10Oct

15 Benefits of Family Volunteering

Posted by HandsOn Network | Category: Family Volunteering | 1 Comment

Volunteering as a family provides a fun way for families to make memories together while making significant contributions to their communities.

It also teaches children the values of kindness and giving back, ideas which complement the gift giving season.

Family members use their talents to work on an issue they feel passionate about.

Serving together builds problem solving skills and strengthens communication within the whole family.

Volunteering together strengthens the family by promoting positive values, creating new opportunities to communicate and focusing on the importance of teamwork.
Volunteering as a family strengthens the community by encouraging people to get involved, and improving the community’s overall environmment—attracting new business, new people, new commitments and new ideas.
Family volunteering strengthens nonprofit organizations by increasing community awareness of important social needs and expanding the volunteer base.
Volunteering together makes family time valuable to both families and communities
Family volunteering can help to improve family communication.
Volunteering as a family teaches children values like kindness, empathy, respect, friendliness and tolerance.
Making family volunteer opportunities available provides opportunities for recruiting new populations, therefore increasing the pool of available volunteers.
Recruiting families to volunteer acts as a natural multiplier of volunteers. Recruitment of any one family member often acts as a catalyst for enlisting other family members.
Family volunteering garners media attention. Families involved in group projects are a media magnet.
Families that volunteer together have a built-in opportunity to reflect on what they did when they volunteered together!

The virtues of family volunteering

Family volunteering offers numerous advantages to the community through the unique way in which it provides services.

Family volunteering enables populations whose volunteering has been restrained by family care-giving obligations (either responsibilities to children or seniors) to become involved. As a “two for one” activity, family volunteering greatly increases the ability of time-depleted working families to engage in service. It is a true “minimum time, maximum benefit” system.
Family volunteering acts as a natural multiplier of volunteers, since recruitment of any one family member acts as a catalyst for enlisting other family members.
Involving families in projects is highly attractive to communities with relatively low rates of involvement in structure volunteer settings.
Family volunteering offers the opportunity for volunteers to take responsibility for identifying and addressing the needs of their community. Empowered family volunteers can directly work to solve their own needs and the needs of those around them.
Family volunteering may, in settings where establishing a personal relationship is an integral part of the helping function, provide a plus factor due to the unique nature of families.

Does your nonprofit offer opportunities for families to volunteer together? Do you volunteer with your family? Tell us about it in the comments!