Are you still looking for ideas for volunteer opportunities that you and your family can share tomorrow for family volunteer day? Why not try one of these?
- Organize a one-day adoption fair with your local animal shelter at a convenient in-town location.
- Collect pet food, rags, newspapers, pet toys, washable plastic pet carriers, paper towels, old towels and blankets for your local shelter.
- Collect money for the training of Seeing Eye dogs and shelter dogs. Make an educational flyer to give to donors about these special animals.
- Make homemade dog biscuits and sell to earn money for an agency that rescues animals.
- Build a dog park on a vacant piece of town land (with permission).
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Organize a musical instrument drive and donate the instruments to a local school or community center.
- Collect art supplies for kids in shelters or hospitals.
- Make coloring books from downloadable web pages and spend a morning coloring or making a mural with homeless kids.
- Help newly arrived immigrant children and their families celebrate their “First Thanksgiving” by collecting food, kitchen supplies, toiletries, clothing, school supplies, and toys.
- Make backpacks of school supplies or toiletries for children and teens in foster care.
- Start a holiday collection of NEW toys for organizations that distribute gifts to children of incarcerated parents.
- Organize a collection of prom dresses and accessories for homecomings and proms.
- Spiff up children’s rooms at a group home with new pillows and comforters and a coat of paint.
- Clean up neighborhood streets, a playground, a beach, or a community garden.
- Clean and paint a family housing shelter or community center.
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Build barbecue pits, picnic tables or trails at local parks.
- Participate in a brush-clearing hiking trip to help keep park trails in good condition.
- Buy or collect donated sports equipment for low-income schools, shelters, after school programs, park and recreation programs.
- Coordinate a healthy snack food drive for children in shelters or low-income after-school programs.
- Organize a dance or a sock hop. Make the admission a pair of new socks or a healthy snack to give to a shelter.
- Collect food for your local soup kitchen or food pantry.
- Collect new sneakers, pajamas, underwear and socks, cleaning and paper items or whatever is needed most on your local shelter’s wish list.
- Decorate the dining hall or common area at a shelter for the holidays; make centerpieces, bring fresh flowers and fresh fruit and vegetables.
- Collect books for low-income schools or after-school tutoring programs.
- Donate funds or purchase new books to an underserved school or library
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- Create a family story hour and read to children in your neighborhood or to residents of a senior home or group home. If possible, leave the books with the residents.
- Volunteer with a local literacy council to help people learn to read.
- Partner with another family to repair or paint the home of an elderly couple or a needy family.
- Make cards or a simple crafts and bring to a local nursing home for them to put on their dinner trays.
- Play bingo, sing songs or host a birthday party for nursing home residents.
- Visit a veteran’s home or senior residence, offer to interview them about their lives, take pictures of them and post on a bulletin board in a common area.
- Make meals or buy groceries for a local Ronald McDonald House or Fisher House, homes that support families while their loved ones are being treated in hospitals.
- Collect phone cards, new stuffed animals, dolls and toys for chronically ill children in hospitals.
- Assemble activity kits for kids in hospitals.
- Organize a “quilting bee” – make simple warm and cuddly quilts for sick babies or children.
- Buy tickets for a local sporting event (minor leagues) for children in-group homes or families in shelters.
- Organize a sports and sporting equipment tag sale. Use the funds to install basketball hoops or playground equipment for shelters or group homes or neighborhood parks.
- Turn a vacant piece of land into a baseball or soccer field.
- Volunteer with your local Special Olympics committee or at a Special Olympics event.
- Organize a “celebrity game” in your town – i.e. a local radio station squares off with teachers to raise funds for a local need or to improve sporting facilities in your town.
Do you have plans for Family Volunteer Day? Tell us about them in the comments!
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- 7 Ideas for Volunteering With Your Kids
- 8 More Ideas for Volunteering With Your Kids
- 6 Ideas for Volunteering and Having an Impact as a Family
Find out what’s expected. It’s a good idea to do a little bit of homework before your family’s first volunteer event. Ask the Volunteer Manager what the age requirements are for the project, what appropriate dress looks like, how to be safe, or any other questions you might have before volunteering. If the organization you’re volunteering with has an orientation program, try to make sure that everyone in your family can attend the orientation.
Take time to reflect on your accomplishments. Taking the time to talk about what you did as a family after volunteering makes the experience more real. Take some time to talk about what you did, why you did it, how you felt and what you learned. It doesn’t have to be just on the drive home! Use this as an opportunity to add to the tradition. Have the conversation about volunteering as part of a special treat.
Volunteering as a family is a great way for families to spend time together. Just think, if one person can change the world, what can your whole family do? We’ve got some ideas about how your whole family can start changing the world!
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.
During the summer, families tend to have more time together. Children are on summer break and parents are planning vacations. If volunteering as a family is part of your summer plans, here are ten tips to make volunteering as a family more fun!
Celebrate! What a great achievement! Awesome! You just volunteered together! Take some time to do something special together as a family! Take a walk together, have an ice cream, or make a special meal. It doesn’t matter if you volunteered for an hour or a whole day, celebrate together!
