Volunteer Opportunities
Whatever your age, your level of education, your skills and talents, the American Red Cross welcomes you as a volunteer. We aim to do our best to make your volunteer experience valuable and meaningful.
There are many possible volunteer assignments available at your local Red Cross. We depend on our volunteers to take on specific jobs and make them their own. We need committed people available on a regular basis for leadership positions. We will also from time to time need people for short-term projects.
Click on the Volunteer Match button to search for our chapter's volunteer opportunities. Check by regularly if you don't see anything you are interested in today.
We depend on volunteers, who constitute 97 percent of our total work force, to carry on our humanitarian work:
- Every year, the Red Cross is there for hurricane, earthquake, and other disaster victims--including 150 families forced from their homes by fire every day.
- 175,000 volunteers worked to prevent, prepare for and respond to nearly 64,000 disaster incidents last year.
- Over 15 million Americans turn to us to learn first aid, CPR, swimming, and other health and safety skills. Last year, more than 230,000 people volunteered to teach those courses.
- Half the nation's blood supply--six million pints annually--is collected by more than 190,000 Red Cross volunteers.
- Among our emergency services for the men and women of the armed forces is the delivery of urgent family messages--one every 22 seconds.
- Over 24,000 volunteers serve as chairs, members of boards of directors, or on advisory boards for local Red Cross units - chapters, Blood Services regions, and military stations.
- As part of the International Red Cross Movement, we work to ease human suffering on a global scale.
Don't wait another day to find out how good it feels to wear the Red Cross emblem. Contact your local Red Cross for more information right now.
Calling All Seniors
We need you. Become a national disaster team volunteer.
Travel to exotic and not-so-exotic places. Meet people whose lives have been struck by disaster -- and help them.
A hurricane hits or a tornado touches down and suddenly a community that was thriving hours before is devastated. The efforts of local disaster volunteers often are quickly dwarfed in comparison to the destruction and number of people affected. It happens all the time and when it does the Red Cross moves into action sending highly trained and experienced Red Cross disaster volunteers into affected areas quickly and efficiently. It can be five blocks or 5,000 miles from your home.
Have we piqued your interest?
To become a member of this volunteer program you must be recommended by your local Red Cross Chapter. In addition, you must regularly participate in an extensive disaster-training program and continue to serve as a member of your local Red Cross Chapter disaster program.
What else does it take?
- Flexibility to serve on disaster operations anywhere in the United States or its territories -- with little or no advanced warning -- for a minimum of three weeks.
- Willingness to live under adverse conditions and work long hours each day for extended periods.
- Good health, including the stamina, endurance and physical capability to protect the health and safety of disaster victims and other disaster relief workers.
- A sense of professional spirit and adventure.
- Disaster Training
What kind of training is available? The Red Cross provides specialized training for anyone interested in joining the Disaster Program.
