What are examples of volunteer work

Opportunities and examples of volunteerism exist all around you. National, international, and local volunteer experiences turn small acts into a big impact.

If you are a credentialed professional, look for an opportunity to share your abilities and skills with others as a form of giving back to the community.

Consider donating your time or expertise to help ensure medical needs are met in your neighborhood or around the world. Services include everything from helping at a flu shot clinic to providing annual physicals.

Places you can look for volunteer opportunities in the medical field include:

The hospital where you have privileges
A medical charity such as Doctors Without Borders
A local health clinic
Local scout troops or similar organizations
Disaster relief organizations

Certified teachers and trained child caregivers can extend their reach to at-risk youth or disadvantaged populations by:

Running an after school program
Tutoring at a local library or kid's club
Providing classes in a disadvantaged area
Working overseas teaching English and literacy

Use your professional training to help others pro bono or volunteer with an organization, like the American Red Cross, which will train you in the necessary skills.

Accountants and finance professionals can volunteer with government programs like the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) programs where under-served communities get free help filing their taxes.
Help children and adults with life-threatening illnesses and low incomes get to specialist appointments by using your skills as a licensed pilot to fly for organizations like Wings Flights of Hope.
Hairdressers and barbers can offer free haircuts to the homeless or low-income families on a monthly or quarterly basis.
Join the volunteer-run board for a local nonprofit or school to put your executive leadership skills into action for a good cause.
Event planners can choose one annual nonprofit event fundraiser to donate their organizational and networking talents to.
Animal shelters find professional photographs help animals find homes faster, so professionals in this field can volunteer to take animal portraits on a regular basis.

The best ways to find your ideal volunteer opportunity are to check with large, popular organizations dedicated to a field you're interested in or look around your neighborhood to find local examples of volunteerism.

Whether it's Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Earth Scouts, or something in between, scouting organizations are run almost entirely by volunteers. Programming provided by scouts include both indoor and outdoor experiences.

Organizations like the Boys and Girls Club of America rely on volunteer mentors, coaches, and tutors to provide many of their youth services. Specific programs vary by location, so contact the club nearest to you and find out what kind of help they need.

The Red Cross is purportedly the largest volunteer organization in the United States. Not only do they provide opportunities to train people in life saving techniques, they also respond to natural disasters and provide emergency relief in the US and abroad.

You can visit residents in the nursing home, cuddle preemies, or volunteer to play games with children who are in the hospital for lengthy stays. Programs vary from hospital to hospital, but if you have a great idea, run it by the volunteer coordinator.

Help stock shelves and dole out dinners to low-income individuals at the local soup kitchen. If you're a great cook, you can help make the meals for weekly in-house dinners. If you're just great at talking with and serving others, you can help people grab their allotted pantry staples.

Active volunteers take dogs for long walks to get them exercise and teach them proper walking behaviors before they head off to their new home. Volunteers also clean cages, greet customers, and transport animals to and from the local veterinarian.

If you're not sure where to start, there are a lot of opportunities listed in searchable databases.

Volunteer Match.org allows you to input your location and a keyword to find a good match.
If you love being outdoors Volunteer.Gov is a searchable database of opportunities pertaining to caring for national parks and forests.
The Peace Corps not only has the benefit of having been around forever, but you can also volunteer and get part of your federal college loans canceled.

Next time you head out to a community event or take a walk through town, think about how many volunteers provide services in your area. Consider your unique set of skills and see where you fit in as a volunteer.

Posted July 11, 2018

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There are many ways to help and volunteer. You can provide manual labor or mentor someone. You can sell, plan, organize, manage, or even entertain. There are volunteer jobs that you do for a few weeks or even just for a day. On the other hand, long-term jobs like advocacy work can span a lifetime. All of these admirable tasks fall into five general categories:

Formal volunteering programs are structured and supervised. These are long term programs that also involve sustained, regular attendance from the volunteers. These programs usually have managers or coordinators that recruit, train, supervise and check volunteers’ work outcomes. There is an emphasis on policies, procedures and quality management of services being delivered.
Example positions: Tour guide or docent, hospital volunteer, or fundraiser for large charities.
Sample activities: Greeting visitors, giving directions, serving meals to patients, printing out and mailing letters.
See current volunteer opportunities at the Canadian Red Cross (Emergency Responders).
Volunteers in governance work provide leadership and direction to an organization. They help in the planning and decision-making involved in an organization’s operations. Those who fit this type of work usually have career experience or advocacy related to the organization’s main focus.
Example positions: Member of the Board of Directors of a not-for-profit, member of a parish administration board, treasurer for the PTA
Sample activities: attending regular meetings, taking minutes of the meeting, basic accounting.
Interested in serving as a Board Member of a not-for-profit? Check volunteer opportunities in the settlement sector at Manitoba Association of Newcomer Serving Organizations (MANSO).
Non-formal volunteer work is different from informal volunteer work. Non-formal volunteer work is usually done in local communities in unfunded and unstructured settings. Informal volunteer work, on the other hand, are voluntary acts of helping and kindness (like buying a neighbour’s groceries or babysitting for a friend). Those who join non-formal programs often think of themselves as members or friends rather than volunteers.
Example positions: Guest instructor, member of a neighbourhood safety patrol or street clean-up.
Sample activities: Teaching arts and crafts, walking with a group around the neighbourhood to keep it safe, picking up trash.
Use the Help Next Door MB platform to connect with those who are unable to leave their homes (elderly, disabled, vulnerable) to help them with errands like grocery shopping, picking up medication, or emergency snow clearing and others.
Social action volunteers are joined together by common advocacy or goal. Like non-formal volunteers, they regard each other as friends or comrades. A social action volunteer program can have structure, for example having a coordinator or leader, but some do not. Volunteers do not usually have regular hours of volunteer time. But volunteers make up for it since they are usually very passionate and motivated about the cause and work hard towards achieving specific social change.
Example positions: : lobbyist for political groups, campaigner for environmentalism, advocate for research/studies on a certain illness or disease.
Sample activities: Attending rallies, talking to people about issues, making placards, gathering signatures, making phone calls.
Check out Greenpeace Winnipeg’s activities and sign up to volunteer.
In this type of volunteer work, volunteers provide their services for projects that have defined time frames. This requires volunteers to have specific skills to contribute. They follow clearly defined goals to be delivered at defined schedules. Project-based work can exist within a formal program or can be a standalone project. It can have leaders or coordinators but they are not expected to manage the volunteers.
Example positions:Folklorama volunteer, member of a committee planning the anniversary of your town
Sample activities: Welcoming visitors, drafting a communications plan, soliciting advertisers for a commemorative book, organizing a drive
Ask how you can get involved in a project for the Oak Table.

Other types:

You may have heard of internship year or gap year volunteering and voluntourism. These types of volunteer work are usually for students or young people who want to experience working for a non-profit or an Non Government Organization. More often than not, these are carried out overseas. Volunteers are expected to work within a specific period. They have the opportunity to experience local culture while providing services like teaching a language or assisting the organization in various tasks.

With recent technological advances, online volunteering and micro volunteering have become common. Online volunteering work can range from mentoring to counselling certain groups of people. It can also use the telephone like the 1:1 Peer support Program which helps individuals living with MS and for loved ones of people with MS. For more virtual volunteering opportunities all over Canada, go to Volunteer Canada.

Meanwhile, micro-volunteering consists of small actions done online that support a cause. Examples are donating through crowdfunding sites (Kickstarter, GoFundMe, etc.) or joining campaigns by providing your digital signature (example: Open Letters to the government on various issues from ONE) via email. These types of volunteering provide opportunities to those who have no time, unable to be physically present, housebound, or are in far off places. This shows that as long as you’re willing to help, you can get involved.

Article updated October 27, 2020.

Sources: Types of volunteering, Volunteering Queensland; The five types of volunteer programs and how to pick the right one, Steph Dyson, Go Overseas; and 5 different types of volunteering activities, Volunteer Weekly. Retrieved July 5, 2018.

There are many volunteer opportunities in Manitoba. Here are some of them:

*recruitment for some of these opportunities may have a deadline. Click on the name of the organization to check for other volunteer opportunities.

Go to Volunteer Manitoba for other volunteer opportunities. Key in your preferences in the search options or scroll down to the bottom of the page for a complete list.

Check your community center’s bulletin board for volunteer opportunities. Your child’s school is also a good source of volunteer positions you can consider.

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