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How Students Can Volunteer Their Way Into College Scholarship Money
College scholarship judges appreciate and reward students who have made a difference. This can result in more college scholarship money for students who are active in their communities!
Students, how many hours of volunteer service have you worked in the last four years?
Do you have ANY idea?
This all too common question found on college scholarship applications can scare off even the most talented and successful high school student.
(Keeping track of volunteer hours is important! Use the ScholarPrep Organizer, and it’s a BREEZE!)
Community service volunteers give their time, talents, and treasures to the causes closest to their hearts.
Volunteering is a wonderful way for students to give back to their communities, learn about service by helping others, and at the same time, add valuable hours and experiences they can use for scholarships and college applications. They are doing good AND helping themselves win money for school. This is how more college scholarship money is won!
“My daughter is now a sophomore in college. She had won around $50,000 in outside scholarships. People DO win the national ones…most of the money came from nationals, including $25,000 from equitable excellence! Don’t give up! Apply SMART! I’m a single mom and a teacher, so she receives lots of financial aid from her college, but a majority of her outside scholarships were not need based. They were mostly based on volunteerism and academics!“ – Shannon, Scholarship Help and College Talk for Parents private Facebook group member
Most high school students are busy with academics, sports, jobs, and the ever-important social life inside and outside of school.
Going into senior year and realizing how important community service is to scholarship judges and committees, students may panic and avoid applications that ask for the total number of hours volunteered.
What students may not realize, however, is that they may have been involved in organizations all through high school that they can use as community service hours.
Here are a few popular ones:
- Coaching a sports team
- Vacation Bible School at church
- Tutoring
- Sports Mentoring (Older athletes are paired up with younger ones)
- Church or community dinners, festivals, and parades
- Scouting (Helping another den/troop, visiting nursing homes, etc.)
- Camp Counseling
- Hospital work
Don’t worry, though; if a student has not done a lot of community service, it’s never too late to start. Making a difference in someone else’s life while at the same time collecting volunteer hours creates a well-rounded student. The National Honor Society and many high schools have mandatory service hour requirements. Any of these unpaid volunteer opportunities count on college scholarship applications.
A great way to impress scholarship judges is to “create,” “found,” or “establish” a community service project.
Students can match their interests with a need in their community and be the first ones to do something about fulfilling this need. (I go into great detail about how students can create their own community service projects in my college scholarship guide ebooks.)
Newspapers love to showcase teens who have taken the initiative and created such a project!
Parents, give them a call, describe what the student has done, and the odds are great that they will offer to write an article about the student’s project.
Open to High School Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors! APPLY NOW HERE
Be sure to read: Make it a Volunteering Summer
People love to read about teens who are making a difference, and the article in the paper will be yet another way to impress those scholarship judges.
This post is dedicated to all those selfless volunteers who give so much of themselves while helping others in their communities. Thank you!
Do you have any other ideas for students who would like to volunteer their time and would like to win more college scholarship money?
Do you need a list of scholarships open to student volunteers and leaders?
Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below, and remember:
This is how students can volunteer, help others, AND win college scholarships! Share on XVolunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart ~ Elizabeth Andrew
Monica Matthews is the author of How to Win College Scholarships. She helped her own son win over $100,000 in college scholarships and now shares her expertise with other parents and their students. She truly has “been there, done that” in regard to helping parents and students navigate the scholarship process.
Her method of helping students in finding college scholarships, writing unique and compelling scholarship essays, creating amazing scholarship application packets, and more have taught desperate parents to help their own students win thousands of scholarship dollars. She teaches them how to apply S.M.A.R.T. with outstanding results.
Monica’s scholarship tips have been featured on many prominent websites, and she has been dubbed the “Go-To” expert on college scholarships.
Wonderful tips! I’m grateful that my son is a Boy Scout and they help track his many volunteer hours for him!
Yes, thanks Mandi! My son is working on his Eagle Scout and just last night we were looking at his volunteer hours. FYI, I highly recommend the ScholarPrep Organizer to help with keeping track of volunteering, awards, honors, etc…
This is not only good for the opportunity to get scholarships…but volunteering is good for the soul no matter what!!
Jodie
Exactly! Also, when families volunteer, students usually become adults who still volunteer and eventually are models to their own children. 🙂
This isn’t just good for scholarships. Its good for the world. What a great round up and inspiration.
Thanks, Anna! 🙂
While this is an awesome opportunity for kids to earn some college scholarship money, the fact they need an incentive to volunteer is troubling :(.
I see your point, Gary. I do think that families that have their kids volunteer from a young age do it mainly because it’s the right thing to do and not to win scholarships. In my home, we have our kids create their own volunteer project. It’s been amazing watching my boys become leaders as a result.
I’m thinking about going back to school, I wonder if it would still work for me? I love volunteering when I can find the time.
Hi Trudy, I’m actually working on an article about adults returning to school and finding funding to help pay for it. Be sure to subscribe to my blog to be alerted when it gets published. 🙂
This is one area that always gets neglected in our family. I’ve got to talk to my daughter about this tonight, thanks for the reminder!!
You’re welcome, Christina! There is a really neat book here with lots of inspiring volunteering stories and ideas, if you and your daughter are interested. 🙂
I love this idea! I love all your ideas actually, Monica. But you know that.
Awwww…that means a lot to me, Carol! 🙂
Volunteering is also good on resumes too when applying for jobs. I volunteer once a month at a local Christian book/coffee shop and have done for over 10 years. It helps socially, morally and I have learnt skills which have helped in securing my paid day job. My youngest sons are both scouts and my husband is a cub scout leader – scout troops are always grateful for help and many are crying out for volunteers.
Excellent point, Linda! We are a scout family too and the boys have lots of opportunities to volunteer with their dens and troops. Your husband is a rock star! 🙂
I think anything that prompts teens to be more involved in their communities is a wonderful idea!
I agree, Austin. Sometimes teens need to be pushed out of their comfort zones. Many volunteer opportunities also help with future career decisions. 🙂
This is so good all the way around. Great for college $, but instilling the idea of service is so important!
I absolutely agree. Thanks, Lee!
Love all of these volunteering suggestions!
Thanks! There are so many ways students can give to their communities. 🙂
I’m glad that scholarships take account of volunteer hours – it’s such a good thing to encourage kids to get involved in community activities and helping others.
I agree and I like to think that kids are doing it to help others, with a side benefit of winning scholarships. Winning money for college is temporary, but they can volunteer for life. 🙂
I really enjoyed volunteering in high school as part of service clubs! It was social and fun and felt like I was doing good for my community! I raised my kids to do the same; their activities helped them get small scholarships at Oregon State University. My daughter still does a great deal of volunteering in our community! So proud!
Thanks for sharing, Sharon and congrats to your daughter! Isn’t it great when our kids keep doing in college what we taught them before they left home? 🙂
I love that volunteering is mandatory in high school now. We’ve created a generation of young adults who want to continue helping even after school is over. In work, our biggest motivational prizes we’re those that got them off the phones in order to do volunteer work. Those prizes we’re up against similar off the phone time events playing games. Volunteering won over playing each time they had a choice.
I agree, Jennifer! Even though “mandatory volunteering” is pretty much an oxymoron, it can turn teens on to new career choices and give them positive feelings of making a difference in the lives of others. We don’t have mandatory volunteer hours at my boys’ high school (besides National Honor Society) but in our own family we have made it a priority to create, develop, and oversee a community service project. Son #3 just finished the first year of his project and it was a HUGE success! 🙂
It’s a requirement of graduation in our area and has been for years. My son is 30 but had to do required volunteer hours when he was in high school. A specific minimum number of hours has to be met and thoroughly tracked.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing, Jennifer!
My high school was huge on service and volunteering. It’s incredibly important to developing character, so it’s nice to see a resource for channeling that behavior into personal growth and opportunity!
Thank you, Tony! “Personal growth and opportunity” Well put!
I have always been a fan of volunteering even when there’s no monetary gain involved. It’s a great way to build your own character, make an impact and most importantly share love to the people around you. The added benefit of increasing your chance to win a scholarship is the icing on the cake. 🙂
I totally agree, Herlina. I also am so happy that my adult kids continue to volunteer after graduating from college. 🙂