these organizations. For more information about Greek life, contact Phil McDaniel, Associate Director of Student Involvement  pmcdanie@gmu.edu. For outreach to student clubs, contact Amber Duffey, Assistant Director for Student Organizations and Governance aduffey3@gmu.edu

Students may come to you with motivations that differ from youth and adult volunteers. Taking some time to get to know their interest in your organization, their availability, particularly during exam time and school breaks, may be helpful as you consider how best to involve the student in your programs. Frequent feedback and recognition will help you retain students long-term.