Find In-Person and Online Volunteer Opportunities for Teens: Ideas for Virtual Learners

April 15, 2024 by Valerie Kirk

5 min to read

An online student finds virtual community service ideas for high school students.

High school is an exciting time for students—from college preparation and sports to extracurricular activities. Volunteering is a great line item for teens to add while building their college portfolio—especially for virtual school students like the ones who attend a Connections Academy-supported school. Fulfilling community service hours can even help them shadow professionals and try out potential jobs as they decide on college majors or other post-high school options.

There are many ways students can get their online volunteer hours while pursuing their interests. But what if their passions don’t line up with what their school offers? Consider finding volunteer ideas near you or online.

We’ve compiled a list of resources to help you and your teen find both in-person and virtual community service ideas.

Finding Online Volunteer Opportunities for High School Students

1. Smithsonian Digital Volunteers

Great for: Students with an interest in museums, zoos, history, sciences, math, literature, arts, and more

Community Service Type: In-person and virtual

Make an impact while learning something new! The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex. From transcribing historical documents (and making them more accessible) to identifying and labeling plants, there is an array of online volunteer opportunities for teens that can support the Smithsonian’s mission.

If you prefer a mix of hands-on and virtual experiences, there are plenty of in-person community service opportunities available as well.

2. Best Buddies

Great for: Students with an interest in museums, zoos, history, sciences, math, literature, arts, and more

Community Service Type: In-person and virtual

Being kind isn’t just a saying, it’s something we do, and it’s as easy as making a new friend. Best Buddies is the world’s largest organization dedicated to ending the social, physical, and economic isolation of 200 million people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).

Their online community service opportunities include joining (or starting) a virtual school chapter, being a virtual speech coach, and more. If you would like to take action in person, they have fundraisers, friendship walks, and more.

Pro tip: Working with people with IDD can create empathy in your students. Let them practice this newfound self-awareness of special needs students in an online school setting or brick-and-mortar school setting daily.

3. Zooniverse

Great for: Students with an interest in biology, history, language, literature, arts, nature and climate, medicine, physics, space, and the social sciences

Community Service Type: Virtual

Zooniverse is an exciting platform for people-powered research that provides high school volunteer opportunities for everything from discovering new exoplanets and studying placenta profiles, to classifying animals and identifying teeth.

Teens looking for online volunteer hours can download the app to conduct research anywhere and spend as much or as little time as they’d like learning something new—while on the go or from the comfort of home!

4. Catchafire

Great for: Students with an interest in developing professional business skills within fields such as marketing, IT, social media, development, HR, graphic design, website development, coding, and more

Community Service Type: Virtual

Catchafire is a volunteer search tool on a mission to mobilize the world’s talent for good and is exclusively for online volunteer projects. Each one has a timeline that can range anywhere from an hour to a few weeks.

Whether your high school student is looking for a few online volunteer hours or an extensive community service project, they can help various organizations with tasks like running their social media accounts, editing photos, writing thank-you letters, and more.

The high school volunteer opportunities available on Catchafire are particularly valuable for seniors looking to make an impact while getting on-the-job experience. Online community service projects where your students can make an impact for an organization while testing out a potential career path are great ways to get volunteer hours and bolster their resume simultaneously.

5. Teen Life

Great for: Students with a passion for helping animals, those with special needs, the homeless, providing international relief, preserving the environment, teaching literacy and education, and more

Community Service Type: Virtual and In-Person

A gateway to over 10,000 academic and experiential online volunteer opportunities for teens, the Teen Life platform is a robust search tool that connects parents, teens, and counselors across the U.S. Targeted for grades 7-12, their community service projects are both in-person and in virtual.

6. BeMyEyes

Great for: Students interested in helping others, individuals who enjoy meeting new people from different backgrounds

Community Service Type: Virtual

BeMyEyes is a virtual app connecting blind people with sighted individuals to help through live videos. The app aims to support 285 million people who are blind or low-sighted with challenges they may face throughout their day.

High school volunteers can help virtually with tasks like

Color matching
Reading fine print on labels
Checking prices at a store
Reading transit signs

Through BeMyEyes, teenagers connect with blind and low-vision users worldwide. Since the app is used in different countries with various languages, there’s always a need for bilingual volunteers. This is a great opportunity to meet other people and a unique way to use foreign language skills.

A group of online students sort through donations as they volunteer in their community.

Volunteer Opportunities for High School Students Near Me

If your high school student is looking for more volunteer opportunities that they can do in person, they can check out other programs like those offered by the

Humane Society or animal shelter (for animal lovers)
Library (for book lovers)
American Red Cross
AmeriCorps

While many high school students volunteer to fulfill required community service hours for school or extracurricular clubs, there are many benefits to encouraging community service for teenagers such as improving their mental health, expanding their social circle, connecting to mentors, learning soft skills, and more.

Students who attend an online school like Connections Academy can take advantage of the flexibility of online school by volunteering at times during the day, when they can be the most impactful rather than waiting only for weekends, after-school hours, or summer breaks. To learn more about enrolling in online school, download our free eGuide.