Need ideas for volunteer or community service projects this summer for your residents? Here are a few ideas from the staff at notjustbingo.com to help get you started.
To save these ideas and check them off as you go, dowload the free printable Checklist here!
- Organize charity auctions that involve your residents, like a bachelor auction or a rocking chair-a-thon
- Collect clothes to donate to the local homeless shelter
- Set up a bake sale featuring the goodies made by the Baking Club
- Host a mentoring sessions for local kids
- Knit baby blankets to donate to a local children’s hospital
- Host a summer reading program to teach kids to read on Saturday mornings
- Bake and deliver cookies to local first responders
- Start a recycling program at your facility
- Plant a backyard garden and donate the harvest
- Build birdhouses for your backyard birds
- Organize a food drive to collect canned goods to donate to a local food bank
- Make care packages for overseas troops
- Clip coupons to give to staff members
- Teach classes, like baking, sewing, or crochet, to community members
- Hold walk-a-thons in your facility to raise money for charity
- Do random acts of kindness like recycling a neighbor’s newspaper
- Make toys to donate to a local homeless shelter
- Read to bedridden residents in your facility
- Host a coat drive for the local homeless shelter
- Crochet scarves to sell to raise money for charity
- Create backyard habitats for local wildlife
- Start a reading buddies program with a local elementary school class
Let us know what your community service projects you’ve used at your facility!
About Not Just Bingo:
Not Just Bingo is an online resource of fun, senior activity ideas for activity professionals of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. They have been providing fun activity ideas online since 2009, and continue to assist activity professionals across the country by creating meaningful and engaging activity ideas for their residents that go “beyond bingo.” Not Just Bingo feels privileged to help activity directors better the living experiences of their residents while demonstrating that a senior’s quality of life can actually improve when they move to a nursing facility!
Want even more ideas each month? Visit www.notjustbingo.com for how-to activity ideas, monthly newsletters, and daily holiday ideas. You can also sign up for the Notjustbingo Membership to receive specialized activity ideas to keep your residents and staff engaged, active, and having fun!
We have shredded newspapers to give to an animal rescue center for bedding for the animals. Also, we cut up hot dogs and put them in baggies for treats for the animals.
Pingback: April Daily Holidays & Observances Printable Calendar - S&S Blog
Thanks for sharing these points. In our daily life, old people don’t get proper treatment, food & medicine from time to time. Eldercare industry provides loving care to senior citizens.
With my memory Care residents..
We have signed Christmas Cards for Veterans and sent them to a Veterans Home
Prepped a craft for a Daycare and donated it.
Made loaves of different quick bread and thanked our local police and 1st responders with it.
Valentines w/ candy for a homeless shelter.
They love doing for others! And it makes them feel like they are doing something!!
Last year we made no-sew fleece blankets for foster children. We are looking for a similar project that will involve folks who don’t sew, crochet, or knit.
Our Senior Citizens not only cut out coupons for clients that come into the building for social services, they have made pillows for kids who have lost a loved one over the past year & who will attend Hospice’s “Camp Courageous”. These are given as an article of comfort. Some of my folks have made lap blankets for Hospice patients as well as for new babies when we distribute toys & clothes at Christmas. Some have worked in the toyshop at Christmas sorting, organizing, or refilling the tables with toys. They have also stuffed envelopes for our Community Foundation as they seek monies to distribute to other groups that need funding. We have cleaned & sanitized toys in the church’s nursery. And many have offered to stand at The Salvation Army’s kettles (inside the grocery store) for an hour or two ringing the bells to help raise funds for our programs. Some also help prepare food or dish up food to give out during our Childrens’ Summer Feeding Program which distributes a free hot lunch daily to children during the summer from age 1 through until they graduate from High School.
Hi Jeanie, thank you so much for sharing these activities with us. It is so great to hear the ways you and your seniors are giving back to the community!