The Center for Ethics, Governance, & Accountability

Discussions with numerous parents, school administrators, and students indicate that more colleges are beginning to look for the “well-rounded” student – not just the ones with the highest grades or the best SAT scores. Outside activities and essays are two areas in which prospective college applicants can distinguish themselves from the competition in the eyes of the college admissions officers. When submitting a college application, it is important to get noticed; volunteering for a community non-profit organization (NPO) may be the ideal solution.

And, volunteering could provide a true ‘Win-Win’ for the NPO and the volunteer.

Most non-profits I know have lost their ability to attract significant numbers of volunteers. I have not researched this issue, so I do not know precisely why; I only know that I hear a lot of executive directors complaining that they cannot find volunteers like they could years ago. My guess would be that there are so many different volunteer opportunities (the numbers of NPOs have increased dramatically over the past few years) that the pool of volunteers has too many choices and, therefore, the volunteer resources are spread too thin for most communities. In order to change this paradigm, the pool of volunteers must be increased.

This article provides an idea for revitalizing the high-level volunteer ranks within a community non-profit.

Accordingly, it is time for NPOs to move into ‘active recruitment’ for the volunteers they want and need. As with any endeavor, the benefits must accrue to both parties – the ‘Win-Win’ I mentioned earlier must be tangible. For the type of program that is envisioned, one cannot expect student volunteers to sign on for menial tasks that nobody else wants to do – instead, the project must come with a high level of excitement.

Competition for volunteers will continue, in my opinion, to be challenging. But, that’s okay: NPOs compete every day for resources and services; they can position themselves to be attractive to high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors (although students waiting until their senior year to volunteer will not likely have significant experiences with which to include on their college applications). Also, competition works both ways: the NPO could announce that it will accept, say, three volunteers and make it a community-wide competition for selection.

As with any new program, a volunteer initiative must clearly define the opportunities open to the student and the non-profit must do a good job of promoting the opportunity and delivering what it has promised. Meetings with guidance counselors at various high schools would be an excellent start. A program of this magnitude could well be chaired and staffed by interested board members, which serves the dual purpose of getting them involved in a specific aspect of the NPO. It would be hard to imagine that the inaugural year of the program would be anything other than successful; the challenge lies in creating a sustainable program over time.

It should be obvious that a “Student Volunteer Program” can be wildly successful.

What would the student volunteers do for the non-profit? Let’s consider the purpose of the program – to assist students in becoming competitive in their college applications – and make sure we know what NOT to do with the student volunteers.

Examples of non-starter activities include:

• taking tickets at events
• soliciting funds
• running errands
• providing secretarial or clerical support

These are not examples of activities that (even though essential) would entice student volunteers, nor do they provide a non-profit experience that can assist in the college application process. A poorly structured program will certainly fail; hence, the suggestion to make this a board committee elevates the program to the highest level within the leadership of the NPO.

If we think ahead – to the ultimate benefit of the non-profit organization – a long-standing, competitive, successful student volunteer program could ultimately carry community prestige and, perhaps, become noted by certain colleges and universities as a designator of top-notch students (like a “Rhodes Scholar” for example). In order to reach this level of success, the student volunteer program must:

• be designed well from the beginning
• provide the edge students need in the application process
• be sustained and improved over time.

(In this article, I will not provide a 1-2-3 process of creating the program; those steps should be obvious to creative thinkers and innovators. Also, it should be understood that a student volunteer program will intentionally differ from the non-profit’s general volunteer programs.)

We should think about the ultimate outcome of the volunteer experience for the student. The goal, as we have already defined it, is to provide an extra-curricular opportunity to participate in a meaningful community service. The specific assigned tasks must be broad enough to encourage individual creativity and thought and significant enough to provide the NPO with an outcome that it could not likely achieve except for the volunteer involvement. In order to accomplish this task – and to explain it well enough on a college application – at least two measures of success must be eventually achieved:

(1) students should be able to make a compelling argument (in a short paragraph and in an interview) as to why the volunteer experience was both personally rewarding and provided a significant contribution to the community

(2) outcomes of the student volunteer program should be significant enough to serve as the topic for the essay that must accompany most college applications.

Designing and introducing a student volunteer program will not be an easy project – nor should it be – because the non-profit seeks to provide the leadership for a ‘Win-Win’ proposition that must attract talented student volunteers. With so many high school students unable to gain employment of any type – either full-time during the summer break or part-time during the school year – and with so many non-profits unable to attract volunteers, the timing appears ideal to roll out a student volunteer program in your community.