I feel the need to help people in need. I am witnessing so many people dying around me and I see that the only thing that truly matters in life is to leave a better world behind us.
The problem is that I have a full time job and I couldn’t find any organization I could join at night only or in weekends. The only thing I’m doing is donating to charities but I feel it’s not enough.
For information I live in Europe.
While not helping people directly, wild animal rescues usually only require one 4 hour shift a week. I do weekends and we have plenty of openings where we could use more help. You can’t just come and go as you please, you pick a shift at the start of the season (March/April to Sept/Oct) and stick to it so we can know we at least have minimal staff. Our shifts are split 8-noon, noon-4, and 4-8.
You will meet a ton of great people, see some truly amazing sights, experience the strength and delicateness of nature, and provide a valuable service to your local ecosystem.
And don’t feel bad “just donating money!”. We can’t do anything without cash. Wildlife rescue doesn’t receive any public money anywhere in the world I’m aware of, and I’m sure many causes are the same way. Yes, groups need people’s time, but we could do a thing without supplies or just plain paying utilities and all the boring overhead costs.
I don’t know about your local area and associated limitations but I can speak more generally.
Volunteering your time is a really rewarding thing and it can feel better than donating money. But that is feeling better for you. If you have specific skills, for example web development, then volunteering your time in that expert capacity can be very helpful. If that skillset is not needed then using that skillset to generate funds to donate is more effective. Your efforts are not fungible, but money is, meaning the organisation can use the effect of your efforts in the most beneficial way for their goals, even if it is not a good match for your skills.
Considering specific hours of your work as volunteering hours and donating those hours of earning may help you get the feeling you need, feeling like you are helping and involved, while turning that effort into something useful for the cause you care about.
“On Saturdays I volunteer for my favourite charity by working my normal job and donating the proceeds”
I have volunteered at something similar to “Food Not Bombs” where they take supermarket food about to be thrown out and makes free communal meals. It’s a nice way to learn a bit of improvised cooking as well!
I work at a non-profit and it’s a shame. We get a lot of people asking for nights and weekends but it’s hard to coordinate volunteers then because our volunteer office is a 40 hour a week office. they aren’t around after hours to supervise volunteers, so we don’t really have volunteers then.
With that being said, look into general volunteerism clubs, like Rotary. They often are geared towards people who work full time.
Has anyone thought about hiring a part time weekend volunteer supervisor?
If there really is that many people interested, you really couldn’t get a better ROI.
It wouldn’t be enough, unfortunately. The inquiries we get are all over the place. “I would love to do a couple hours on a Tuesday evening” and then “can I come in Saturday during the day?” Not enough to justify an off hours supervisor. It would basically be a full time employee but they’d work a super random schedule.
The sad truth is that retirees tend to be the most reliable volunteers. Just because we get people interested doesn’t mean they stick around/come regularly. And I don’t blame them. I work full time and having to commit to something else after work seems daunting.
I discovered that volunteering is not for me; for different reasons than what you mention. So I support other people financially to do the volunteering for me! It’s a win-win-win situation.
for me i donate to https://protectavolunteer.com/ who send the funds directly to soldiers, weapons to ukraine who have campaigns like https://weaponstoukraine.com/en/kampane/sos
SOS Kyiv – Emergency Fundraiser for Generators and Backup Batteries
and UFL Robin https://www.reddit.com/user/UFL_Robin/ who does weekly raffles like this one that just ended:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1qjvk1q/about_7_hours_left_for_a_shot_at_three_packages/
they literally post videos and photos showing the goods being received like
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1qjxgmj/tempest_group_of_3ab_and_fluffy_boy_downie_thank/
this is about as close to the front line i can get without being there
irl i don’t have time to do charity work so before ukraine i would donate to a homeless shelter and climate change charities, I try to buy australian or european where I can, avoid american/chinese, and have solar panels/solar battery/ev and heat pump, i also export a big chunk of battery power every night during 5:30pm to 7:30pm to reduce demand when fossil fuels are being used the most, it takes about a ton per year of co2 off
tldr i don’t have time for charity work as im already pretty busy irl similar to you so i try to make up for it by having my donations go as far as possible and things i spend money on make the biggest impact
You could look into volunteering at charity opshops, aged care, soup kitchens, firefighting, picking up trash in parks and cleaning up water ways, animal shelters, after school activities
