Wielding loppers and wearing hiking boots, Breece Eagar hacked at invasive autumn olive shrubs on a late December afternoon. The branches were dense, the weather was cold and stray rose vines caught her gloves, but this was what she’d come for.
For the last year, Eagar, 27, has regularly joined a group of volunteers at an oak savanna in northern Illinois to do ecological restoration work. She has learned about birds and plants, been inspired to take up home gardening, made friends over post-work chili and cornbread — and, most importantly, gotten her hands dirty.
“You’re not doomscrolling, feeling completely paralyzed and helpless,” she said of volunteering with Small Waters Education in Harvard, Illinois, the nonprofit restoring the oak savanna. “It’s ‘Wow, I’m actually making a difference.’”
Eagar is among the members of Gen Z who are keeping the tradition of volunteering alive — and discovering its potential for helping them get offline. As Gen Z seeks out phone-free experiences and extols going analog, some volunteer organizations have worked to recruit them and tailor programming to their interests. National and regional volunteer organizations have seen rising interest from teens and young adults in the last few years, several organizers said.
The American Red Cross, which provides disaster relief, blood donation and other volunteer services, has seen more Gen Z volunteers over the last three years, following a drop after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, said Matt Bertram, the organization’s vice president of volunteer services.
“For us, it’s looking up in terms of getting young people to volunteer,” Bertram said. “There is a yearning from a lot of young people to do things where they’re connected with folks.”
Eagar doesn’t normally post on social media about volunteering. But last month, wondering whether peers on TikTok would engage if she promoted the topic, she recorded a time-lapse as she worked at the oak savanna.
A few weeks later, Eagar, who works in marketing, posted the video with text overlaid: “No one talks about how volunteering is one of the best ways to fight existential dread.”
The post got nearly 80,000 views in about a week. Eagar said she received messages asking for tips on getting involved, and viewers echoed her sentiment in dozens of comments.
“We get so caught up in the rat race or being busy with our lives that we forget it takes a village,” said Eagar, who said her volunteer work has “snowballed” into opportunities to attend other events and career network. “I always walk away feeling almost a relief that I did my part. I feel so connected to people.”
Challenges remain for organizations trying to persuade young people to volunteer, and not everyone is seeing an increase. Nichole Barrett, program director at the Rural Outreach Center in western New York, which relies on volunteers for tutoring and mentoring people living in rural poverty, said most Gen Z volunteers she meets show up to fulfill school or work requirements. Getting them to return can be hard, though she said she has seen a recent uptick in those who stay even after they’re no longer obligated.
It can be particularly difficult to attract men and boys, said Barrett and other organizers. Across ages, men volunteer less than women, and men without college degrees are far less likely to get involved, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the research group American Institute for Boys and Men.
About 26 percent of women and 22 percent of men aged 18 to 29 said they volunteered in 2023, the data show. Once students are no longer in school, where there are often community service requirements, it can also be harder to attract them as volunteers.
Akhil Mehra, a 17-year-old high school senior from Vienna, Virginia, agreed that it can be tough to get kids, especially boys, to sign up for volunteering. But he was easily sold when he started helping with his church’s food drives as a middle-schooler during the pandemic. Now, he estimates he is on track to hit 500 volunteer hours with the Red Cross by the time he graduates.
“One hour of my time can have an insanely drastic impact on somebody else’s time,” he said. “It’s a little bit of an inexplicable feeling.”
To attract young people, volunteer organizations have focused on digital recruiting strategies and offering more flexible opportunities, such as one-time projects rather than weekly commitments.
At the nonprofit Hands On Atlanta, marketing and communications manager Kahiah Polidore encourages people to take videos while volunteering and post about it afterward, like Eagar did in Illinois. The approach has boosted online engagement for the organization, which connects volunteers to other nonprofits in Atlanta.
Polidore is preparing to launch a social media ambassador program next month — modeled after a successful effort by a New Jersey nonprofit, Jersey Cares — that will allow participants to log community service hours by making posts and videos about upcoming volunteer opportunities. Polidore hopes the program will help Hands On Atlanta recruit more members of Gen Z, especially those under 24.
“We’ve been seeing that they want to volunteer,” she said. “What we figured is that they’re already making Reels and TikToks and sharing what they like and don’t like about organizations, so we hope to get in there and be one that they like.”
The Red Cross has also turned to social media for recruitment, with organizers focusing more on promoting the benefits of volunteering than on emphasizing an obligation to help.
Those benefits are many, Bertram said: Volunteering provides a sense of community, improves mental health, allows people to use new or dormant skills, helps them see how others live and gets them out of the house. Those are good reasons to sign up, he tells people.
“It doesn’t have to be just 100 percent altruistic,” Bertram said.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the youth mentorship organization, has expanded some programs to meet a steadily growing demand from younger volunteers, said chief impact officer Ginneh Baugh. Gen Z students are starting to volunteer at a younger age than some millennials did, she said, and they tend to report a desire for meaningful real-life interactions.
“They’re making sure it’s a genuine connection,” Baugh said. “It’s not in service of social media.”
The organization still needs more mentors, particularly for boys, and it has worked on creating events that align with Gen Z interests, Baugh said; for instance, working with the beauty chain Ulta to offer a skin care activity for mentors and mentees. It also partnered this year with the razor brand Gillette to draw young male mentors through flag football games.
Becoming a “big sister” to an elementary-schooler five years ago was a formative high school experience for Mary Ann Rickles. Now a 20-year-old student at the University of Alabama and a member of the Big Brothers Big Sisters National Youth Council, a leadership board, she plans to pursue a career related to community service and nonprofit work.
Volunteering, Rickles believes, helps “you understand something beyond yourself.” She advised other young people to “just go for it.”
“In a lot of ways, it helps you get out of your own head,” Rickles said. “In a time filled with so much darkness sometimes, especially [for] my generation who are on their phone and have a lot of mental health issues, pouring into other people is fulfilling.”
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