Volunteer Opportunities for High School Students

For high school students, volunteer work of any kind is a laudable pursuit, possessing more than enough intrinsic value to make it worth your time. Yet, dedicating your time to charitable endeavor can also help you to gain real-world experience in an area of academic and/or career interest. Perhaps you have an academic/career interest in healthcare, computer science, education, helping people with disabilities, animal rights, community organizing, assisting developing nations, conservationism, politics, history, or eldercare support. No matter your passion, there is likely a perfect volunteering opportunity out there for you—there’s just that tiny matter of finding it.

College Transitions’ list of Volunteer Opportunities for High School Students is designed to help with you search by highlighting nationwide organizations that work with American teens from coast to coast. Of course, local opportunities can be located via your guidance counselor, word-of-mouth, or by utilizing any of the various search databases that assist with location-specific hunts. In the list that follows, we highlight whether each organization has opportunities that are in-person or virtual. Additionally, we have categorized the volunteer roles based not just on the type of organization but also, when applicable, the skill demands associated with the position (e.g. doing web development for an animal adoption group would be both “Animal Welfare” and “Computer Science”). Lastly, we list any available eligibility requirements; some organizations accept 9^th graders (or younger) while others are open only to 18-year-olds (presumably seniors).

Mobile users: To view additional data columns, click the + icon to the left of the organization's name