What is Direct Service?

(Makes up at least 80% of term of service hours)

• Direct service is defined as actual face to face service with your community and could take the form of mentoring, counseling, coaching for Special Olympics, planting trees, building houses, feeding the homeless, and countless other ways of assisting your community.
• At least 51% of your direct service must be face to face with community 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.
• In some cases where a member's direct service is less than 51% face to face service with the community but the proposed service does significantly benefit the mission of the non-profit organization (ex. creation of a web site) then on a case-by-case basis the Director of SIS or designee will review the service agreement and make a decision on whether the service qualifies for a Students in Service term of service.

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?

(can be up to 20% of your term of service hours)

Up to 20% of your service hours can be spent on striving to achieve service-related or professional goals you have for yourself. Member development goals must be related to their service or future service/professional goals. SIS encourages members to strive for goals that would help a member in developing their ability to better help their community now and/or in the future. Some examples of member development goals include:

• any trainings, readings, reflections, an elective class, symposiums, workshops, In-service, presentations, etc. that will help you in better serving your community
• 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-profits with their website
• taking a First Aid/ CPR class
• Development, implementation, and/or involvement in peer training
• Teacher education classes that provide added skills/knowledge for direct service activities
• reflecting on your service and providing a great story
• working out/exercising so member can pass the disaster relief worker strength test or firefighter exam
• take an extra coaching class so as to be better prepared to be a coach for Special Olympics
• take an intercultural communication class so as to work more effectively with immigration services
• time spent in workshops at a Service Learning Conference

What is not Member Development?

Any activity that is not related to your service or future service/professional goals such as running or going to the gym for personal health, doing yoga, dancing, eating right, walking your dog, general reading not related to service goals, or other activity that purely benefits the member personally.

What can count as Fundraising Hours?