What is Direct Service?

Direct service is defined as actual face to face service with your community and could take the form of mentoring, counseling, tutoring, coaching for Special Olympics, planting trees, building houses, feeding the homeless, and countless other ways of assisting your community. Our program is especially interested in encouraging our members to serve with disadvantaged youth as mentors/educators and to encourage friends and family to get involved in their community through events such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the National Day of Service, and many other volunteer events at your university or in your community.

At least 51% of your service must be direct service and less than 49% must be doing the administrative work that is usually needed to coordinate or support your direct service. Administrative functions can include marketing an event, staff meeting time, doing follow-up calls, filing paperwork, writing reports, etc.

What is Not Direct Service?

Any service that is purely administrative like a research position, clerical work, student assistant positions on campus not working with the community, any position on campus that does not serve the local community outside of the campus, any internship with a for-profit organization, or any position that involves activities on our prohibited list. List of prohibited activities

What is Member Development/Training Hours?

Up to 20% of your service hours can be spent on striving to achieve personal, professional, or service learning goals you have for yourself. These goals can be pretty flexible but we encourage members to strive for goals that would help you in developing your ability to better help your community now and/or in the future. Some examples of member development goals include:

• learning a new language such as Spanish to better serve the Hispanic community,
• to take a class in website design so as to help non-profites with their website,
• to go to a Service Learning Conference,
• to study for the LSAT so as to apply to Law School and perhaps later help your community with your law knowledge,
• and many other development opportunities that make you a better person and can benefit your community.