It’s hard to think of a time when volunteering wasn’t part of my life. There were regular volunteer opportunities at church as a child, I did service work in high school for academic organizations, and I volunteered as an intern for various organizations in college. I had the time and capabilities, so why not? I found (and still find) it educational, enriching, and necessary.

Nonprofit organizations regularly count on volunteers to accomplish their mission, and it’s easy to see the impact the work has on the people they help and the community around them.

I hope this post encourages you to start a regular volunteer routine by giving you some recommendations.

Why Volunteer?

These are the places we live, work, and play. These are our neighbors. It’s my duty as a member of my community, and it’s an honor to be able to give my time and energy to help others in my community and to help create a community where we can all thrive. Can you imagine a place where people are fed, supported, and living their best lives? Or an environment that is clean and healthy? 

These are some of the ways volunteering has a deep impact. By volunteering, you:

• Change lives in your community
• Support the growth and wellness of your community
• Improve your mental and physical health
• Gain new skills and experiences
• Support conservation efforts
• Build social connections
• Create ripples for future generations

Volunteer at These Austin Non-Profits

A fraction of the 700+ nonprofit organizations in the Austin area are featured in this post. These are places I’ve volunteered before or am familiar with.

*Sometimes the volunteer task doesn’t have you working directly with those the organization aids. For example, you may end up painting an office or organizing a room. Tasks vary, and finding one that matches your interests and capabilities takes a little effort!

If you want to: help our outdoor spaces thrive by working in the dirt

• Austin Parks Foundation
• Green Corn Project
• Festival Beach Food Forest
• Keep Austin Beautiful
• Treefolks
• Urban Roots
• Waterloo Greenway Conservancy

Looking for ways to help animals

• Austin Animal Center
• Austin Humane Society
• Austin Pets Alive!
• Austin Wildlife Rescue
• Safe in Austin – rescues animals who suffer from abuse or neglect and introduces them to people with similar backgrounds

If you want to: support the well-being of your neighbors

• Austin Marathon, Cap10K, Spurs Austin International Half – support runners as they go through race day (these are 3 of the biggest races in Austin)
• Austin Creative Reuse – promotes conservation and reuse by selling gently-used creative materials
• Casa Marianella – provides shelter and support to displaced immigrants and asylum seekers
• Central Texas Food Bank – largest hunger relief charity in Central Texas
• Community First! Village – provides affordable, permanent housing to formerly unhoused neighbors
• Heartening – puts clothing back into the community as cheaply and efficiently as possible
• Meals on Wheels – provides meals and services to older adults and people with disabilities
• Mobile Loaves & Fishes – provides food, clothing, and other life-sustaining items to the homeless 

Opportunities to support kids in Austin

• BookSpring – ignites the love of reading and builds literacy skills in kids
• Center for Child Protection – reduces trauma for children during the investigation and prosecution of crimes against children
• GirlForward – serves girls in grades 9-12 who identify as refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers
• Girlstart – empowers girls in grades 4-8 in STEM
• HopeAustin – provides food security

How to Start Volunteering

First, narrow down what type of organization would be a fit for you.

What do you enjoy doing?

• Would you rather be inside or outside? Do you want to be around people or animals?

What causes are you passionate about?

• The above list gives you an idea of the causes – environment, animals, education, homelessness, senior adults, and basic needs (like hunger).

How much time can you commit?

• Some volunteer programs are more in-depth, with an orientation session and a minimum hour requirement. Consistency is very helpful for organizations to plan. Once a month is a great place to start!

Explore 700+ nonprofits in Austin/Central Texas on AmplifyATX.org. Here you can view organizations by their cause category. Consider the organization’s location relative to your home to help with consistency.

I volunteer every 2nd Saturday with Volunteering Untapped (VU). It’s a good organization if you just want to get started. We volunteer with a different organization every month, so it’s an opportunity to have variety and to learn more about an organization before becoming a regular volunteer. VU also focuses on community and encourages volunteers to join in their social time (“volunbeering”) after the event. Learn more on the website.

Need more volunteer ideas? Check out this post about food-related volunteer opportunities.

The post Where to Volunteer in Austin appeared first on Fearless Captivations.

I put together this list to give myself some volunteer options and I look forward to joining in the fun. I encourage you to sign up and give back, too.

If you’re unable to support an organization immediately, I encourage you to sign up for their emails and follow them on social so you stay informed. You never know when an opportunity will find you.

Volunteer for These Austin Organizations

Bake A Wish

This organization creates birthday magic with the help of volunteers. They support Austin-area organizations serving children, the elderly, and the disabled by donating birthday cakes. If you like to bake, this one is for you!

Capital Area Food Bank of Texas

Capital Area Food Bank of Texas provides about 26 million meals every year. Volunteers sort donations in their warehouse, interact with the organization’s clients through the mobile food pantries and educate families about healthier eating options.

Farmshare Austin

Get your hands dirty! Farmshare Austin is educating those who want to learn about farming practices and techniques. As a volunteer, you’ll be right alongside them on the farm, harvesting, washing, and packing produce.

Generation Serve

Have kids? Teach them about giving back with the organization Generation Serve. The nonprofit facilitates volunteer opportunities for families. Ages 3 and up can learn about gardening, cooking, and organizing, depending on the volunteer task you choose.

Good Work Austin

This organization supports local small businesses while feeding the community. Their programs include educating restaurant workers and paying businesses to provide meals to the community. While there aren’t volunteer opportunities with the public, they take donations.

Keep Austin Fed

Keep Austin Fed serves the community by redistributing food to those who need it. On average, 30% of food in the U.S. goes uneaten while people go hungry. Volunteers are food runners who pick up excess food from businesses like grocery stores and restaurants and take them to partner organizations.

Sustainable Food Center

The Sustainable Food Center aims to transform the food system by supporting local farmers, increasing food access, and more. You can support them by donating money or hosting your own fundraising event.

Texas Food & Wine Alliance

This nonprofit is focused on fostering awareness and innovation in our culinary community. They host several foodie and educational events every year, which require the help of friendly faces to make a success.

Urban Roots

Urban Roots transforms the lives of young people by teaching them about food and farming. While young people have hands-on experience in the farms, volunteers are needed to interact with the young people and help with the farm tasks.

I hope this list inspires you to give back to your community!

The post Food-Related Volunteer Opportunities in Austin, Texas appeared first on Fearless Captivations.

Photo used with permission from Johnson’s Backyard Garden. Photo taken by Scott David Gordon Photography.

When I was a kid, our church brought my family Christmas gifts every year. While my siblings and I were born in Dallas, my parents are immigrants and we joined a church in our neighborhood as a way to learn and improve our English. We got on a list somehow and I have sweet memories of this couple from our church delivering wrapped presents – one for each of us kids plus a Disney movie for the family. The gifts were the fanciest and coolest I got as a kid and we were always excited to watch a new Disney movie as a family.

Growing up, volunteer work was a natural part of church and service organizations at school. I went on week-long mission trips, was a camp counselor, feed the homeless, organized food drives, and more. Whether it was the desire to pay it forward or the influences around me, giving back was an integral part of my childhood. Looking back, I’m touched that a community would provide the funds and time to make sure we had a memorable Christmas. (This is also why I never thought Santa was real because “Santa” was the sweet couple from church. HA!) When I come back to my values and the purpose of living, the need to help others always seems to be one of the most important things.

Compassion is providing for someone because the person in need could have been you if the cards were dealt differently. When you have the privilege of having more than enough, why not give a hand to someone who doesn’t? There is always need, and there are opportunities to give back everywhere, all the time, and in multiple ways. I hope this post will give you some ideas to make a commitment to improve your community and contribute to the betterment of the world.

What Kinds of Non-Profit Organizations?

It starts with passion, even a little bit. Who do you want to help and what causes do you care about? People come to support a non-profit or cause in multiple ways.

• Maybe you know someone who needed the help of a non-profit or you experienced the need first-hand and wanted to find a way to help. For me, scuba diving opened up the underwater world for me and made me aware of the great need to conserve our oceans. Others I know had a family member who fought cancer and continue to fight for research and a cure.
• Maybe you experienced something in your life and you want to give others a chance at the experience. Reading and access to books were a constant for me growing up so non-profits providing books are near and dear to my heart.
• Maybe you’ve always had a favorite hobby or skill and you have the opportunity to share it to help someone.

Here are some categories of non-profits and examples of organizations.

Animal care and services

• Helping animals get adopted from shelters
• Rescuing and adopting a particular breed of dog
• Saving the bees
• Providing animals to help humans physically or emotionally

Environment

• Conserving our earth, specifically forests, national parks, oceans, and animals

Education

• Building schools
• Supporting teachers
• Providing uniforms or school supplies for kids in need
• Providing educational opportunities for low-income kids
• Fostering special interests like astronomy, reading, writing, or technology
• Supporting kids to get them into and through college

Health Care

• Providing access to healthcare and health education
• Supporting veteran health and rehabilitation
• Helping low-income kids dream bigger by giving them a support system and opportunities: reading, mentors
• Supporting those affected by a particular disease

Basic Needs

• Helping refugees and immigrants re-build their lives
• Helping low-income people with basic needs such as food, clothes, and toiletries
• Helping abused women re-build their lives
• Supporting efforts to provide clean water for all

Arts & Culture

• Supporting theaters, art programs, musical groups
• Supporting education for the arts and creative endeavors
• Supporting public art

Sports and Recreation

• Introducing kids to a particular sport or activity to help the other areas of their life
• Providing sports opportunities for low-income kids and families

Community

• Supporting a shared interest for a particular need
• Ending sex slavery
• Fighting for women’s rights
• Creating and providing programs for self-development

These are a few examples. If there’s a need and a passion, there is an organization helping. There are so many non-profits working to make the world a better place and improve the lives of those around them. Which will you support?

Six Opportunities to Give Back

How can you give? It can be as quick and easy as donating money to a cause online to a years-long commitment of in-person interaction every month. I think a combination of monetary donations and volunteering makes it more meaningful for a donor. When you’re working in-person or raising money, you have hands-on experience connecting deeper with a cause that means a lot to you.

1. Hands-on Volunteer
If you want to donate a few hours of your time, the hours add up to a whole lot of change. All of it makes an impact!

• Skills/Office Work: Some non-profits are so small they don’t have a staff member for tasks like marketing or need extra hands for data entry or answering phones. If you want hands-on work that is indirectly helping the people the organization serves, this is a great option.
• Advocacy Work: I haven’t done this myself, but sometimes non-profits need hands and voices to appeal to government. This could mean contacting and meeting with politicians, showing up at city hall, and working at events.
• Working with Beneficiaries: This volunteer work can be the toughest yet clearest way to see how your work helps others. It may involve paperwork and background checks before you start, but work such as mentoring low-income high school students, helping an immigrant family settle into their new home, and talking to folks at the nursing home is worth the time if you want to invest time into the cause long-term. I recommend being a part of Big Brothers Big Sisters!
• Manual Labor: This includes volunteer work that doesn’t involve a particular skill. From painting a house or pulling weeds at a farm to sorting items at a food bank, working with your hands can be hard work but also a big help! Other examples could be handing out water to runners during a race, running the registration table at an event, or being a part of a park clean-up crew.

2. Monetary Donations
Sometimes, money is the easiest and fastest way to help someone. As we’ve seen with the natural disasters recently, providing money to local organizations and allowing them to buy what is immediately needed is more helpful than donating random items. Organizations can also get discounts when they buy in bulk.

When you’re thinking about how much to donate, I recommend a percentage of your income as an easy way to calculate it.

• Set aside a certain amount to donate every year. This is for donations you want to make for annual fundraisers or donations you don’t know about ahead of time. Dip into this fund when friends host fundraisers or when disasters hit. If you see someone in need, like a kid in front of you in line who didn’t have enough money for his lunch, you can help them in the moment without worrying about your budget. If there is anything left at the end of the year, donate it to your favorite charity.
• Set up a monthly contribution. Many organizations provide a way to charge your credit card monthly for a set amount you decide. This way it’s not hitting your account all at once. A little goes a long way!
• Sponsor a child or a family. There are notable organizations that allow you to give a child the chance at an education or the ability to provide “simple” needs. This usually means a monthly or annual donation. Check out Plan International or GlobalGiving.
• Fund small businesses. How do you lift up an entire community? Fund small businesses, especially those owned by women. There are great societal and cultural shifts when women succeed. It might not be positive at first, especially in patriarchal communities, but success breeds respect. Organizations like Kiva allow you to loan funds to small businesses. On the website, you can read about their business, where they are, and how much they need.

3. Donate Unused Items
That pair of like new jeans that don’t fit you anymore, appliances you don’t need, or even an old car can find a place at a nonprofit. Places like Goodwill and Salvation Army are probably the closest locations to you to donate unused items.

4. Donate new items.
Nonprofits ask for new items year-round. There are organizations that collect bras and feminine products for the homeless, school supplies for low-income kids, and toys and canned food for families during the holidays.

5. Organize a fundraiser or item drive.
Set up an online monetary fundraiser for your birthday or as motivation for a race you’re running. Another idea is organizing a donation drive. Throw a party and ask all guests to bring an item or two for the drive. For example, hosting Friendsgiving or a holiday party? Ask friends to bring two canned goods or a new toy. Get your work office involved!

6. Buy for a cause.
There are many organizations called “one-for-one” organizations that give back when you make a purchase. One of the firsts was TOMS, which gives a pair of shoes to a child in need when you buy a pair. Other organizations might occasionally or temporarily give a percentage of their purchases to charity. The Shop Forward donates proceeds to charity. I posted about purchases that give back in this previous post.

How do you find organizations to support? Ask your friends, check your local newspaper, or use the Internet! If you’re in Austin, we have a handy website with a non-profit database.

Have any tips you would add? Where do you enjoy giving back? Comment below!

P.S. Here’s a post of culinary volunteer opportunities in Austin.

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