Support the Starr Ranch Sanctuary’s Work
ALL SUMMER LONG! Please consider supporting Starr Ranch. Your donation will help them: Enroll students in their Field Ecology and Junior Biologist programs, now in their second decade of giving insight into nature and imparting valuable practical skills, support their seasonal restoration and education staff – recent college graduates from all over the country who come to live and work at Starr Ranch for 6-10 months to learn about their innovative approaches to restoration, wildlife research, and education, remove invasive plant species – without the use of toxic chemicals – in preparation to restore rare habitats such as coastal sage scrub, which is found only here in Southern California, increase the quality of the viewing experience of Starr Ranch's webcams – their broadcasts heard 'round the world, and maintain Starr Ranch. This includes twelve buildings, eight vehicles, two tractors plus implements, and 18 miles of roads. Most importantly, it will help preserve this special place. From all of the folks at Starr Ranch, thank you!.
Tutor Youth at After School Learning Centers with Teen Challenge of Southern California
Support children living in urban communities who are most at risk of academic and social failure. Trained volunteer tutors provide academic mentoring, homework help, literacy tutoring, leadership formation coaching, and digital literacy guidance within their neighborhood learning center programs. Background check and onboarding orientation required to work with minors.
Deliver Spiritual Encouragement as a Speaker with Teen Challenge of Southern California
Share motivational messages and biblical insights with students enrolled in the recovery program. Regional centers are actively seeking local pastors, faith leaders, and Christian speakers to bring a word of encouragement to chapel services or group study settings to support student resilience.
Offer a Transformative Skills Workshop with My Friend’s Place
Share your talents by designing and leading a workshop in creative arts (theatre, writing, or visual media), employment readiness, health and wellness, or essential life skills. These educational programs open new doors for young people and help them gain the tools, confidence, and perspective they need to thrive.
Support Seasonal Educational Workshops with Parents’ Place Family Resource and Empowerment Center
Assist with the execution of on-site family programs, including community workshops, informational open houses, parent educational panels, and transition conferences. Volunteers handle multi-tier assignments such as preparing sign-in stations, greeting incoming families, arranging classroom spaces, distributing literature packets, and supporting cleanup.
Engage in Diverse Community Services with Los Angeles LGBT Center
Join the volunteer network to support a wide array of essential programs caring for the LGBTQ+ community. Vetted individuals can contribute across multiple departments based on current center needs and personal skills. Opportunities include serving meals to seniors or unhoused youth, assisting with community group check-ins, mentoring youth, providing legal and health clinic clerical support, helping with back-office administration, and staffing major summer fundraising and cultural events. All volunteers must complete an initial orientation process to match with open shifts. Requires a volunteer profile setup, orientation, and background check for sensitive roles.
Share Skills and Passion with Covenant House California
Share your talents and passions to provide opportunities for healing and growth to young people overcoming homelessness and trafficking. Individuals, corporate teams, and civic groups can design custom volunteer experiences based on what they love to do. Engagement ideas include cooking or hosting a group meal, leading wellness workshops (yoga, meditation, or gardening), providing educational tutoring, or hosting recreational events like birthday celebrations, game nights, movie nights, or beach days. Volunteers can also contribute via professional skills like providing haircuts or organizing community donation drives. Requires completing a volunteer application, orientation, and a background check.
Share Skills and Passion with Covenant House California
Share your talents and passions to provide opportunities for healing and growth to young people overcoming homelessness and trafficking. Individuals, corporate teams, and civic groups can design custom volunteer experiences based on what they love to do. Engagement ideas include cooking or hosting a group meal, leading wellness workshops (yoga, meditation, or gardening), providing educational tutoring, or hosting recreational events like birthday celebrations, game nights, movie nights, or beach days. Volunteers can also contribute via professional skills like providing haircuts or organizing community donation drives. Requires completing a volunteer application, orientation, and a background check.
Assemble Academic Supply Kits with Crime Survivors Resource Center
Support the summer Backpack Program to help children who have been victimized by crime. Volunteers assist with collecting, sorting, and packing essential school supplies—including pencils, pens, notebooks, rulers, and calculators—into durable, washable, multi-compartment backpacks. This program ensures impacted children receive valuable and necessary tools for their primary education ahead of the new school year.
Coordinate Professional Roundtable Workshops with Crime Survivors Resource Center
Assist with the logistics, setup, and execution of the Service Providers Roundtables hosted throughout Southern California. Volunteers support these professional training sessions and workshops by managing check-in desks, distributing informational packets, and arranging meeting rooms. These roundtables bring together psychologists, lawyers, and victim advocates to focus on the newest and most innovative efforts to assist survivors.
Provide Individual Program and Day Center Support with Downtown Women’s Center
Engage directly with women and gender-diverse individuals navigating homelessness. Ongoing individual positions span several crucial departments: Kitchen Assistants chop, measure, and serve three daily meals; Day Center Helpers distribute toiletries, manage administrative desks, and welcome incoming participants; Residence Hosts monitor supportive housing lobbies and sign for packages; and Learning Center Tutors offer computer literacy guidance and employment readiness coaching. To access these on-site shifts, individuals must first complete an intake profile and attend a virtual volunteer training session covering trauma-informed care and de-escalation strategies. Must be 18 years or older and attend a mandatory virtual orientation training.
Lead Educational Cooking Demos and Workshops with Garden School Foundation
Share culinary, nutritional, or environmental expertise by leading community workshops. Volunteers with specialized experience design and facilitate interactive cooking demonstrations or garden workshops during scheduled Community Garden Days. These presentations help strengthen local connections between food justice, environmental stewardship, and community health.
Become a Community Educator for Alzheimer’s Association California
Alzheimer's Association Community Educators are volunteer public speakers who provide Alzheimer's Association education programs to community audiences. They deliver approximately 12 presentations (in person or virtually) annually using prepared Alzheimer’s Association consumer education programs on a variety of care and support topics and more.
Become a Community Representative for Alzheimer’s Association California
Alzheimer's Association Community Representatives are community engagers that raise awareness of Alzheimer's Association programs, provide basic disease information, and link consumers to Alzheimer’s Association services. They deliver approximately 12 presentations (in person or virtually) annually using prepared Alzheimer’s Association consumer education programs on a variety of care and support topics.
Create a Safe Environment & Support Group Facilitators for Alzheimer’s Association California
Support Group Facilitators create a safe, open environment where people share their feelings, thoughts and experiences in a combined effort to better cope with and manage the shared problems of dementia. Support Group Facilitators facilitate groups of caregivers or people living with dementia to provide social and educational support helping group members provide emotional support to one another and more.
Become an Advocate for Public Policy Change for Alzheimer’s Association California Southland Chapter
Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most critical public health issues in America. That’s why the Alzheimer’s Impact Movement (AIM), the Alzheimer’s Association and their advocates are unrelenting. They fight to support Alzheimer's and dementia research funding and advance bipartisan legislation that will have a positive and meaningful impact on people living with Alzheimer's and their caregivers today and in the future.
Empower the Next Generation of Readers: Donate to YouthLit today
Donations to the American Youth Literacy Foundation directly support the expansion of the groundbreaking FUNetix reading app, a tool capable of teaching children how to read in just 12 hours. Because the foundation is dedicated to ending youth illiteracy, financial contributions help ensure this vital learning tool remains completely free for underserved children and families. A gift today is a direct investment in a child's lifelong academic and personal success.
Support Aviva Family and Children’s Services
For 110 years, Aviva has provided services to meet critical needs for their clients and address the most pervasive issues in their communities. Their goals are ambitious. They are committed to improving children’s lives, strengthening families, enhancing their local communities, and creating a more equitable society. Their bold vision requires a large circle of donors and partners and they are deeply grateful for their essential support. As Aviva continues to optimize their resources and expand their capacity, they invite you to join them in fostering more stable, healthy, resilient, and happy lives for thousands of children and families.
Donate to Support the Bolsa Chica Conservancy
You can help the Bolsa Chica Conservancy Educate, Restore, and Inspire. Donation dollars are directly applied to STEAM based education programs about wetland science, active habitat restoration projects, and to inspire a proactive and respectful community that works together to protect this natural gem of Huntington Beach that they call Bolsa Chica.
Train Youth in Safe Tool Operation with The ReDiscover Center
Share woodworking or tinkering skills to empower the next generation of makers. Specialized volunteers assist center staff in teaching children and teenagers how to safely handle basic hand tools, mitre saws, drills, and clamps. Tinker lab assistants monitor the safety perimeter, demonstrate proper tool posture, and guide youth as they construct physical wood and plastic prototypes from scratch. Must be 18 years or older with demonstrated comfort or background using basic hand and power tools.
Featured Projects
Join Big Sunday for Relaxation and Community Care at Wellness Mondays
Big Sunday,
dom@bigsunday.org,
(323) 549-9944
If you're feeling like you could use a holiday – or a way to relax and recharge while meeting great, helpful folks -you're going to love Big Sunday's Wellness Mondays. Every Monday at 10 AM, we'll be hosting a different, fantastic sound bath here at Big Sunday HQ. Every Sound Bath is wonderful, designed to help you relax, recharge, and reconnect with yourself and others. They're all incredibly relaxing, totally free, and everyone is invited! We want everyone to be as comfortable as possible and suggest that you bring your own mat, cushion, pillow, blanket, eye cover, etc. – whatever you need to feel relaxed and cozy!
Create Mosaic Suns With Big Sunday at our Art Tuesdays
Big Sunday,
josh@bigsunday.org,
(323) 549-9944
Every Tuesday, volunteers join us at Big Sunday HQ to decorate mosaics in the shape of a sun. These beautiful works of art are then donated to schools, shelters, food banks – anywhere in need of a little more sunshine and warmth! This wonderful project is the brainchild of our old friend Cathy Weiss and led by Cathy and our own Big Sunday staff. You don’t need to be a brilliant artist to participate – just friendly and sincere. Just about everybody who’s worked on one tells us the mosaic suns are their favorite Big Sunday project!.
Join Big Sunday for our Accessible Wednesday at 10am Event
Big Sunday,
passion@bigsunday.org,
(323) 549-9944
A spin-off of our flagship weekly event TM@10, Accessible Wednesdays @ 10 (AW@10 for short) hosts volunteers every Wednesday to work on hands-on projects to help local nonprofits. The difference? The projects we do on Wednesdays are specially geared to be accessible to folks of all ability levels! Our guests of honor at each AW@10 are groups of volunteers with intellectual and developmental disabilities from some of our partner organizations like AbilityFirst, ETTA, PassAbility, Partners For Potential, and Arroyo Development Services. At Big Sunday, we firmly believe that everyone has something to give, and that everyone has fun helping others! Anyone and everyone is invited to join us for AW@10, whether it’s with a group or as an individual who wants to help out and hang out with some of the best volunteers in the business. From assembling goodie bags for unhoused people and their dogs to decorating pumpkins for underserved kids at Halloween, there’s always something fun going on at AW@10. This week we will be sorting cloths for donations.
Join Big Sunday for our Thursday Morning at 10am Events
Big Sunday,
nicolo@bigsunday.org,
(323) 549-9944
TM@10 (Thursday Morning @ 10) is not only one of our favorite programs, but it’s one of our most popular, too! Every Thursday morning from 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM, volunteers gather at Big Sunday HQ to work on hands-on projects that help local nonprofits. We’ve assembled birthday gifts for folks in shelters, written letters to soldiers stationed overseas, packed backpacks for ex-gang members starting college, made fleece blankets for shelter kittens, and done about a thousand other fun and meaningful things. In classic Big Sunday fashion, it’s a great way for people to meet new people, work together, and enjoy some laughs while helping someone else. It’s no wonder we have so many regulars who come every single week! We’re regularly joined by groups like AbilityFirst, Partners For Potential, and of course the famous TM Ladies! Projects we’ve worked on have benefited organizations like Covenant House, Carlos Santa Ana Academy, PATH, Exceptional Children’s Foundation, Angelus Plaza, and countless others.
Join Big Sunday for our Food Pantry and Food Fridays @ 10am
Big Sunday,
madison@bigsunday.org,
(323) 549-9944
Big Sunday has given away mountains of food over many years, but now we’re going to make it a weekly event. Our Food Pantry will be open year ‘round and will contain both perishable and non-perishable food. We’re also introducing Food Fridays. Every Friday morning we’ll be open from 10-11:30 to sort and pack food. We’ll also distribute to nonprofits and schools from all over town who will distribute the food to hungry and grateful people in their communities. All ages are welcome. Groups, too! We need volunteers, collectors, donors and sponsors.