Volunteering is not a brand which you can wear a t-shirt with its logo on it. It is not a copyrighted thing that can be carried out by NGOs only. Volunteering can be carried out by anyone, anywhere at any time. True volunteering is just simply doing something without receiving anything or any recognition in return.
It may be throwing some rubbish in the bin even when no one is watching or it can be helping family members, friends, neighbors, strangers or even private businesses. It is just about making someone’s life better or easier.
Volunteering is a great way to make new friends and learning new skills. It is a great feeling when done with a pure heart. Many times we are not able to go out for volunteering due to different constraints. Here are 43 different ways of volunteering from home.
Teaching
1. Recorded – Udemy and Unacedmy are great examples of pre-recorded teaching but not everyone can afford these platforms. If you can teach something then you can record it, post it on youtube, and then share it.
2. Live: Live classes were the biggest surprise during lockdown for many people. You can teach students at an unlimited number of locations at the same time. The best thing about live classes is their access, even students from remote locations can have access to education.
3. Assessment Making: Every teaching involve the assessment of students and it takes a lot of time. If you cannot do teaching, then making assessments for students will be very helpful.
4. Assessment Checking: Checking completed assessment again takes a lot of time and nonteaching volunteers can help with assessment checking
Mentoring
5. Recorded: Similar to teaching, mentoring can be done through the recorded videos. Cooking recipes on Youtube are great examples of this kind of mentoring.
6. Live: Live mentoring makes it interactive. A mentor can ask questions from the mentee and the other way around.
Counseling
7. Group counseling: Pandemic has pushed many more people into depression. Group counseling is a great way to break that circle. There are many free tools available for this (Duo, Whatsapp Video Calls, Zoom Video Call).
8. One to one counseling: Not everyone can join group counseling due to different reason (privacy, technical inability, time constraint, unavailability of groups). For these people, a simple video chat can work as a wonderful counseling session.
9. Legal Counseling: If you are a legal expert, then you can help people with legal counseling.
10. Business counseling: Expert or seasoned businesspersons can mentor startups from making fatal mistakes.
11. Career Counseling: Top achievers from different industries can help students with career choices and career paths.
Group Activities
12. Group meeting: Group meetings are a great way of coming out of the thought cycle. It helps with building new ideas. With help of free group video calling tools, these sessions can be easily arranged.
13. Group Singing: A study has shown that group singing helps in depression. With help of free group video calling, group singing sessions can be arranged.
Customer care(Weworkremotely, remote.co, Zendesk are great examples for customer care from home and the same way it can help with volunteering from home )
14. Chat customer care: These days lot of companies provide customer care over chat. It is cost-efficient for companies. Any individual can help any business or NGO with chat customer care from the comfort of their home.
15. Email customer care: Similar to chat customer service, Email customer service is quite common for non-emergency issues. An individual can help any business or NGO with emails.
16. Phone Customer Care: Zendesk is a great example of customer care from remote over the phone. Even if such systems are not available, then simply call diversion can help in volunteering as customer care from home.
17. Social Media Customer Care: Most businesses and organizations use social media to interact with their customers and you can easily help in this with specific permission.
18. Phone Order: Similar to remote customer care over the phone, an individual can help NGOs and businesses in order management.
Content Writing
19. Blog Writing: Blogs are a great way to express your thought. If you have an itch for writing but do not know where to start, You can help businesses or organizations by writing blogs for them.
20. Website Content Writing: A lot of small businesses or organizations do not have the resources to hire professional content writers for their websites. You can help these businesses, individuals, or organizations with content writing in your own time.
21. Collaborative story writing: Storytelling is a great way of expressing oneself but a lot of individuals get stuck. Collaborative story writing is a way around this. There are many platforms where you can join other writers to write collaborative stories.
22. Reading Material or copywriting: You can help with copywriting, brochures, catalogs, manuals for individuals, businesses, and organizations.
Website Development and Online Marketing (If you are an IT professional or allied service provider, you have an abundance of opportunities to volunteer from Home )
23. Website Development: Most website development is done remotely so you can easily do website development from home for businesses, individuals, and organizations.
24. Mobile app development: Mobile app again is done remotely and anyone with skills can easily do it from home. This volunteering can be treated as a validation platform for testing the usability of the mobile app. A good mobile app can be resold to many other organizations.
25. Software development: Again mostly done remotely. You can develop software for a business or organization for free. If it ends up a great software for business or organization, then you can sell it to other organizations or businesses as well.
26. IT Mentoring: If you are an expert, then you can mentor newcomers in the technology.
27. Digital Marketing: Digital marketing is an ongoing task for any business. You can do digital marketing from any location. There are hundreds of tasks in digital marketing and you can pick of your choice and schedule.
28. Email Marketing: It is also an ongoing process for any organization. There are many tools where volunteers can collaborate.
Content Writing: Content writing for IT service is a huge field. This is a full-time job.
29. Blog writing: Businesses and organizations promote themselves by providing free useful informational blogs. An individual can help with these blogs.
30. Website content writing: Website content writing is a very particular field, and the writer has to stick to the message that the website wants to deliver to its reader. If you have good writing skills, you can help with website content writing.
31. Manual Writing: Product and services need user manuals for their customers. This is relatively easier writing.
32. Forum Answering: You must have noticed forums on many websites to answer queries. This is a great way to contribute at your own leisure time.
33. Data Entry: Data entry is time-consuming and repetitive work. It is easy and does not require much of the skills. Anyone can do data entry.
Social Marketing: Social marketing is an integral part of any marketing these days. You can join the social media marketing efforts of any organization or business.
34. Responding to Social Media Queries: Social media is a great way for businesses and organizations to connect with their customers. Anyone can help the businesses or organizations in this interaction.
35. Spreading Message – Businesses and organizations need to spread specific messages to the masses and sharing these messages is a sure-shot way of getting the message across to the masses.
36. Creating Posts: Any social media activity starts with creating the post. It may be just words or words with graphics. You can help with creative posts for businesses and organizations.
Fundraising: As mentioned earlier, fundraising is the most significant part of any organization to run it smoothly. You can help in fundraising from your lounge.
37. Social Media Fundraising: Online competition, birthday fundraising or sponsored online activities are a great way of fundraising from home.
38. Phone Fundraising: You can get the list of donors from the organization and call them for donations.
39. Email Fundraising: Emails is another great way of fundraising which can be easily done from the home.
40. Coordination – Any project coordination or activity coordination can be done over the phone. You can monitor progress, resource requirement, and other activities over the phone and report them to the right person.
Neighborhood Care: The most important but most ignored people are neighbors when it comes to volunteering. There are many ways we can help our neighbors.
41. Simple Call: A simple “hello” call can cheer them up, break them out of the thought cycle, and even make you feel better also.
42. Help the elderly in Product/Service order: During the lockdown or even otherwise, you can help your elderly neighbors with online ordering of groceries, medicines, or other necessary items.
43. Video Call to lonely people: A simple WhatsApp call is easy to make and receive.
Products donation: You can make products at your home and arrange pickup for donation
44. Products: You can make some products and donate them to society. The best example Mask for a mate.
45. Food Packet: Grocery Packet – A great example was in India where daily wager and other less fortunate people were donated the grocery packet. These packages had enough grocery for 15days or 30 days.
46. Cooked Food: Donate a meal is a great example where cooked food was picked up from homes and delivered to people in need. The same way many organizations catered food to people struck in difficult situations during the lockdown.
These are some of the ways of volunteering from home that I can think of. I am pretty sure there would be many more. Please feel free to share it with me.
I believe that we can and should help everyone, not only NGOs or people in trouble. You can even help a private business – why not. After all, what goes around, comes around.