A Successful Community Service Project In 10 Steps

You have seen people who could use a hand, or someone has come to you asking for your help. They don’t have enough food, or their local park is littered with rubbish and not safe for their children to play in, or they feel lonely and want to know where they could have a friendly chat.

You want to help them, but you’re not sure how or where to start. Develop your own Community Service Project using our handy guide and make a difference in your community.

But first… what is Community Service?

It is exactly what is says: Community Service is a service that benefits your community. From collecting items to donate to people who can’t afford them, to teaching people skills for free or at a discounted rate, to volunteering to clean up parks and bushland, there are countless ways for you to help your community become better.

A Community Service Project, on the other hand, are more specific than general community service. Because they are a project, they are usually focussed on an event or goal with distinct checkpoints and/or endpoints.

Examples of a community service project are:

• Organising a weekly walking group in the local park for mums and bubs
• Organising Community Libraries or Pantries in neighbourhoods that encourage neighbours to share and borrow from each other easily and freely
• Hosting a donation drive to help with disaster recovery

But how do we go about developing a Community Service Project?

Step 1: Find Out What Your Community Needs

You might have an idea already about what your neighbourhood needs. You can also ask your friends and family if they have seen any problems that need a solution. Talk to your neighbours. Go online and join community discussion boards on Facebook or local forums. Speak to local not-for-profits (NFPs) and charities about their work.

Once you have an idea about what issues are in your area, spend some time researching these issues. Some questions you may look into are:

• What is the history of the issue?
• Is this a new thing or has it been around for a while?
• What can be done realistically to address this issue?
• Are there other groups that have tried to fix it before, or are there groups trying to address it now?

It’s also good to look into what events or projects your community has held before. What projects were successful? What sort of activities has the most participation?

Step 2: See What You Can Do

You’ve identified a few community service project ideas. Now, it’s time to ask yourself the tough questions. Be realistic and honest as you answer them:

• What skills and talents do you have that you can contribute to the project?
• How many people do you think will realistically join your project and help you?
• What skills and talents will these people have?
• How many hours a week can you and your potential group members devote to the project?
• When do you want to start and/or finish this project?
• How much money do you think you can realistically raise for the project?
• What do you currently have on hand (materials, resources, etc.) that will help you with your project?

Step 3: Choose A Community Service Project Idea

List the issues you want to address and the project ideas you have for each issue and rank them from most to least important. If you have a group of people that have agreed to join you, let them help you!

Vote or decide on which activity you will do from your list. Make sure that it is reasonable, doable, and will actually have an impact.

When assessing your idea’s impact, be honest with yourself and your group. What seems like a good idea initially may need changes as you start developing the project.

For example, you have decided that you will build a home for a homeless family. Are you going to build the home yourselves or raise money for professionals to do the work? Will it be more beneficial and economical to buy an existing home and let the family live in it? Will the family be living in the home rent-free or be charged minimal rent to help them build rental history?

Be realistic with your expectations and honest about the best way to reach your end goal.

Step 4: Develop A Plan

Now that you have chosen a community service project idea, it’s time to develop a plan of how to achieve it.

To start, write down exactly what you are hoping to accomplish. What is your big-picture goal? What smaller tasks will you need to do to get to that goal?

This is also when you begin to detail the practicalities of the project. How much equipment will you need? How many people will you need for each step of the project? How much time can each person commit to the project? Will you need to recruit more volunteers, and how will you organise them?

Remember, a large part of the success of the project is that it takes place safely and legally. Make sure that you take the time to check any compliances and liabilities that may relate to your project and research potential complications that can arise from your planned activities.

Step 5: Recruit Your Volunteers

If you don’t already have a group of people helping you, now is the time to get some people involved.

Ask your friends and family if they want to contribute to your project. Approach your neighbours, advertise in local newspapers and online community forums, or sign up for online volunteer databases such as https://govolunteer.com.au/

When you successfully recruit a new volunteer, make sure that you have their contact information (email and phone number) and what areas they are best able to help in, such as cooking, admin, social media management, etc.

Make sure that you also get specific time commitments from your members that are realistic. How much time can they contribute every week? How much time can they contribute on the day of the planned activities or event? Your members have lives outside of your community service project; be sure that they are not committing more than their schedules will allow.

Step 6: Make A Budget

You have goals, you have volunteers, and now you have to get specific with how much money you will need to make your community service project a reality.

There are many programs out there that can help you make organised budgets. Excel or Word also have pre-made templates to help you get started.

List the type of items that you will need – be specific! How many will you need for each item? What is the cost per item? What is the total cost?

Don’t forget that your budget will include more than just physical items involved with your project. If you need any licenses to hold your activities, pay someone to make an appearance, pay for any subscriptions for software programs, these will need to be factored into the budget as well.

Finally, be sure to consider practical needs, such as transportation costs, food costs, etc. for your volunteers on the day of your event or activity.

Step 7: Make A Timeline

You should already have a rough idea of how long your project will take, but now you will need to narrow it down to the specifics.

Pick an end date for your project that will give you enough time to put it together, Make sure that this date is approved by all necessary authorities.

Make specific schedules for each of your volunteers based on how much time each person can contribute and what areas of the project they are contributing. You don’t want to end up having to do everything yourself at the last minute because you assumed that they would just ‘do the work’! Check these schedules with your volunteers to be sure that they will be able to accomplish the tasks they are assigned within the timeframes that you need.

Mark specific goals on your timeline. By a certain date, a certain amount of the project should be completed, etc.

Make a note of any specific things that are critical to success. What are the dates for fundraising events? When do you need to begin online promotions? When do certain things need to be ordered or bought?

Step 8: Raise Money

Assess how much money you need to raise in order to complete your community service project and decide on your fundraising method. There are several ways to raise money: street collection, organising fundraising events, direct mail donations, asking for contributions through church or community newsletters, and more.

Look into crowdfunding websites such as GoFundMe or Kickstarter. Are these viable options for your plan?

Contact local businesses for sponsorship. Often, if a business can’t donate money, they can donate other things instead, like volunteers, food, and other items or resources. Offer them some sort of advertisement in return.

Whatever you choose to do, you will need to develop a strategy. Decide what your plan of attack will be to raise the money you need.

Top Tips for Raising Money:

1. Contact local officials to see if they have any tips, advice, or restrictions on how you can raise money
2. Check community grants. Many councils, private foundations, and organisations will give money to worthy projects
3. Try to get money from a variety of sources so that you’re not too reliant on just one if it happens to fail. Always have a backup plan.

Step 9: Get Publicity

You and your team know your community service project well, and now it’s time to tell the world about it. Be clear about the specifics of your project and why you’re doing it. You want to excite and inspire people who otherwise aren’t invested in your project with your promotions.

Most people are on social media in one way or another. Create social media accounts for your project and start promoting it through your own accounts. Ask your friends and family to follow your project and share it on their accounts. Update your followers with project activity, news, and other exciting and important information.

Start looking for journalists who have written about similar causes or events in the past. You may be able to find an email address or other contact information by looking at previously-published articles. Check local papers to see if there is information about whom to contact for local stories. Sign up to websites such as ‘Get The Word Out’ that will send your press releases and articles to media professionals across the country.

Be persistent! In a world where there are billions of posts and articles being published every day, being consistent and continuous with your promotional activity will help you stand out from the rest.

Step 10: Do Your Community Service Project

It’s finally time to execute all of your planning! Regardless of if your project is a one-off event or a series of continuous activities, that first event is the most crucial to know if your planning went well.

Make sure that as much as possible is done and set up the day before the event. Don’t stress yourself out more than you need to on the day of!

Send out reminders and checklists the day before to volunteers, participants, media, and anyone else who is important.

Have a detailed schedule for what you will do on the day of the event. Make a list of volunteer contact info, vendor contact info, emergency contact info, etc. Keep this with you at all times and keep a copy somewhere accessible on-site for your team.

Stay on top of how things are progressing, but remember to enjoy yourself! This is the result of your hard work.

Don’t forget to take lots of pictures and videos! If you can, stay active on social media during the event.

What’s Next?

With your first event or activity completed, you hopefully have experienced and learned new things. Take some time to reflect on this on your own. Get feedback from the volunteers and participants by talking to them or sending out a short survey.

• What did or didn’t go to plan?
• What went well? Why were those things successful?
• What can be improved for next time?

When you are reflecting on your community service project’s activities, make sure you consider if you achieved your initial project goals. Did you help your target group? How do you know if you have made an impact on the issue you originally identified?

Finally, take some time to celebrate. It’s a big job to organise a community service project, and you just completed one!

Need help with developing or detailing the logistics of your community service project? Want more traction? Call us on (02) 8774 2682  or contact us via our chat on the Collappor8 page. We’re more than happy to collaboratively discuss how we can find creative solutions to help you help your community the way that you want to.