Leadership Volunteer Opportunities: Develop Your Skills and Make an Impact
Whether you are looking specifically for leadership volunteer opportunities or a way to get involved in your community, volunteering with a local nonprofit is an excellent option. Typically, leadership roles are offered to volunteers who have already demonstrated their commitment and skills to an organization as a volunteer. Still, if you’ve got the leadership skills and experience, you might be eligible to become a volunteer leader straight away.
This said, even if you have the necessary skills to become a volunteer leader immediately, there is something irreplaceable about the experience you gain from simply volunteering with an organization. So now you may wonder, what can you gain from volunteering roles?
This is precisely what we’re going to talk about today, so let’s get started!
Why Volunteer in the First Place?
If you have volunteered before, you know how rewarding it can be. But, if you are new to the volunteering crowd, you may be wondering why you should invest your time and energy doing it.
Volunteering can provide you with a rewarding way to spend some of your time and offer opportunities to build new skills and connect with your community and even high-level professionals in your area.
Volunteering is especially helpful for young professionals or educators because it can be a great way to gain experience that can qualify them for jobs down the road. As a rising professional, volunteering is a great way to build the skills you need to help get you promoted and support you in climbing the ladder, while expanding your network, building friendships with other volunteers through community and social events and becoming part of a nationally recognized organization with chapters across the country.
Additionally, while there may be fewer job opportunities in your preferred field, there are approximately 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States. This means, more likely than not, you will be able to find a nonprofit that can help you gain the type of experience you are looking for to present yourself for a job application more effectively.
Another incredible benefit of volunteering is making an impact on your community. Whether you have lived in the same place your whole life or you have just moved to a new town, investing in your community is crucial. When you volunteer with Minds Matter Bay you are actively making a material, positive impact towards ending the cycle of intergenerational poverty and directly addressing a pervasive challenge in the Bay Area, giving back and building community in your city.
With those incentives in mind, you may have decided that volunteering is a good idea for you. But what type of volunteer work should you do?
Volunteering as a Student Mentor
If you want to volunteer somewhere but aren’t sure what you want to do, we strongly recommend volunteering as a mentor for students. Don’t get us wrong, volunteering at your local school, soup kitchen, or children’s museum can all be incredibly impactful and rewarding. But volunteering to help mentor students and prepare them for college is an opportunity that can not only help you improve your skills but also help the younger generation be successful.
Becoming a student mentor allows you to build invaluable skills — such as lesson planning, explaining concepts in depth, assessing work, being engaging, and tailoring resources to individual needs. While you may not think of these skills as highly transferable, they actually are.
Whether you have a job at a corporate office or own your own business, communicating effectively is an essential skill. And as mentioned earlier, as a student mentor, you’ll learn how to not only explain concepts effectively, but you’ll also learn how to be engaging while you do it. This can be that thing that sets you apart from your co-worker and allows you to further your career.
Another benefit of volunteering as a student mentor is that you can develop leadership skills that will enable you to become even more involved by taking a volunteer leadership role in your local community.
How Volunteering Can Help You Develop Your Skills
There are numerous ways that volunteering your time — especially as a student mentor — can help you develop new skills and improve upon your current skills.
Some of the most easily transferable skills that you will gain from volunteering are:
Effective time management skills
Planning and organization skills
The ability to understand and incorporate new approaches to your learning and teaching methods
Networking and people skills
The ability to communicate concepts and ideas effectively
The freedom to experiment and try new methods of explaining or teaching without the traditional penalties of a job
Versatility in your repertoire of skills and strengths
Experience that builds your eligibility for volunteer/paid board positions
All of these skills are useful in and out of volunteering. In addition, having the above skills can distinguish you from your peers when applying for a job or promotion.
Alongside these skills, you can learn how to interact with community members more effectively. This can lead to more opportunities for you in your professional life, and you may also end up making friends who share many of your values.
Why Volunteer Leadership Is a Great Opportunity
Being a volunteer of any kind is a great way to become involved in your community and build connections with people from all walks of life. And a volunteer leadership role can tremendously improve what you get from your volunteering experience. Becoming a volunteer leader allows you to significantly enhance various transferable skills — such as teamwork, communication, problem-solving, strategic thinking, presenting, research, and project management.
In addition to helping you improve your skills, volunteer leadership is an incredible way to increase your involvement in your community and build relationships with high-level professionals. Which, if you’ve tried searching for a job recently, you know just how important this kind of networking is. So this benefit of volunteer leadership can really help you get your foot in a door that may otherwise be closed to you.
Finally, if you’re still unsure whether a leadership position would be a good option for you, just remember that employers love seeing leadership roles on resumes!
Conclusion
If you’ve been sitting on the fence, deciding whether or not you want to volunteer somewhere, we hope this article has given you that final little push that gets you involved in your local community. After all, our community will only improve if we pitch in and make the changes we want to see!
So, if you think volunteering as a student mentor would be a great way to get involved with your community, check out open volunteering roles at Minds Matter Bay Area today!