Behind the Scenes Work at Your Local Shelter

It's that time of year again. We just had Thanksgiving and Christmas is quickly approaching. All the spirit and cheer usually put many people in a mood to give back to their community, so many people choose this time of year to volunteer at their local homeless shelter. When most people think of a homeless shelter they think of the traditional soup kitchen service. You go in for an hour or two before the meal, maybe help prep, serve food to the local needy, clean-up, and go home. While providing sustenance for those who are unable to provide for themselves is an important function of a homeless shelter, most homeless shelters provide many more services than only a soup kitchen. These are the services that most people don't think about and so don't think to volunteer for. Here are a few things you could do for your local homeless shelter other than serving soup.

1) Run a donation drive.

You could do this at your church, your workplace, your community center, your book club, your gym, your grocery store, or any where else you think people might respond. Some of the most needed donations are blankets and sleeping bags for cold nights, toiletries such as toothepaste, deodorant, and soap, and clothing basics such as socks and underwear. Shelters really need blankets because once they give them out, they usually don't get them back so there is a continuous need for blankets and sleeping bags during the colder months of the year.

2) Sort donations.

Go to your local shelter and ask if they need help sorting donations. Many times donations are temporarily put aside to deal with more pressing and urgent needs and do not get sorted. Shelters need their donations sorted so they know what they have. If the shelter does not know what is available, there is no way for them to give out the donations to the people they service. Sorting is very easy and if you get a group of friends, family, or co-workers together it goes very quickly.

3) Hand out mail.

Many shelters offer their clients a permanent mailing address. This allows their clients to receive important mail and give out a valid address when searching for a job or an apartment. The shelter will generally sort and organize the mail and all you have to do is look up whether a particular person received mail that day and give it to them. It's simple and it allows the non-volunteer workers to focus on the tasks they are trained to do.

4) Monitor the computer lab.

One of the new services that many shelters are offering is the use of a computer lab. Clients can come in and use the computer to do a job search, search for housing, update their resume, look for support groups, or just keep in touch with friends and family. Most labs have a computer desk or station for the monitor to sit at and while you're there you can work on anything you need to work on. Or you can just surf the web, play games, or check your e-mail. It's an easy task that can really help the homeless.

5) Do administrative work.

Most homeless shelters qualify as a non-profit organization which means they often have to do a lot of grant writing, federal funds requests, state funds requests and many other administrative duties. Sometimes this can be as simple and as onerous as entering the number of clients they serviced in the last month and what services they provided to who into a data sheet. If you know how to write grant proposals that is one great way to help out. If grant proposal writing is not something you're familiar with you can still help the shelter with basic things such as data entry, filing, copying, faxing, and other administrative maintenance tasks.