Try These Volunteer Opportunities to Grow On-The-Job Skills and Advance Your Career

Anyone who has been looking for a new role this year knows that we’re in a tough job market. With reduced budgets, staff shortages, and cuts to vital government agencies, social-impact professionals are doing everything they can to set themselves apart from the masses and find a job that aligns with their values.

If you’re actively looking for a job or exploring opportunities to make a career jump, there are a few ways you can continue to grow your network and add new skills or experience to your resume. Today, we’re going to focus on one of those options: volunteering.

How volunteering can grow on-the-job skills

Gone are the days when volunteering meant picking up trash at the local park or donating cans to the local food pantry (though, those are great ways to lend a hand, too!). Today, volunteering comes in many forms and cause areas, particularly when nonprofits and community organizations are facing outsized need and not enough staff members or funding.

Sometimes an organization needs help managing the financial operations of a new program, or requires the expertise of an HR professional to share knowledge about team-building and people operations. We refer to these types of opportunities as skill-based volunteering, and they’re a great way to develop new skills, showcase existing ones, and grow experience to add to your resume.

Imagine that you want to get into graphic design, but you can’t land a job without showcasing previous experience (one of those annoying chicken-or-the-egg types of cycles that plague those of us making a career change). By applying to an organization that needs a volunteer to assist with graphic design needs, you can start building a portfolio of examples that showcase your skills.

Often, these types of volunteer projects will provide access to necessary applications like Canva or Adobe Premiere, which you can add to your resume under “Special Skills” or talk about in your cover letter.

Find a volunteer opportunity that’s right for you

Depending on the type of field, organization, or job title you’re looking for, there are a couple of ways to approach skills-based volunteering.

To help you get started, we walk through the most common types of nonprofit jobs and different volunteer opportunities that can help you grow on-the-job skills and advance your career.

1. Land a nonprofit development job through fundraising volunteer opportunities.

Development professionals are essential to the nonprofit sector—they’re the ones who ensure programs can stay funded, and help the organization commit to future work. If you’re interested in getting started in fundraising, you’ll probably need to grow certain skills. Here’s how volunteering can help with that:

• Volunteer for a nonprofit’s gala to learn what goes into planning an important event, and such as project management and operations.
• Volunteer to develop crowdfunding projects—such as community drives, peer-to-peer donations, and small events—to learn how to launch a fundraising initiative.
• Volunteer to assist with grants administration to improve writing skills and help organizations secure critical funds. 

2. Become a communications professional through volunteering to produce content, manage social media, and transform marketing campaigns.

So you want to be a communications professional for a social-impact organization? That’s great! You can choose a specific area of communications to focus on—such as email marketing or social media—or develop skills across several areas to showcase you have what it takes to lead a comms team. To find the volunteer roles that can help you gain the experience you need, check out these opportunities:

• Volunteer to launch the social platforms of a new organization to show prospective employers you have the digital knowledge to expand their online presence.
• Volunteer to design marketing graphics and illustrate Canva, Adobe, or Sprout Social skills.
• Volunteer to assist with SEO and signify that you’re an expert in digital expansion.

3. Gain experience with directing an organization by volunteering as a board member.

For those of us who want their next job to be a step up, as opposed to a lateral move, showcasing leadership experience is essential. So how can you find a volunteer opportunity that allows you to steer an organization forward, direct a team, or manage a group of professionals? Check out some volunteer board member opportunities:

• Volunteer to lend legal expertise to organizations and gain pro-bono experience 
• Volunteer to steer an organization’s mission forward as a board chair
• Volunteer to lead fundraising efforts and showcase development skills

There are so many ways volunteering can support a growing or future social-impact career. In addition to skill building, you can also benefit from meeting new people in the sector and developing important contacts. That way, when a job opening comes up that you want, you have a crew of references who can speak to your skills, experience, and passion for a certain cause.