Service Ideas

General Ideas

• Ask your local church about opportunities in your community
• Donate or raise money for your local Red Cross
• Organize a community blood drive
• Send cards to soldiers serving overseas
• Hold a bake sale for your favorite charity
• Read books or letters to a person who is visually impaired
• Participate in a charity race
• Volunteer to help at a charity auction
• Collect unused makeup and perfume to donate to a center for abused women
• Organize a car wash and donate the profits to charity
• Help deliver meals and gifts to patients at a local hospital

Helping Children and Schools

• Tutor children during or after school
• Donate stuffed animals to children in hospitals
• Organize games and activities for children in hospitals or who are visiting hospitalized relatives
• Knit or crochet baby blankets to be donated to hospitals or homeless shelters
• Collect baby clothes and supplies to donate to new parents
• Collect used sports equipment to donate to families and after-school programs
• Sponsor a child living in a foreign country, either on your own or as part of a group
• Coach a youth sports team
• Put on performances for children in hospitals
• Give free music lessons to schoolchildren
• Become a volunteer teen crisis counselor
• Organize a reading program to encourage kids to read
• Create a new game for children to play
• Organize events to help new students make friends
• Organize a reading hour for children at a local school or library
• Donate used children’s books to a school library
• Work with the local health department to set up an immunization day or clinic to immunize children against childhood diseases
• Volunteer to help with Vacation Bible School or other religious camps

Helping Senior Citizens

• Read to residents at a nursing home
• Deliver groceries and meals to elderly neighbors
• Teach computer skills to the elderly
• Drive seniors to doctor appointments
• Mow an elderly neighbor’s lawn
• Host a bingo night for nursing home residents
• Host a holiday meal for senior citizens
• Make birthday cards for the elderly
• Organize a family day for residents of a retirement home and relatives to play games together
• Ask residents of a retirement home to tell you about their lives
• Pick up medicine for an elderly neighbor
• Perform a concert or play at a senior center
• Help elderly neighbors clean their homes and organize their belongings
• Rake leaves, shovel snow, or wash windows for a senior citizen
• Deliver cookies to a homebound senior citizen

Helping Animals and the Environment

• Take care of cats and dogs at an animal shelter
• Clean up a local park
• Raise money to provide a bulletproof vest for a police dog
• Place a bird feeder and bird fountain in your backyard
• Start a butterfly garden in your community
• Sponsor a recycling contest
• Grow flowers in your backyard then give bouquets to hospital patients or people who are housebound
• Help create a new walking trail at a nature center or park
• Update the signs along a nature trail
• Adopt an acre of rainforest
• Help train service dogs
• Participate in the cleanup of a local river, pond, or lake
• Foster animals that shelters don’t have space for
• Organize a spay and neuter your pet program
• Care for a neighbor’s pet while they are away
• Sponsor an animal at your local zoo
• Train your pet to be a therapy animal and bring it to hospitals or nursing homes
• Build and set up a bird house
• Organize a carpool to reduce car emissions
• Campaign for more bike lanes in your town
• Volunteer at a nature camp and teach kids about the environment
• Test the water quality of a lake or river near you
• Plant native flowers or plants along highways

Helping the Hungry and/or Homeless

• Build a house with Habitat for Humanity
• Donate your old clothes
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen
• Donate old eyeglasses to an organization that collects that and distributes them to people in need
• Donate non-perishable food to a food bank
• Donate blankets to a homeless shelter
• Offer to babysit or nanny for a family in need
• Make “care kits” with shampoo, toothbrushes, combs, etc. to donate to homeless shelters
• Prepare a home-cooked meal for the residents of a nearby homeless shelter
• Collect grocery coupons to give to a local food bank
• Help repair or paint a local homeless shelter
• Donate art supplies to kids in a homeless shelter
• Help organize and sort donations at a homeless shelter
• Babysit children while their parents look for jobs
• Become a Big Buddy for children at a homeless shelter
• Take homeless children on outings
• Bake a batch of cookies or loaf of bread and deliver it to a soup kitchen
• Build flower boxes for Habitat for Humanity houses
• Organize a winter clothes drive to collect coats, hats, scarves, and gloves to be donated
• Make first aid kits for homeless shelters

Reducing Crime and Promoting Safety

• Volunteer at a police station or firehouse
• Become a certified lifeguard and volunteer at a local pool or beach
• Paint over graffiti in your neighborhood
• Organize a self-defense workshop
• Organize a drug-free campaign
• Sponsor a drug-free post-prom event
• Start or join a neighborhood watch program
• Create and distribute a list of hotlines for people who might need help
• Become CPR certified
• Volunteer as a crossing guard for an elementary school

Promoting Community Enhancement

• Paint park benches
• Donate used books to your local library
• Become a tour guide at your local museum
• Repaint community fences
• Plant flowers in bare public areas
• Organize a campaign to raise money to buy and install new playground equipment for a park
• Participate in or help organize a community parade
• Clean up vacant lot
• Produce a neighborhood newspaper
• Campaign for more lighting along poorly lit streets
• Create a newcomers group in your neighborhood to help welcome new families
• Petition your town leaders to build more drinking fountains and public restrooms
• Volunteer to clean up trash at a community event
• Adopt a local highway or road and clean up trash along it
• Help fix or raise funds to repair a run-down playground