Schools, courts, or other organizations often order community service hours for students, inmates, employees, or other individuals so that they can give back to their communities. These people can fulfil these hours through various activities, such as being volunteers at local non-profit organizations, taking part in clean-up events, or participating in community projects.
If you are someone who is required to fulfil community service hours but you are unable to dedicate your time physically due to certain reasons, you may be wondering if you can donate money instead. So, is it possible to donate money for community service hours?
Definition of Community Service and Community Service Hours
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, community service is described as a work that is done without pay to help people in a community. The one who can do it can be an individual or a group of people. There are several purposes of community service, including looking for compensation, inciting people to do community service, trying to get citizenship, replacing a criminal justice sanction, and so on.
As for community service hours, they are defined as a predetermined set of hours of volunteer service to be performed by the individuals as all, or part, of a sanction imposed.
Types of Community Services
There are several types of community services, including:
1. Educational community service
In the United States, some students are required by their educational jurisdictions to perform community service hours as one of requirements to graduate from schools. For example, some students in some high schools located in the state of Washington require to complete a total of 200 hours of community service if they want to get a diploma. In contrast, there are also some other schools that do not require community service hours for graduation. However, the number of students who get involved in their communities are pretty impressive. For instance, the students at Palo Alto High School located in Palo Alto, California, are known to like participating in community. Every year, they record about 45,000 hours of community service. To appreciate the hard work of these students, the College and Career Center of the school awards hundreds of their students the President’s Volunteer Service Award every year.
2. Court-ordered service
The court may order the convicted individuals to perform community service in the sentencing jurisdiction either entirely or partially. This may be required as substitution for incarceration or fines. Basically, a fine that should be paid by a defendant may be able to be reduced if that person is able to complete a prescribed number of hours of community service.
Sometimes, the defendant is given a chance to choose the kind of community service they want as long as it is documented by credible agencies like a non-profit organization. In some other cases, everything is designed by the court based on the crime done by the defendant. For instance, a litterer may be asked to clean a park or roadside while the one who commits drunk driving may have to speak in front of students to explain how dangerous drunk driving is.
3. Community service for institutions
There are a lot of institutions that give incentives or only require students or employees to participate in community service programs, such as charity events like runs or walks. They can work together or work on their own form of community service.
One of the programs in question is called the Johns Hopkins Takes Time for Schools by Johns Hopkins University. This one was launched on March 3, 2010 and is led by the president of Johns Hopkins University and the chief executive officer of Baltimore City Schools named Ronald J. Daniels. The man teamed up with human resources of the university and the community affairs departments to develop this program. The main purpose of the program is to provide support and assistance to Baltimore City School or BCS while at the same time providing both faculty and staff an avenue for community service.
4. Community service for religious purposes
Religion has become one of the most common reasons why people do community service. In fact, almost every major religious group emphasizes values of charity, compassion, and community. Religious people would know how important serving for the community or giving to others is. That’s why it is common to see many people gather in religious places, regardless of their wealth.
In Christian, groups and churches encourage Christians to do community services by holding a few things such as hosting Red Cross blood drives, offering free meals, having fall carnivals, providing shelters for homeless people, providing daycare, or holding Vacation Bible Schools for children. There are also a number of non-governmental or NGO community service organizations founded by Christians, including Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, and Samaritan’s Purse.
In Islam, volunteerism is promoted by calling its followers or the ummah to provide everything they want or have on their own free will, including time, knowledge, and wealth. This religion has a pillar known as zakat. For anyone who has no idea about zakat, it refers to the obligatory form of charity, especially to those in need. This can be in the form of giving money or providing physical support to others. Aside from zakat, there is also sadaqah, which is similar to zakat. Both of them are forms of worship for the sake of spiritual purification. Not only spending money, but volunteering in Islam can also be in the form of providing goods and services without spending money. The examples of this action include being an attendant to the blind, visiting the sick, participating in building houses for the homeless people, school for the poor children, or hospital for sick people, collecting and distributing donations, and working in the non-government Islamic organizations. In addition, providing intellectual support, such as being a teacher or tutor for the poor can also be counted as the act of volunteering.
Is Donating Money Counted for Community Service Hours?
For anyone who is wondering whether or not you can donate money for community service hours, the answer may vary, depending on the party that orders the community service. Some of them allow donations to replace community service hours, while some others do not.
For example, Georgia College and State University and Oklahoma State University do not count donations as community service. On the official website of Oklahoma State University, it is stated that donating money, which is known as philanthropy, is different from community service. Just like donating money, raising money, donating items, and purchasing items to donate cannot also be counted as community services. To be able to earn community service hours, it is a must for the students to give time rather than funds. Instead of donating money, the students can do a few things that count for community service such as handing out water during a race, checking people in, crowd management, and so on.
Similarly, Georgia College and State University also state that volunteer recognition and awards are earned through time served, meaning donating money does not court for service hours. The ones that count for service hours include participating in dance marathons, relay for life, or washing cards for a charity car wash.
Donating Money for Court-Ordered Service
If you are a defendant who has been ordered by the court to complete community service hours, wants to donate money for community service hours, and has approval by your probation office or court to do this, you may want to consider making your donation to North Texas Food Bank, especially if you are in Texas. In order to do that, it is a must for you to do it in person. It means there is no way for you to do it by checks or debit or credit cards. You can do it by visiting Perot Family Campus’ HEB Canned Food Drop Off door at 3677 Mapleshade Lane, Plano, TX 75075 United States. When you are there, you can ask a member or a volunteer to help you. Do not forget to also ask for a receipt of your donation just in case you need it.
Bottom Line
In conclusion, whether or not you can donate money for community service hours depends on the party that orders the community service. That is the reason why it is important for you to ask the party that orders you the community service whether or not making donation in the form of money counted for community service hours before donating. If the party does count donating money for community service hours, make sure to donate to a trusted organization so that your donation will not go to waste.
