Keen to get involved with volunteering, but not sure where to start? Virtual volunteering is a great way to get involved with meaningful projects from the comfort of your own home. While large sporting events, outdoor volunteering and volunteer abroad projects offer important ways to give back, you can make just as much of an impact without leaving home.
Below, we’ve compiled 22 virtual volunteer opportunities that you can get involved with today. All you need to make a difference is a computer, an internet connection and a positive attitude.
Is virtual volunteering worth it?
There are many reasons why people might look to volunteer online. Maybe they have busy professional lives with little free time, they work in a remote location, or they have mobility issues that make it hard to get around. Or perhaps there are other external factors involved, such as the COVID-19 Pandemic. Whatever the reason, virtual volunteering offers everyone a chance to give back and make a positive impact, while providing the skills and resources that non-profits desperately need.
Volunteering, whether it’s virtual or not, has so many benefits. It boosts your mental health, it can provide you with important networking and career opportunities, you can meet new people and learn new skills, and it can provide purpose and motivation.
So is it worth it? Absolutely!
How can I get volunteer hours online?
If you need to get volunteer hours for a school project or job center, volunteering online is a great way to do that. Just make sure you double-check the eligibility requirements before signing up for a project. If you need evidence of hours, you can ask the nonprofit organization to write a letter confirming your involvement, or if the organization uses a volunteer management solution, your hours should be automatically tracked in your volunteer portal.
Take a look at our list of virtual volunteering opportunities and sign up for one that piques your interest.
Virtual volunteer opportunities for teams
1. Prepr is a network that uses education to solve complex challenges to local and global problems. These challenges might be related to UN Sustainable development goals, careers, or the future of work. Corporate teams are encouraged to get involved in challenges by way of sponsoring a challenge, sponsoring a workshop, donating prizes, offering mentorship or even offering job placements or internships.
2. Crisis Commons / CrisisCamp IT workplaces could host virtual boot camps and work together to create disaster response and learning events with volunteers. At these crisis camps, you collaborate to aggregate crisis data, develop prototype tools and train people on how to use technology tools to aid in disaster response.
3. Kindness Quest: is a virtual team building event aimed at spreading gratitude among groups during the holiday season. In teams, participants undertake virtual community service activities such as donating food to animal shelters, writing thank you cards, and collecting non-perishable food for food drivers.
4. Smithsonian Digital Volunteers: The world’s largest museum needs digital volunteers to help transcribe, edit, and review a range of historical documents into the public sphere. Sign up and you could be editing notes from explorers, logbooks from ships, currency proof sheets, photo albums, manuscripts or nature specimen labels. Whether you're fascinated with botany or astronomy or the experience of women in science, you'll find plenty of meaningful citizen science projects. While you’re there, check out their other unique Citizen Science opportunities like eMammal camera traps, Fossil atmospheres and LeafSnap.
5. CricketTogether offers meaningful corporate volunteering opportunities to empower lifelong learning among children. The online mentoring program can be conducted anywhere, anytime to fit around busy schedules, and full training is provided for mentors. Plus, the robust platform gives engagement and impact reports!
Virtual volunteer opportunities for students
6. ZSL Instant Wild: Help conservation efforts by looking through camera and video images from amazing jungles and forests around the world and tagging animals you see. You don’t need to have a degree in biology, you’ll get full field guides for each project so you know what to look out for!
7. Learn to be is a nonprofit that invites student volunteers to use their powers for good. Share your writing expertise, math skills or passion for science and provide 1-1 tutoring to other students from as young as five. Working as one of the volunteer tutors, you’ll be helping improve the lives of children in vulnerable neighborhoods across the US.
8. DOROT aims to combat loneliness in older adults by creating intergenerational engagement activities and phone calls. Join up and take in weekly Zoom calls with adults in the US who are keen to have a chat and get to know you. You never know what you might learn or who you might meet!
9. Cards for a Cause: This is a great one for creative students of all ages. Create a beautiful handmade card to brighten the day of a sick or injured child. You can create as many as you want, send them in, and the organization will distribute them as needed.
Quick and easy virtual volunteer opportunities
10. Be My Eyes: This app connects blind and low-vision individuals with sighted volunteers for visual assistance through live video calls in their custom-built app. Volunteers may receive calls to help read food labels, navigate around a city, buy a ticket or read instructions. Your one small service can make a big difference in someone's day.
11. Career Village: If you didn’t know what you wanted to be when you grew up, you can imagine that students today are even more overwhelmed with the future of work. At Career Village, students can ask questions about careers and career paths of interest, and you can volunteer to answer them as honestly as possible. Take part whenever you have some free time and you might just inspire the next generation to follow in your footsteps.
12. Friends of the Earth asks citizens to use their voices to help protect the environment. They have simple actions such as writing to congress, signing petitions, and emailing major producers to encourage change. Each campaign features a form with a built-in message that you can edit and send with one click.
13. The World Hunger Education Services quiz is a no-brainer, everyone should take 5 minutes and do it now! Simply read their educational material about world hunger, and they will donate $0.02-$0.10 for everyone who completes the short corresponding quiz.
Virtual volunteer opportunities for multi-linguists
14. Tarjimly: Download this app and you can be connected to refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants and social workers who need your help with translation. They may be at a bank, on a phone call, or need help filling out a document, and you can guide them over the phone. You’ll only get requests based on your availability.
15. TED Translate: If you love watching TED Talks, why not give back by volunteering as a translator for the non-profit organization. You’ll work remotely and on your own schedule to translate talks into different languages.
16. Translators Without Borders recruits volunteers who want to translate texts into different languages for NGOs and nonprofits.
17. Kiva: If you love English grammar or consider yourself a language enthusiast, you may be able to support Kiva’s mission as a Volunteer Editor for their global network of microentrepreneurs.
Virtual volunteering search engines
18. Catch a Fire: Catch a Fire lists volunteer opportunities at a range of non-profits in need of skills. You can share search through the listings that include short-term projects, ongoing projects or one-off tasks in everything from social media to accounting all around the world.
19. Vollie: An Australian based platform that connects skilled people to non-profits, charities and social enterprises for skills-based online volunteering. All the projects listed are online and available for people all around the world. Simply sign up and start helping!
20. Idealist has many volunteer tasks listed on its site that can be completed online, simply search using the virtual filter.
21. VolunteerMatch hosts a database of thousands of volunteer opportunities, so just search for virtual opportunities using the filter.
22. The United Nations online volunteering database offers a huge spectrum of diverse service opportunities for the UN all around the world.
Conclusion
This list of virtual volunteer opportunities only just scrapes the surface of what’s available. There are thousands of different types of volunteering opportunities, whether you want to help animals, children or the environment or older adults. And you can always get in touch with local charities and non-profits in your area to offer your services and find the virtual volunteer opportunity that’s right for you - they’re always looking for committed volunteers.
So what are you waiting for? Simply find a project that interests you and see how you can start making a difference.
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