Student-Specific Benefits

Why volunteer as a student?

Professional Benefits for Students

1. Career Direction
   • Experience what working in a certain company, field or work environment is like.
2. New Professional Skills
   • Build skills and get experience that improves your job qualifications, enhances your resume and makes you a more competitive job candidate.
3. Leadership Opportunities
   • Challenge yourself! Community engagement can be added to your resume and is viewed positively by employers.
4. JOB REFERENCES!
   • Job applications often require 3+ references. Ongoing volunteerism is a great way to ensure you have them by graduation.
5. Network, Meet Professional Contacts
   • Make valuable contacts and learn about job opportunities.

Personal Benefits for Students

1. New Friendships and Social Connections
   • Meet and build bonds with fellow volunteers, nonprofit workers and advocates for the cause.
   • Volunteering increases social interaction and helps build a support system based on common interests. It helps expand your social network and practice social skills with others.
2. Sense of Meaning and Purpose
   
   • Find satisfaction in helping others, and discover purpose and passion for an important cause.
3. Stress Reduction, Happiness Boost
   • Research shows that volunteering causes a release of dopamine in the brain (Mayo Clinic; Berkeley). Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of well-being, among many others.
   • The stress reduction and happiness boost occurs for individuals with both high and low levels of initial well-being, and those with low initial levels of well-being experience even greater benefits from volunteering (Berkeley).
4. Greater Life Satisfaction, Overall Health
   • Those who volunteer consistently and more frequently experience greater benefits (Berkeley).
   • A Longitudinal Study of Aging found that individuals who volunteer have lower mortality rates than those who do not volunteer, even when controlling for age, gender and physical health (Mayo Clinic).

Tax Deductions

• The IRS allows volunteers to deduct un-reimbursed expenditures made incident to the rendering of services to the University of Southern Indiana. Examples of deductible expenses include automobile mileage, bus and cab fares, parking and toll fees, special uniforms, telephone bills, entertainment and mailings. The IRS does not allow deductions for the value of volunteer time.
• A complete description of federal deductions for volunteers can be found in IRS Publication #526, Deductions for Charitable Contributions.