Teenagers are much better off doing their philanthropy service directly with the organization versus joining and paying to belong to a group. Think about it - why PAY to perform philanthropy when you can do it for free? Better yet, start your own philanthropy drive and/or create your own non-profit. My daughters and I use to belong to a mother-daughter non-profit group with the hopes of making lifelong friends while volunteering for a good cause. INSTEAD, we were burned by the mismanagement, greed, and insensitivity of the Board with not enough volunteer hours available for all the members, infighting, lack of general knowledge of nonprofits having the chapter’s money without approval on things that only benefited a few, district reps were not supportive with any issues such as bullying, not following the policies and procedures, and on and on!
I think it’s worthwhile researching to find a good EXISTING organization instead of starting your own with all the issues that go with starting something new. Yes, new is fun and exciting but why re-invent the wheel? I’m sorry you were burned by mismanagement, greed, and insensitivity of the Board. That would definitely be a turn-off, but there are a lot of worthy and good organizations doing great work. Please don’t consider ALL organizations bad just due to your bad experiences.
Paying for service trips never made a lick of sense to me. I have enough need in my own back yard that I can (and did in high school and continue now) address for free.
what kind of philanthropy group do you pay to join? I’m confused. Plenty of local organizations welcome any and all – local food pantries is just one example.
I have a guess what organization the OP is talking about. (I wonder if it’s a national group - some might call it a league - that does charity.) I had never heard of this organization until last year when I met a woman at a training who was applying to join. I found the whole concept a bit bizarre, especially that she was so concerned about being accepted and that she felt she only had one shot of joining. I couldn’t understand why an organization that supports charities would turn away someone who wants to volunteer. I do like the idea of mother-daughter pairs volunteering together and I was once in a group where families volunteered regularly each month. It was nice to see everyone on a regular basis. Our group was organized via facebook, and I would encourage you STella65 to try to organize some activities yourself this way. I imagine you’re not the only one dissatisfied with the organization you were in.
Is this Junior League? If so, there are way better charities, that are actual charities to get involved with. I don’t know why anyone would pay to play or apply to join and risk getting rejected when there are numerous organizations that ae starved for volunteers.
Yes, there are great existing organizations out there, but what I am referring to is joining a nonprofit group and paying dues/fees to the organization in order to do philanthropy work in your community which you can do independently with your children or in a group of friends. Big mistake! My garland I now organize our own philanthropy drives to help local charities in our city i.e. Animal Shelter, Women’s Homeless Shelter. Also, many nonprofits have their own volunteer list which you can join independently without having to pay a fee which we did to feed the homeless in a soup kitchen. Thank you for your input and empathy!
Many! I will not name them, but these groups usually have local, state or regional, and national organizational structures.
I like your ideas and my girls and I have done such as noted in another answer to a comment on this particular thread.Yes, the organizational you have referred to sounds like I was talking about - they only take so many members of mother/daughters in a class and the membership committee rates prospective members how well they would"fit" into their chapter. Another reason not to join and pay to perform philanthropy in your community!
I pay my daughter’s Girl Scout dues every year happily. Her troop is open and takes all interested girls. I think it would be difficult for her to find the same variety of volunteer activities that she has in the troop on her own.
“Teenagers are much better off doing their philanthropy service directly with the organization versus joining and paying to belong to a group.”
I can’t think of an instance - profit or non-profit - where it isn’t better to cut out middlemen and deal directly with the target organization. More efficient and direct use of time and money.
I belong to one of these charity leagues. It works for us. This is a great mom-daughter league, where we do charity hours together. Can I sign up individually to work at the food bank? Sure I can, but all the sign ups for 20 different charities are on one calendar, and there are a variety of events that I would never even think of even looking for. We also get to work with friends at times, and are constantly meeting new mom-daughter pairs. And quite honestly, we are both busy, so me trying to track down an event to work at may not happen as quickly as having the events pre-selected for who needs to work at what.
Yes - space is limited, because the daughters have monthly meetings and all hold different positions to get leadership opportunities, and there just can’t be that many different roles. The membership is drawn blindly literally out of a bowl - I have been to one to confirm. There is no country-club like feel to this at all - it’s luck of the draw. Even our local food bank limits the number of people who can sign up for activities. And the local food bank draws a lot of their help from charity “groups.”
It’s not for everyone. In fact, my older daughter didn’t like it and dropped out. But it’s great for those it does work for.
@VickiSoCal , Girl Scouts are more than just a volunteer organization, though. Girls learn skills and have a lot of fun, in addition to serving their communities. The dues are beneficial and necessary. I think this is very different from what the OP was talking about. People don’t usually have to pay to have access to volunteer opportunities. In fact, in the last few volunteer jobs I’ve had, I didn’t even have to pay for my own background (CORI) check, even though I was more than willing to do so. But paying dues to put up with sniping sorority queen bees (which is what I think the OP was talking about) is just pointless.
Well to use Girl Scouts as an example. You might do some philanthropy as part of your Scouting activities, you might even go as a group to a local soup kitchen. I know our soup kitchen encourages groups to come together on one night if they like. But obviously the Scouts offer a lot of other activities. My troop a million years ago organized a huge clean of the C and O Canal. We took care of press coverage, invited a Supreme Court justice and got Scouts from all over the city. All of us who were involved in the project learned a lot from it, and I suspect others like me wrote about it for their college applications.
I won’t comment on groups like NCL. I think posters have made argument for both sides of the “is it worth it?” issue.
As someone who has been on the board of multiple nonprofits and started an international nonprofit that now has over 300 adult volunteers I thought I’d make a few comments.
-Charities often limit the number of volunteers they’ll take because it takes more time and effort to train a volunteer than they provide in labor. These organizations take young volunteers because
a. they value the impetus to help people and they want to encourage it.
b. they hope one of the 30 teen volunteers they have in a week will become a useful, consistent volunteer who regularly shows up and has the maturity to do the work of an adult.
c. new people sometimes bring in new money.
-If you find a group you like but they don’t have any volunteer slots available ask what you can do to help them then do that job no matter how seemingly small. Once they see you’re serious about the work they’re more likely to give you a job.
-I often see kids on CC asking about creating their own charities. It’s much better to find a charity doing something that interests you then ask how you can support them. As someone upthread said, “Why reinvent the wheel?”
-It is sometimes nice for kids to have a friend with them when they volunteer but at some point there’s value in separating yourself from the herd. Any kid or adult who sticks with the people they walked in the door with is losing out on the experience of really getting to know the people they’re helping. Get out of your comfort zone!
-Kids often imagine that pricy service trips will wow admissions officers. The truth is that colleges would rather see that you tutored kids in your community than tutored kids in Haiti and you don’t need to go to Africa to plant a vegetable garden. Simple, consistent work leads to lifelong change more often than a flash in the pan service trip.