Should You Volunteer While You’re in School

Are you thinking about volunteering while you’re in school? You definitely should! There is a world of opportunities available to you in volunteering, yet college students don’t do it nearly as much as they should. They don’t like going after things that don’t yield a paycheck. Take our advice — you have your whole life to chase a paycheck. There may be times down the road where you don’t have a choice but to go after the paycheck part. You will have a family that needs your attentions, so you can’t just assume that you can jump off at any time to go volunteer somewhere.

Volunteering is experience, and people are just lining up to give it to you. They’re lining up to help you. They’re lining up to see exactly what they can help you with. They only ask that you’re truly passionate about working with them. Someone in the engineering world might not think about going for a charity like Habitat for Humanity (US based but there are some international outreaches), but it makes a difference. Someone else might want to go work with Bliss UK, especially if they plan on going into the medical field. Fighting for a better life for your fellow humans can get you noticed, in a lot of interesting ways.

What you’re going to have to figure out from here is to think about where you want to volunteer. You also want to make sure that you’re set up already to take full advantage of the experience.

Having your own website is downright necessary for college students. Don’t go with the domain that the college gives you as a little offshoot of their own. You want to have your own brand that’s outside of the school. If you ever transfer schools, you won’t be able to just get the traffic to follow you. It makes a lot more sense to build a permanent home for yourself online. This is where you can basically control your own media and piggyback off the media that the charity has already received. You need to figure out where and when you are getting involved.

Posting the details of your charity projects is a good idea. Including pictures is even better. Photographs capture the excitement of each and every event that you do.

You might not think about it from this perspective, but future employers are watching your page and even studying what you’re doing and how it’s working for you. In this modern era, it’s all about being ahead of the curve.

Don’t take this for granted or give up on it just because it might seem like a lot of work that isn’t going to pay off. It’s going to be up to you to figure out what you’re doing, and how it’s going to really connect itself together in a lot of ways. Be focused, be consistent, and make sure that you treat the charity favorably. If you’re going to commit to it, treat it like a job. Show up early. Get to know people. Follow up wisely. And don’t forget to work hard for the cause!