Want to Volunteer in the Bay? Here's What Nonprofits Say Actually Helps

Updated 11 a.m. Monday

“Service is a great way to close the gaps in perception and to understand better that we’re all part of this human experience.”

That’s according to Lou Reda, executive director of the nonprofit organization HandsOn Bay Area. Reda said that a lot of people are responding to their feelings of being “demoralized by national news” by seeking out volunteer opportunities — as a way to feel rooted in their local communities.

• Jump straight to: Tell us about your own volunteer story

Over 28% of Americans report volunteering through an organization, according to the most recent available numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau — figures that have rebounded after historic lows during the early COVID-19 pandemic. And more than half of the population give back in informal ways, helping or exchanging favors with neighbors, “such as house sitting, running errands, or lending tools.”

But before you begin fantasizing about playing with cats at the local animal shelter, or organizing the best canned food drive your block has ever seen, there’s something the people who work full-time for nonprofits want you to know: while some rosters are overflowing with well-meaning volunteers, other crucial, lesser-known voluntary roles are going unfilled.

So, how can you be as helpful as possible to organizations doing community aid work? To mark National Volunteer Week, we talked to Bay Area nonprofits about the volunteer help they truly need, the roles that don’t always make it onto a sign-up sheet and how you can make the most meaningful impact with your time — without accidentally adding to their workload.

• Jump straight to: Where to find volunteer opportunities in the Bay Area

It’s OK to start small — and try out different roles

“There are so many opportunities out there,” Reda said. “It can be so overwhelming that people don’t want to volunteer.”

His organization, HandsOn Bay Area, works with hundreds of nonprofit organizations, to connect them with eager volunteers for projects that require assistance. And for people just getting started on their volunteer journey, Reda suggests taking stock of your interests first — as well as your limitations. Got a 9-to-5 job? Consider looking for weekend or evening opportunities. Are you a parent of young children? Search for tasks you can do as a family, like cleaning up a park or volunteering with a community garden. Do you love working with young people, or have extra time to commit? Consider becoming a mentor to someone in foster care.

It’s OK if you’re unsure about which roles will feel the most fulfilling for you. “There’s a spark in all of us that’s waiting to come out,” Reda said. “You will find that by going to do a variety of things.” He recommends signing up for single-day volunteer commitments at first, while you search for the organization or cause that’s most meaningful to you.

There are many ways to make an impact in just a few hours, said Cody Jang, senior associate director of community engagement at the SF Marin Food Bank.

Most shifts at the food bank are about two hours, and all you need are closed-toed shoes and a “willingness to work with others,” Jang said. Each shift is designed so that you can be trained within five to ten minutes and then be ready to go, so there’s no need to commit to hours of training first.

Remember: whether you find the perfect fit on day one or decide to sample other opportunities, every little bit of time helps these organizations.

If you want to volunteer with animals, consider looking beyond the shelter 

Ryan Ericksen, the volunteer services manager at East Bay SPCA, said the organization is always in need of volunteers to foster animals — and the commitment doesn’t have to be long-term.

Even short-term fostering can have an outsized impact, he said, and that “field trips” of a few hours — or even a weekend — can make a “huge difference” in how they allow animals to “decompress” from the many stimulating smells and sounds of a shelter.

Counterintuitively, Ericksen said, people often underestimate the sheer amount of education that’s required for hands-on roles volunteering with animals in the shelter environment.

“Working with animals in the shelter setting is not as simple as working with animals in our home,” he said. “This work really requires a commitment to becoming educated regarding [animal] behavior.”

For this reason, volunteer roles at the East Bay SPCA’s shelters are among the most selective — requiring a 50-hour, six-month volunteering commitment. Shelter volunteers also go through a substantial amount of training, learning how to care for and train animals in a stressful environment. “We want to set people up for success in whatever role they take on,” Ericksen said.

And don’t despair if the nearest animal shelter has reached its volunteer capacity,  Reda said: “There are other organizations that work with animals that also need help.” HandsOn Bay Area’s past projects have ranged from horse and goat care to specialized roles training dogs to “smell if a person goes into diabetic shock.”

Be open to under-the-radar ways to help 

When people think about volunteering with an animal shelter, Ericksen said, many of them naturally think about volunteering with animals — but one of the “most overlooked” roles at the East Bay SPCA has to do with building repairs and upkeep.

This may come as welcome news if you’re a professional contractor or electrician — but Ericksen emphasized that specialized skills aren’t required. Volunteers of every level are welcome to help with building improvements, even if your only experience is “changing out lightbulbs or painting around the house.”

In the next year, he added that the East Bay SPCA is “actually hoping to upgrade the lighting fixtures of several of our facilities.”

Other lesser-known volunteer opportunities at the SPCA include transporting animals to and from the spay and neuter clinic, and preparing pet food for the “pet pantry” program, which distributes to lower-income and unhoused pet owners.

“At the end of the day, the best way to improve the quality of life for our four-legged friends is to provide the resources, education and experiences that people need to grow skilled and competent working with animals,” Ericksen said. “The world becomes a better place for animals when we exhibit patience, compassion and active engagement with the people in our community.”

Over at the SF Marin Food Bank, one of the most critical needs is for volunteers with a valid driver’s license and their own vehicle to deliver food door-to-door through the home-delivered grocery program. The program helps seniors, parents of young children and other people with mobility limitations who “still want to live independently and cook with good food,” Jang said.

It’s also a great way for volunteers to spend time with a friend or family member, Jang said. He encourages drivers to bring a copilot along for the ride. “You get to spend time together with someone that [you] care about and deliver groceries,” he said.

Another under-the-radar volunteer opportunity, Jang said, is to seek out your local neighborhood food pantry.

“The food bank is much more of a warehouse,” he said. “We get the food, we build a menu each week, and then we push it out to partners. These can be schools, community centers, senior centers, soup kitchens, all kinds of different places.”

Volunteering with one of these smaller pantries “helps with the chain of getting food to those in need” and is more likely to impact your literal neighbors, Jang said. Alongside their work serving unhoused communities, most food bank clients are actually “housed and employed,” he said, “It’s just really expensive and difficult to make ends meet in the Bay Area.”

Make use of your in-demand specialized skills 

Many organizations have a “wish list” of projects to complete — and if you’re someone with a very particular set of skills, you might be able to help their dreams come true.

For example, Ericksen said he’s always looking for SPCA volunteers with language translation or photography skills. (Hey, someone’s got to take profile pics for animals in search of their forever homes.)

Other highly valuable skills include tax, finance or legal expertise, he said.

Every nonprofit “needs someone who understands money,” Reda said. He even encouraged folks with professional leadership experience to consider joining an organization’s board of directors, where they can have a tremendous impact. Board members help with operational issues and governance of the nonprofit and are a “great way to get further involved” once you’ve found a meaningful cause, he said.

Long- and short-term administrative help is also welcome, said Jang, who noted that volunteers who are willing to support the food bank’s development team are always a boon. Even simple tasks like writing thank you notes to donors are crucial, he said — so reach out if you’re someone who has “really nice handwriting,” he joked.

Consider volunteering at less popular times 

All the nonprofit leaders KQED spoke with agreed: there are times when their volunteer cups runneth over. Volunteer shifts in November and December, for example, fill up as many helpers find themselves in the holiday spirit.

“Then in January and February it takes a nosedive, and volunteer numbers drop steeply — but we serve the same number of people,” Jang said. This means that late summer, “right around Labor Day,” is another great opportunity to volunteer, he said, when many regular volunteers are taking a summer vacation and you’ll be truly filling a need in their absence.

As for time of day, it’s no surprise that weekends and evenings are popular shifts among volunteers with 9-to-5 office jobs, meaning weekday and morning shifts are much harder to fill, Ericksen said. So if you have availability during those hours, you’re more likely to snag a volunteer coordinator’s attention.

Just don’t get so hung up about scheduling that you lose sight of the mission, Reda said. The need for community support is never-ending, he said, and ultimately, “it doesn’t matter when you can give back.”

“It’s just important to do it,” he said.

Ready to get started with volunteering in the Bay Area?

• Search HandsOn Bay Area’s calendar of volunteer projects.
• Find your local Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) chapter:
  • East Bay SPCA
  • San Francisco SPCA
  • Humane Society of the North Bay
  • Humane Society Silicon Valley
  • Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA
• Volunteer with the SF Marin Food Bank or find a partner pantry near you.
• Browse for additional opportunities on VolunteerMatch.

Tell us: How is volunteering a part of your life?

We want to hear from you: If you’re already a volunteer, what do you do? And which organizations in your area do you want to hype up — and recommend others consider volunteering there too?

You could tell us about:

• Your own volunteer experience — where you volunteer, how you got started and what you do.
• A nonprofit organization or community group (or even an individual) that does great work in your area and that might need more volunteers.
• Any tips you might have for how to make volunteering work with your schedule or your circumstances — for example, how can you volunteer as a family?

You can use the form below to share your thoughts with us, and what you tell us could be shared in a future KQED story.

There’s a chance we may use any contact information you provide to get in touch with you to ask a few follow-up questions, but we’ll never share your information outside of KQED without your permission. We won’t be able to reply to everyone who submits a question, but what you tell us will make our reporting stronger on KQED.org, KQED Public Radio and our social media channels.

(And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that you can also volunteer at KQED.)

This story has been updated to correctly attribute two quotes to Ryan Ericksen, which had been previously attributed to Lou Reda.