Volunteer.gov: Discover volunteer opportunities around the country | Hacker News Reader

Volunteer.gov: Discover volunteer opportunities around the country

volunteer.gov

166 pointsKoftaBob101 comments

The thing about volunteer sites, the first one you visit can be impractical or worse, especially if it was placed in front of you.

If I search for->thru a half doz volunteer sites, I tend to find usable opportunities.

Case in point: americorps.gov. Enter zip code; go to the results page. Distance is 20mi. Results: 1-4 are four states away, 5-6 are virtual, 6 is seven states away. 8-9 duplicate Exchange Student hosting. 10-11 are nearby and look like what I'd expect.

Volunteerism is trust-based and confusing me at step 1 isn't the best way there.

habitat.org. My zipcode yields HFH offices (not build locations). None in my county. I imagine there's an (reasonable!) onboarding process beyond a background check. There are HFH stores that are closer; they prob have volunteers. It's not obvious on this page that there's somewhere I can click to find a FAQ or a splainer about different opportunities.

volunteermatch.org. This seems more inviting+useful. My zipcode gets me 2 dozen nearby opportunities with locations, informative headlines and brief descriptions. All right on the results page.

These were from the top results of a Kagi search. There are quite a few beyond that that look worth clicking into.

Anecdote: My wife has been in volunteer management for quite a while now, and in her multiple roles has used Volunteer Match. It’s a good platform, both for volunteers and organizers.

Pretty interesting to see the visceral and divided reactions in this comment thread. Some people are like, “that’s crazy” and others think, “I wish I had the time for that.”

I feel this is precisely the divide that would be worth bridging in the US. Spend some time knowing and loving nature, and you’ll realize that there are many people who would take these opportunities, and they’re not crazy, they just have a different perspective.

I wonder what other opinions people have that we think are “nuts” but are really just a different perspective?

Quite a few of these "opportunities" are asking a LOT of volunteers, implicitly asking for unpaid labor. These are not your typical "volunteer a few hours a week helping fix up a school/sorting at a food bank/helping the homeless" to give back to your community.

Look at this[1] particular ask:

> Applicants must be available to work a minimum of 32 hours per week.

> [minimum 3 month commitment with possibility to extend to a year] ... Weekend and holiday work is required.

> shovel snow for extended periods of time, hike-ski-snowshoe in extreme weather conditions with a 35-pound backpack at 7,000ft, live in remote locations with regularly snow packed roads.

> Groceries and shopping facilities are approximately 60 miles away; reliable personal transportation is required.

[1] https://www.volunteer.gov/s/volunteer-opportunity/a093d00000...

I think you missed out this part:

> Housing is included

You missed the last half of that sentence. It's a room, not a house, that you will be likely be sharing with someone else.

> room in a shared apartment or house.

The target audience of volunteers for this type of position are people that are probably used to happily sleeping in tents and eating camp food for days/weeks at a time. I don't think they'd mind.

guess it's a race to the bottom then

It’s for the self-selecting who see it as an experience, not a race.

Why would you expect it to be an entire house for one person? It's a volunteer position in a national park, not Jimmy Carters newest deal: homes for extremely introverted humans.

As somebody that's enjoyed many months living exclusively in hostels:

You're out of your mind. Homes should be a standard. That's like, one of the basic human wants/needs as an organism. And having the privacy of your own space is essential to the human psyche.

What?

Which part are you confused about? I like to have a lock on my door.

The part where you started comparing a private room in a shared house/apartment, with a hostel.

does that include food and drink?

healthcare too? and food and pension?

I don't know how it works across the pond, but in Britain, some amount of volunteer activity is allowed whilst officially unemployed. This means that the country contributes National Insurance payments on your behalf so that you'll be able to receive treatment by the National Health Service and a state pension.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/volunteering-and-claiming-benefi...

https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance-credits/eligibility

On this side of the pond unemployment is mostly 13-26 weeks of a fraction of the money you earned previously and requires you to be actively seeking and available for work. You can neither be volunteering nor pursuing education even if you are laid off and need training in another field.

In some particularly stingy places this is as little as the equivalent of 80 pounds per week whereas rent is oft closer to 800 pounds per month.

In many cases its something you receive later after weeks or months of bureaucratic wrangling after you would long ago have lost your housing if you didn't have any of your own money saved.

Hell we make sure you can't exploit the system by getting food stamps or housing help while going to college even if you are poor as a church mouse.

Heck we set the benefits threshold low enough that as you move from part time employment to full time employment the poorest households experience a hump where if you move to full time you may end up poorer than you started because you lose more benefits than you gain income. This is especially true if you go from free medical care to $500-$800 out of pocket.

Because most professions don't involve doubling your wages regularly one has to in effect agree to take on more work to climb into greater poverty in order to work your way out the other side IF increasing costs ever let you get ahead in the first place.

One of the most attractive ways OUT of permanent poverty is naturally a college education however this will almost certainly be by way of borrowing tens of thousands of dollars but since you don't qualify for benefits during your education and you need to keep eating and living inside you are liable to need to continue to work full time which creates a much higher chance of failure which stands to leave you without a degree with thousands of dollars of undischargable debt.

This concludes our tour of one of the shitty parts of America.

Thank you for the really detailed explanation! It sounds like a harsh system for those that don't have the right educational background. I think I can see now why some on this thread are so unhappy about US government organizations asking for volunteers when the welfare benefits are so restricted.

Where exactly are you drawing the line before using scare quotes around volunteering? Is 10 hours a week too much? Is requiring transportation too much? Would working at 5,000ft vs 7,000ft be ok?

For what it’s worth: if I were at a time in my life where I could do the linked opportunity, I absolutely would. Even better would be an Antarctica opportunity for a winter season.

Depends on the person, but requiring anything over 30 hours a week to me is part-time work commitment, and compensation is deserved

Then if I were you, I would absolutely not take any volunteer opportunities that don’t meet this criterion. Otherwise, in some cases these seem like amazing opportunities that pay in experiences much more valuable than money. Working at Crater Lake would be a dream come true for me.

I'm sure experience can pay my bills...

Since when is volunteering supposed to pay your bills??

Do bills stop existing because one chooses to volunteer? Volunteering is an economic decision every bit as impactful as a job.

> Do bills stop existing because one chooses to volunteer?

Bills don't stop existing because I choose to eat a watch a sunset, either, but I don't ask if watching a sunset is going to pay my bills. People obviously need a way to pay their bills, and lots of activities they might engage in aren't part of that. If you aren't in a position where you can do an activity because of what you need to do to pay your bills, than that activity clearly isn't for you, but unless you were personally and specifically solicited for that activity by someone who should have been aware of your personal circumstances, I don't see how that warrants anything besides "well, that's not for me".

Your circumstances aren't universal.

Imagine defending getting the equivalent of a full time job's work for free and acting like economics isn't still in play regardless of income level.

Take your socioeconomic bigotry and shove it up your priveleged ass.

No, it can't, but then, volunteering isn't a job, and its function isn't to pay your bills.

A particular volunteer opportunity may not be interesting to you, because of the time commitment and the opportunity cost of sacrificing paid work, or because you aren't interested in the particular area of volunteer work, or because you just aren't interested in donating labor in general, but... so what? The posting of the volunteer opportunity isn't a personal solicitation aimed at you, either.

This is a public forum, why are you so against a differing perspective that you go through two rounds of trying to essentially say there's only one way to think about it?

There are some things that are too much work for anyone to call it merely volunteering, and should be compensated. I don't care if you find that opinion acceptable.

Any labor deserves compensation. Volunteering is choosing to donate labor, not doing labor that doesn't deserve compensation. That's true if its 1 hour every other week or 40 hours a week, not a function of the time commitment.

IF and how much any given person is willing and, given their other circumstances, able to donate is, obviously, highly variable between people.

Some people may see the use of the word volunteering as virtue signaling, it depends on the audience. IMO, if you assist at the local blood bank during a donation drive after a disaster -- that's volunteering. If you are retired and/or rich and can afford to go do Antarctica to assist with research for three months as an essential role or not -- that's free labor.

A person living paycheck-to-paycheck may view the Antarctica opportunity as pompous, but environmental-club peers may view it as volunteering to save the planet and deserves a round of cheers with drinks in hand.

If I have a million dollars to donate to a charity, is not a donation nor an act of charity because most people don't have a million dollars to donate?

It's near certain that every person on HN is in the top 20% of intelligence in the world, and probably in the top 20% in their country. Are our actions and achievements less meaningful because we are lucky enough to be smart?

If someone has the ability to donate months of their life volunteering, I see no reason to diminish or demean their actions simply because I or other people couldn't do it.

somewhat similar to unpaid internships for adults who have finished an expensive 18 month MBA program? slightly worse?

I'd wager the volunteers are less annoying to be around.

Some of these postings are indeed asking a lot, but I don't think this specific one is that crazy. It's essentially an opportunity to live out in the wilderness and go hiking regularly, with free housing provided in exchange for maintenance and rescue work. I know a lot of outdoors enthusiasts that would love to do that. Hell, I know a lot of outdoors enthusiasts that would probably do it without the free housing, or even pay out of pocket to do it (see also: PCT or Appalachian Trail hikers).

not exactly what I'd describe as volunteering though.

yea thats more like barter

No. It’s a legal status that says you will perform work for a registered nonprofit and they will cover some of the costs you incur, but you will not come out materially/financially ahead.

I'm going to suggest a new term here - "context dissonance". This occurs when you see something, and because it doesn't apply to your context, you can't imagine it applying to any context.

For example, you use Linux, and can't understand why anyone would use Windows. Or you're a work-from-home fan and can't understand why some people want to work in an office, or why management might need it.

Or, as in thus case, if you work primarily for money the idea of a job that pays in something other than money seems exploiting.

Whereas, of course, there are lots of people who have enough money to meet their needs, and are instead looking for something else. Solitude, Community, Experience and so on.

I don't say this to be disrespectful at all, but part of maturing is in understanding that others can have a different point of view of things. We don't all have to be the same, with the same goals.

These are unpaid positions, with specific requirements and benefits. Clearly they don't sppareal to you and thats fine, but perhaps, just perhaps, there's someone out there this is perfect for.

I can’t do it right now (young family, work responsibilities) but if I’m fortunate enough to retire at a reasonable age and am in good health, I 100% plan on doing these extended volunteering opportunities with NPS or other similar more localized efforts.

There are so many things I complain about in the US but our national parks and the services that make them accessible are not one of them.

I truly believe capital E everyone benefits from spending time in nature, and want to find ways to support this however I can. I really appreciate the feelings I get after extended periods of time in the woods/mountains.

> "context dissonance"

I like that and think it fits here.

Some people can't imagine picking up litter or caring for the elderly as anything but torture and humiliation. For others, the chance to do it, to feel valued is what makes life. Context might be that you became unemployed and just got sick of seeing garbage in your street.

During the pandemic cabin fever drove me out to do volunteering at the church and vaccine drop-ins.

I volunteered a lot in my 20s. Homeless patrols handing out blankets etc. The typical "Kibbutznik" doesn't go to dig soil expecting it to be a picnic, but to satisfy a bunch of other drives. At a certain age you have a ton of energy, a desire to meet people, and the world you know seems too small.

Of course that's always a good recruitment chance for armies, but I was taken with William James' "Moral equivalent of war", at least the abstract ideas and insightful social psychology. There are thousands of environmental and rebuilding projects that need doing - but won't get done - because it falls outside the realm of "capital".

The problem is when profitable interests and corporate workflows intersect with altruistic labour supply. It's obvious the most cynical sort of exploitation is afoot. Many large organised charities suffer from being poisoned that way, I've heard.

I guess before volunteering for an org these days one should do a lot of diligence, check out who runs things, who they're associated with, and whose ethics are behind whet you see on face value.

There are some people for who this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

PSAR volunteers are also called Trailhead Stewards and people who care a lot about the environment and the health and safety of people flock to these positions. You get training, accommodation that is impossible to obtain otherwise, and experience. There is almost always a waiting list for trailhead stewards.

I’m a watershed steward so I spend a ludicrous number of hours poking around storm drains, parking lots, and streams, writing and giving presentations, compiling reports, and wrangling volunteers for cleanup and drainage projects all in exchange for $0.00.

I like sailing and swimming and fishing and I want my local rivers and bays to be clean. If I liked hiking in the mountains I’d probably be a trailhead steward.

Here’s a video with some psar volunteers: https://www.flickr.com/photos/grand_canyon_nps/51252679717/i...

steward definitely feels like a more appropriate term, seems awesome though. I don't mean to knock it

These full-time positions are fairly common at National Park Service (or other agency-managed) public lands, and are attractive to retirees. I was a paid (and housed) intern at one site, but I lived alongside three or four couples in their RVs. Some used it as a way to vacation, while for others it was more of a lifestyle, volunteering for four months at one location, then traveling for a couple months before volunteering at another location.

This feels like making something into a problem when it's not a problem. These are volunteer opportunities, no money is being offered and that's made very clear. People volunteer because they want to do something, or feel like it needs to be done. That's what volunteering is, that's the opportunity that's on the table, this website lists those opportunities.

Those last 2 are just business as usual for anybody who already lives in those area.

> Quite a few of these "opportunities" are asking a LOT of volunteers, implicitly asking for unpaid labor.

Its not implicit, "volunteer" is the word for a non-coerced unpaid laborer.

Don't worry about it, son; you're not the kind that the National Park Service nor Search and Rescue is looking for.

It's asking a lot because the vast majority of folks can't not work unless they also want to stop eating or become homeless after the end of the season not because they implicitly lack the commitment. It's also unpaid labor for a government with a 6 trillion dollar budget.

Most of the old folks retiring at 70 aren't doing any of these labor intensive affairs so its mostly a task for the idle children of the upper middle class to rich. Are we feting people for being born on third base again?

Most of the volunteer SAR people around me are still able to have full time jobs.

This posting isn't for SAR, which typically requires specialized skills and the time commitment is different. This is for _Preventative_ SAR aka PSAR, which basically means just being physically present on trails to give people guidance, direction, and education about how to not get into dangerous situations. The time commitment for PSAR can be greater.

Ah, you're looking for USA Jobs.gov.

https://www.usajobs.gov/

Isn’t asking for volunteers _explicitly_ asking for unpaid labor?

This is neat thing! Is there similar site for non-profit organizations or private sectors?

https://justserve.org if available in your area.

https://volunteermatch.org

This site has issues.

Why can't I search by Zip Code? Or by Remote?

For a non-profit, and a government site, the Accessibility scores are pretty low... just using WCAG scanners. This should be a flawless site.

They also claim "Volunteer.gov is committed to being in full compliance with the requirements of the American Disabilities Act..." but they aren't... there are at least 10 issues per page.

There should be multiple languages supported.

There's a post... "National Park Service 2024 COUPLES ONLY Opportunity" -- I'm not sure that's even legal.

There should be a way to post non-profits, maybe there is. Just feels like any non-profit should be able to use this to post needs.

I can't find any opportunities in Ausitn. Ok, we're just a small backwoods town.

There aren't like "profile pages" for non-profits, or real job posts... you click on a card to learn more, and all it shows you is a button "apply now" -- it's missing the page that tells you more about the job and more about the non-profit.

Ugh, anyway terrible UX. Curious how these people got funding for this... No thoughts were given to SEO, or usability, or growth... seems like it's destined to fail in the shape it's in.

> This should be a flawless site.

> Ugh, anyway terrible UX. Curious how these people got funding for this... No thoughts were given to SEO, or usability, or growth... seems like it's destined to fail in the shape it's in.

Perhaps you should volunteer to fix it?

If they had gone to any number of design agencies, they likely would have been happy to do this work right, pro bono. Given they don't seem to have any sort of request for assistance... sort of left taking pot shots from the sidelines. Someone got a grant, didn't know how to build a real website, and likely doesn't have the right staff put together to make it all work.

It should have been something like Volunteer Match or One Star... a way to network and do good.

https://www.volunteermatch.org/

https://onestarfoundation.org/

The idea has so much merit. But it's not being executed on correctly. They can reach out if they want suggestions. Happy to point them to design agencies or give strategy suggestions.

the (implied) social contract around volunteering is "everything" .. here in California I was bluntly told by my Japanese colleague "never volunteer, you are being taken advantage of"

true to his words, the only volunteer contact I got with that guy later was to be an usher at an exclusive dot-com event in San Francisco, pre-covid.. I did do it to hear the speakers, and lo-and-behold, the organizers mostly thought of the volunteers as worthless suckers.. you could see it. And, volunteers got the 'show up on time' authority talk from a typical hotel-worker-manager type, too! awful

Nice, didn't know about this.

Perhaps much smaller in scope, but justserve.org is a good one for finding service/volunteer opportunities in your local community

> JustServe.org is provided as a service by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

hmm...

Careful, you might accidentally interact with someone with different ideas than you!

Say what you will about Mormon/LDS religious beliefs, but I have never met anybody more selfless and pleasant when it comes to volunteering and caring for those in need. I've been a recipient of that kindness and co-participant in many volunteer activities with them, and not once felt like there was any attempt to push a belief on me other than "be kind to others". I probably wouldn't want to join them at church or read their literature other than as entertainment, but the individual people don't deserve all the hate that the church gets as a whole.

Do you have a specific allegation here or are you just casting aspersions because you don't like the LDS church?

A short response to the reactions your comment received:

I'm not sure why so many took your comment to be negative. It looks like a plug for that church.

I was disappointed to learn the nature of the volunteer.gov sight. I don't know why I expected different from a .gov url. It is obviously useful to know who is behind an effort. So your post added useful information.

I have used justserve.org to find opportunities to serve in my community. Most of the activities I joined didn't seem to benefit the church in any way beyond a rising tide lifting all boats. I jumped in because they looked like worthwhile activities that would just take a couple hours of my time.

So I took your posting as a bit of good will for an organization committing resources to a website that lets people of any stripe find opportunities to help other people of any stripe.

Warning to any mobile users: the site has an enormous banner image that is absolutely crawling over a high speed wired connection. I'm going to guess some idiot uploaded a high resolution PNG...

There's a general "search" field with no indication of how to search for a geographical area.

I did a search and everything that comes up are janitorial positions for the national park service. In what reality are people going to volunteer to scrub bathrooms for tourists?

> the country

Protip: the internet is available outside the US.

.gov is a US domain.

Domain for the government of the country

which is why the title should have been "discover volunteer opportunities around the US"

As a general rule, government websites tend to assume that if you're visiting them you understand that all information is directed at residents of the country the government is in charge of.

This is not limited to US entities: data.gov.uk purports to provide "data published by central government, local authorities and public bodies" without specifying which country it belongs to, yet I can't find my local information there!

Yeah my mistake, I should've said "around the US"

There's two opportunities open at Crater Lake that are literally full time jobs in search and rescue.

Preventative search and rescue, for at least one—which is the opposite of what you'd typically imagine "search and rescue" entails, and if effective, obviates the need.

It does require going on dangerous trails in inclement weather and it's a full time job. That was more my point. Seems like things that should be paid.

About page says sponsors are:

US Fish and Wildlife Service

Bureau of Land Management

US Forest Service

US Army Corp of Engineers

National Park Service

US Geological Survey

Worth mentioning https://justserve.org

Post a need or find one.

My state has 15 physical opportunities and 1 for data work. The closest physical option is 4 hours away.

https://codeforamerica.org/ might have more flexible, remote opportunities.

> We aren’t accepting new volunteers for this program at the moment. Please check back in early October for further updates.

There are few if any ways to do voluntary software development. At least not for a charity org. Few of them need software work and of those that do it's really hard to just bring in volunteers have them do something useful. Probably the best thing you can do is just work on useful open source.

These all appear to be full-time unpaid work? Like the expectations are incredibly joblike and the pay is free housing and a visitor's pass to all national parks.

They are volunteer opportunities, typically sought by folks who don't need an income (retirees, students, etc). If you're looking for paid work, there are alternatives:

https://www.usajobs.gov/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/climatecorps/

I wasn't expecting paid work, but I also wasn't expecting "come live in this cabin for several months while you work full time in a visitors bureau."

The map data entry opportunity that seems to be available in every state was closer to what I expected, some projects people could spend a few hours a week on in their hometown.

You can filter the opportunities to only show "Event" types (as opposed to "Position" types) which are things like one-off volunteer events like this one: https://www.volunteer.gov/s/volunteer-opportunity/a093d00000...

But in general, I agree with you. From what I can tell, even though this is just broadly called "volunteer.gov", it really seems like it's specific to the Bureau of Land Management/National Park Service, and is missing a large amount of types of positions that I think most people would expect when they think "go volunteer".

Old enough to recall a time when parks and museums were free of admission costs as was the parking? Congress in all its wisdom slashed those budgets but good over the last 4 decades and these job postings are symptomatic of these Bureau of Land Management/National Park Service fiscal funding revisions as well.

A family member works one of these jobs, so it’s probably my bias that this is reasonable. They love it and live off a military pension, getting to live in the wilderness (a national park near the Canadian border) and provide service to others who want to experience it.

There's really only two kinds of people I can see going for these. Those like your family member, with a steady revenue source and a desire to spend 40+ hours a week in a park anyway, and those hoping to leverage this into a paying gig.

This isn't a bad thing, just isn't what I expected when I saw this post.

There is some crazy stuff in these volunteer positions: https://www.volunteer.gov/s/volunteer-opportunity/a093d00000...

    Volunteers are expected to contribute a minimum of three 8-hour shifts per week (8:45AM-5:15PM) with a half hour lunch for a period of three to four months.
    
    Weekend availability is required.
    
    Consecutive days off are offered, except in unusual circumstances.

Days off are offered? lol

> Consecutive days off

"Consecutive days off" is much different than "days off"

Might not be all that crazy; people are often sentenced by courts to perform community service - perhaps related?

There's also apparently a volunteer -> actual employment process for national park service.

is there a site to students for volunteering hours or regular volunteering

salaried employees with health benefits and work rights are paid while building that site! so you can work for free! be sure to login with your cell phone.

Really? Why the hell should I volunteer to work for one of the richest governments in the world? What are they going for? The wealthy and bored housewives?

I have no issue with volunteering for non-profits to do things like food distribution and homeless shelters. But volunteering for the USG? HAH fuck you pay me.

We are the government. It's just people. The more rural and remote you get, the more this is true. There are countless volunteer search and rescue, firefighter, food distribution, etc in rural areas who volunteer to help because they want to improve and safeguard the community. This is the natural state of humanity, it just gets weird once you have enough people in one place that you need to make abstractions like 'government' instead of 'joe who has a snowmobile and does s&r for the town when needed'

That's not true. It's an organization made up of people, but is something distinctly different that individuals.

Again, I made a point to say I'm for actual volunteer work, but doing so for a organization with trillions of dollars not even accounted for is laughable. Joing a group for SaR is completely different than a job and not paid.

And, at the same time the federal government is begging for free labor, they're selling our national parks to Booze Allen Hamilton for $$$$$$ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37549569

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