Gaining relevant experience and leveraging it into an entry-level position with a nonprofit, school, government agency, or corporation can help you become a community service coordinator. In this field, experience and a demonstrated aptitude for the job are more important than any specific educational background. Volunteer coordinator is another common title for this position, which is found in the fields of public relations, community engagement, community outreach, and human resources.
You must be able to rally volunteers, engage the community, and manage community service projects in order to become a community service coordinator. Soup kitchens, clothing drives, and health fairs are all common community service projects run by churches, synagogues, and other religious organizations. If you take a leadership role in these types of extracurricular activities, it will fill your resume with positions that demonstrate your ability to do this type of work.
Students at all levels of education have opportunities to develop their community service skills. Every year, most school groups have service projects that they must manage. Even if you don’t care for student politics, the experience you gain recruiting voters, establishing a platform, and advocating for your peers on important issues demonstrates the core skills you’ll need to work as a community service coordinator.
Applying for jobs with organizations that focus on community service, community outreach, or large-scale public recruitment is the best way to develop a salaried trajectory for your community work. All of these jobs necessitate the ability to organize and engage. It’s probably easiest to look for positions with the title of community service coordinator at nonprofits, government agencies, and schools, but other jobs, such as political campaign workers and managers, frequently perform the same functions.
Once you’ve gained some community-based experience, you can look for a corporate position in the community engagement department of a large corporation. Many large corporations have employees whose job it is to organize employees to participate in community service projects. The majority of these coordinators work in the public relations or human resources departments, but some companies also have a community service department. You can progress from here to work for the corporation’s foundation, where you can set strategic policy for how the company should invest in the communities where it operates.
Service coordinators will almost certainly be required to have a bachelor’s degree, especially in more stable positions at larger corporations and nonprofits. Marketing, business administration, public administration, and public relations are all majors that will help you achieve your goal of becoming a community service coordinator. Almost any field of study could be applicable to this position.