5 Tips and Resources for Getting Your Family Involved in Volunteering

Whether you are trying to make the holidays more meaningful, or teach your family valuable life lessons year round about caring and sharing volunteering is the perfect way to avoid holiday craziness and to keep perspective. Don't know where to begin to get involved?

First try these helpful tips for getting the family involved in volunteering:

Consider the issues and causes that are important to you and your family. Maybe you already make donations to a pet shelter or a national organization. Find out what volunteering opportunities that they may have available near your home.

List the skills that your family has to offer. Since some opportunities to volunteer may require special skills it is important to know what you have to offer before you sign up and commit your time. Consider this, if you are allergic to dogs or cats would you volunteer at a pet shelter? Probably not a good idea, but maybe you are a writer and could do a newsletter to help your favorite charitable organization.

Combine your goals; it is good for you and good for the charity. For example if your family is hoping to get fit or more exercise consider walks or runs, both as a family activity to raise money but also to work the sign up table or keep everyone in the bottled water.

Don't over-commit. We all get busy. Many have to stay late at work or get sick, but when you make too many commitments from volunteering at your child's school to helping out an organization it is important to make sure to avoid burn-out by over extending yourself as well as leave your favorite organization in trouble and without a volunteer on a very important day.

Go local with your efforts. Large national organizations need help at the grass roots level, but so do small local charitable organizations such as food pantries, Good Will, missions and re-training efforts. It's good for your family because you don't have to travel far and good for your community because you are helping it right where you can see the results. For example, in our family the children help collect and wrap gifts for the children of Star of Hope in Houston, then go with me to deliver the gifts so can see immediately, what a difference volunteering makes.

Now that you know how to volunteer find out where your family can volunteer:

Visit VolunteerMatch and find out what your match is for volunteering. This online site offers the opportunity to match according to location and has a database of over 74,000 opportunities. Both volunteers and organizations can make a meaningful match this season through this helpful (and free) volunteering tool.

Based on the popular PBS show "Zoom" PBS Kids online also offers a "Zoom into Action" program where you can help your children find volunteer opportunities that they can participate in as well as share their success stories.

Kids' Planet offers families opportunities to "defend it" and "fundraise it." By "it" they mean the planet, find out what your family can do to protect the environment.

Kids Next Door offers helpful matching making tools to volunteer to help the homeless.

Kids Can Make a Difference offers opportunities to help end poverty and hunger.

And, Meals on Wheels, the helpful organization that brings hot meals to seniors, allows children to accompany their parents when making deliveries. In this way you not only spread some cheer, during the holidays and every day, but also provide your children with safe ways of meeting new people, and maybe even finding a special senior to friend if grandparents aren't available.

Volunteering as a family is the best way to teach children the value of the gifts of time, and putting a little "heart" into the holidays and every day.

For information on your favorite charitable organization, visit "Charity Navigator Provides Free, Unbiased Evaluations of Charities" and put some party in your precious gift of time with these "Charity Begins at Home: Charity Party Ideas.

Sources:

Personal Experience

VolunteerMatch.org

Kids' Planet

Kids Next Door

Kids Can Make a Difference

Meals on Wheels