How strategic volunteering can help you find a job you love

Kickstart your career exploration with some strategic volunteering in fields that align with your values and interests!

How Strategic Volunteering Can Help You Find a Job You Love

By Dan Hahn, M.S., and edited by Jelena Grove and JD Duran

Need help clarifying your career goals? Schedule a call and we’ll see how we can help

Why do we volunteer? Generally speaking, our community service efforts are driven by our passion to help vulnerable populations, satisfy our curiosity, and support worthy causes like education or the environment.

These are excellent motivations to volunteer when you are employed. However, when seeking a career change, we urge you to think both morally and strategically. Your volunteer choices will lead to employment if they provide opportunities to expand your network in your field, develop an important skill, produce a work sample, or become an inside candidate in the organization.

Home → Helpful Articles → Career Growth → How Strategic Volunteering Can Help You Find a Job You Love

Here are more great posts to help you along your career path, whether you’re looking to meet new challenges, or thrive where you are:

If you feel stuck, get in touch with us, and we’ll tailor a career growth plan to help you become the professional you want to be.

On this page:

- Why is strategic volunteering important for career development?
- How to find places to volunteer
- Client experiences with strategic volunteering
- Sample request for strategic volunteering
- Final Thoughts

Why is strategic volunteering important for career development?

Strategic volunteering can do wonders for your career and personal life. Here are the three most important reasons why.

Gain experience and build skills

By reviewing job openings that interest you and conducting informational interviews, you can identify skills and experience you’ll need to get the job you want, while your volunteer experience or internship can strategically fill in experience you don’t have yet. There’s also the benefit of being hired on full-time for the organization you volunteer for, as your chances of being hired increase dramatically when an employer has observed you and your contributions to their organization.

Prepare you for your next job

Strategic volunteering is especially important if you have been out of the workforce or have a sporadic work history. You may want to start by volunteering at a few places and then initiate the request to make a more serious commitment. If you carry out professional-level duties over several months, you can place this experience at the top of the professional experience section in your resume.

Most of the organizations that accept volunteers are non-profits or government agencies, but paid and unpaid internships—usually seeking specific skills such as copywriting or video production—occasionally appear in the private sector. If you have more interest in working in the private sector, volunteering at a nonprofit can still be useful if you focus on choosing a volunteer activity that builds skills valued in the private sector, such as social media promotion, public relations, or project management.

Contribute to society and meet kindred spirits

In addition to helping you find a job, strategic volunteering can offer a way for you to contribute, giving your days structure and purpose. Strategic volunteering also provides a place to meet kindred spirits who are great sources for informational interviews.

How to find places to volunteer

Once you’ve decided on the type of volunteer activity (or activities) that could help you best compete for your desired position, the next step is to locate an organization that will respect your contribution and offer you a true opportunity for professional development. Opportunities are plentiful and may be obvious to you at this juncture. If not, we recommend the following:

Approach your target organizations directly

Once you’ve a selected career arena, it’s helpful to make a list of the organizations where you might like to work. For example, if your target is helping low-income or immigrant populations with job skills, you might have identified community colleges, Stand for Children, and Head Start as possible employers. Searching their websites, following them on LinkedIn, and conducting informational interviews will reveal the volunteer activities they may have available for you.

Post your volunteer need on a listserv or website in your area of interest

One of the richest local resources in the nonprofit arena is Mac’s List.

Craigslist also has a section for listing your volunteer services. Choose “Post > County > Community > Volunteer” and create your post.

A sample voluteer listing might look like this:

“I seek to volunteer 15 hours per week in an organization that promotes justice for underrepresented populations, to put my new law degree to use,” or “I want to volunteer evenings and Saturdays to use my background in graphic design to help create brochures, ads, and possibly websites for organizations dealing with homelessness. Prefer SW Portland location.”

Volunteer for a professional association

One of the easiest ways to access friendly people willing to give you informational interviews is through professional organizations. For example, Rick, who is interested in an entry-level position in development at a nonprofit, volunteers on a planning committee for the NW Association of Development Officers. Other members of the committee are senior development officers who are well steeped in the traditions of the profession. Even if fellow committee members don’t offer you a job, they will experience your skills first-hand and serve as potential references.

Look for options on volunteer boards

Here are a few of our favorite local volunteer boards:

You can set up alerts to receive emails sabout opportunities particularly tailored to your skills and interests. Common skill areas include administrative, fundraising, teaching/mentoring, counseling, technology, social media, event planning, graphic design and public relations.

Once you identify an organization whose mission meets your passion and offers volunteer opportunities that match your career goals, you can either apply online or send a letter (see our Sample Request for Strategic Volunteering below).

Client experiences with strategic volunteering

How Teresa found her work-life balance

Teresa volunteered at the Oregon Food Bank for a few years but was not expanding her skills or meeting people who might be helpful to her career goals. During her career transition, she reduced her hours at the Food Bank and strategically selected a new arena to explore as a volunteer. So, she searched volunteer positions on Hands On Greater Portland.

Teresa wanted to find out if she would enjoy being in a clinical environment, her strategy was to volunteer at a large hospital. One of Teresa’s strategic choices was to volunteer at CARES Northwest, a collaborative program housed at Legacy Emanuel Hospital that coordinates services for abused children.

As a CARES volunteer, Teresa initially was content with data entry tasks. She enjoyed being around intelligent, committed professionals who began to trust her accuracy and attention to detail over time. Impressed with her abilities, the executive director created a part-time paid position for her, and within a few months, upgraded and expanded it to meet Teresa’s goal of working four days per week, so she could spend her fifth day pursing her hobby of playing the pennywhistle.

Five years later, Teresa happened to wander into one of our counelor’s garage sales and said, “I wish other people got to know what it’s like to go do something you love every day. I didn’t even know that there was something like this out there!”

How Alicia found her career focus

In the beginning of her career transition, Alicia’s interests were divided among three core passions: international travel, housing issues, and the environment. While these interests kept her plate full of worthwhile diverse volunteer activities, she lacked a focus for a next career move. A breakthrough occurred when Alicia realized the term “outreach” captured a role in which she excelled, irrespective of the purpose of the organization. It became clear that her extroverted personality and love of people were assets for the networking process.

The Master Recycler program in which she was enrolled required volunteer hours, so she offered to man an information booth at the Portland Home and Garden Show. This led to lively conversations with people from the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. Soon after, she saw an ad for a position in the bureau doing outreach for the multi-family housing sector. She contacted the people she had met at the show for additional information. While her resume could have been lost in a stack of applicants, she was a familiar name who had made an impression with her vivacious smile and friendly manner. The contacts that she made as a strategic volunteer helped her plan the interview which, in turn, won her the job.

How Chris built the portfolio that led to a breakthrough

Chris, a graduate from a program in communications and journalism, noticed that most of the jobs he wanted required experience and portfolio samples as a copywriter with expertise in social media.

He began volunteering for Portland Fruit Tree where he developed website copy, shaped brand voice across social media, designed and developed publicity materials and special event flyers, and used a content management system (CMS) to add and customize new pages on the website. What’s more, Chris was able to do this volunteer work remotely during the pandemic.

This expertise helped him land a position as a copywriter at Vacasa, a cutting-edge Oregon-based vacation rental company.

How Susan became a shoo-in at her target non-profit

Susan, a mother who took time away from the workforce to raise her children, volunteered at a non-profit focused on child abuse prevention. After nine months, the organization opened up a paid position and gave it to Susan, without even advertising it to the general public. In fact, they reconfigured the position to better match her skill set.

When asked for advice for other job seekers, she said: “Figure out where you want to work. Impress them with how much you can do for them. Keep hanging around until they hire you.”

Sample Request for Strategic Volunteering

February 13, 2018

Jane Smith
Oregon Environmental Council
222 NW Davis Street, Suite 309
Portland, OR 97209

RE: Environmental Health Education Volunteer Position

Dear Ms. Smith,

When my five-year-old son comes to me in a decade and asks me what I did about global warming, I’m determined to have an answer. We biked, walked more, and drove less. We reduced our carbon footprint. We shopped at farmers markets and were thoughtful about our consumption. The birth of my son took my passion for the environment to a new level. We used cloth diapers and purchased organic clothing, toys, and body products; we converted to gentle, earth-friendly cleaning products. At some point I stumbled upon Tiny Footprints and have been an OEC Website devotee ever since.

I have spent the last number of years nurturing my family, further deepening my passion for the issues that OEC addresses. I cared for my mother through years of declining health, and I became a mother myself. Last fall I began to prioritize expanding my influence beyond my family. I believe my life experiences over the last several years have trained me to be a better, more conscientious employee than my formal education ever did.

I have worked as an educator—formally and informally—in school classrooms, homes, community centers, mediation centers, and elsewhere. My focus has been to help people live better lives through conscious choices. With over five years’ experience assisting in the administration of nonprofit mediation programs and conducting mediations myself, I know how to build rapport with people from all walks of life and resolve problems of varying complexity and scope. I have demonstrated success in resource development and have excellent research and writing skills.

Most importantly, I am eager to make a difference in what I believe to be the issue of the day—the environment. Plus, I want to be able to expand on the answer I will give my son about what I did to combat global warming. With my strong work ethic and willingness to take on new challenges, I am confident that I would be a valuable addition to the OEC. If my credentials are of interest, please contact me at [phone number] or [email address].

Sincerely,

Vera Volunteer

Final Thoughts

One of the most important pieces of career advice we give to our clients is this: decide on a time commitment and find volunteer work in your area of interest. Whether it’s in the nonprofit sector or for-profit, strategic volunteer service (including unpaid internships, pro bono work, or standard community service arrangements) can help you build skills, make key connections, and find people with whom you share values.

Volunteer time is work time, and it’s important that you make it count – both for you and the causes you care about.

Key takeaways

Volunteer experience is work experience – and it can help you reach your professional goals faster if you do it strategically
It’s okay to think a little bit selfishly about volunteering – think of it as a mutually beneficial situation where you get to build your professional skills and contribute to society
A volunteer role can help you gain new skills, bolster your resume, network in your field, get hired, and meet kindred spirits that share your values
You can find volunteer programs for both nonprofit organizations and for-profit organizations, both in public and private sectors
There are several places you can look for volunteer engagements: direct contact, listservs, LinkedIn, and volunteer boards