Animal Welfare Professionals

Does anyone currently offer volunteer or foster programs specifically for college students (or do you know of an organization that does)? We'd love to learn from other organizations that work with a college student population on volunteer programs in their community.

• Do you only offer volunteer opportunities at a physical shelter?
• Do you offer opportunities for college students to volunteer on campus (maybe walk/run programs)?
• Do you use college student volunteers in other ways?
• Does anyone have or know of an organization that has a college student foster program?

If you've heard of anything or have any ideas about college student volunteers and fosters, please share! Any links to websites, resources, etc. would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Mostly Mutts is located about 2 miles from Kennesaw State University, and we love our college student volunteers. Students that are willing to commit to a 3 month weekly assignment can volunteer on shelter shifts at our rescue center. Those that only want to knock out a few hours are able to help at our adoption and community events where extensive training isn't necessary. They are always excited to become involved and bring lots of great energy to our volunteer community. The University works with us to promote our programs and students can track hours that are approved by us through the VKSU (Volunteer KSU) system and use them for community service, scholarship, and class requirements.

We have also begun using their internship program and started a marketing intern during the current semester. We created a position description and requested sophomores or above. Our intern has been a huge help and is hopefully learning useful info that will help him in the future. He earns credit hours for the number of hours worked. 20 hours weekly=6 credit hours. We plan to more fully utilize this program next semester.

A couple of challenges that we have come across are schedule changes with each semester and students leaving to go home during breaks sometimes without notice.

Thanks for sharing what you're doing with college students, Michelle. It's great that the University works with you to promote your programs and allows students to earn volunteer hours towards their requirements! Great idea to tap into their internship program to help with your marketing needs, too! 

I appreciate you sharing the challenges with college student volunteers. I can see how scheduling could be a bit more difficult due to their changing schedules. 

How did you go about setting it up with the university to have them credit hours for volunteers and interns?