Good day:
Is there a specific form for documenting community service time or does the organization just write a letter sting your time at service?
Best regards,
The organization will write a letter stating how many hours your have
Thank you for the reply.
Is that for Seniors as well as cadets?
CAPR 39-3Quotei. Community Service Ribbon. Awarded to members who complete 60 hours of
community service outside of Civil Air Patrol. The service must be verified by a volunteer
coordinator. Community service projects conducted by CAP units do not qualify for this recognition.
A bronze clasp may be added for each additional 60 hours of community service.
CAPR 39-3 does not state that you need a letter of verification of volunteer hours. It states that your hours need to be verified by the volunteer coordinator. Many Non-Profits send letters, but some don't. In an effort to reduce paperwork and make it easier for our cadets to build volunteer hours, our squadron is looking at one form to consolidate this effort. The form simply has a place to log the Date, Hours worked on the date, Name of agency, Type of work performed, Volunteer Coordinator's signature, Phone number for verification. If needed, our Senior Members can then call the Volunteer Coordinator to verify this service. The form meets the intent of the regulation in CAPR 39-3.
Quote from: Hot Rod on May 23, 2019, 05:03:47 PMMany Non-Profits send letters, but some don't.
Not all community service hours are provided to other non-profits.
As to the form itself, there's nothing wrong with it, per se, but understand it meets the mandate in the opinion of
your CC
and no one else, including the next CC of your squadron.
I don't think I've ever heard of an organization that would accept scores of volunteer hours and not be willing
to write a memo to that effect.
Also, the form doesn't really meet branding guidelines, and it states it's for "cadets" - Seniors can earn the CSR as well.
This is the problem with home-grown forms that leak out nationally.
Quote from: Hot Rod on May 23, 2019, 05:03:47 PM
... In an effort to reduce paperwork.... The form simply has a place to log the Date, Hours worked on the date, Name of agency, Type of work performed, Volunteer Coordinator's signature, Phone number for verification. If needed, our Senior Members can then call the Volunteer Coordinator to verify this service. The form meets the intent of the regulation in CAPR 39-3.
Some organizations, including the American Red Cross, have an online volunteer hour tracking system. Your form might be OK if it's
optional, but for CAP airmen who belong to another non-profit that do have an hour tracking system, it would be much easier to just use the other non-profit's system to print out a log of their hours, get the supervisor to sign it and print the supervisor's name, organization, and phone number.
You all make great points and we will revisit our form. We developed the form to help our cadets who don't have much experience in volunteering to record the necessary information. I will delete the attachment, as it doesn't meet branding guidelines. Thanks all for your help.
Quote from: Thomas Sabatino on May 14, 2019, 12:48:42 PM
Good day:
Is there a specific form for documenting community service time or does the organization just write a letter sting your time at service?
Best regards,
The person you did community service for, will sign your sheet of community service hours. And then you give the sheet to a senior member from your squadron, in order to get the award.
Quote from: Color Guard Rifleman on May 14, 2019, 12:50:29 PM
The organization will write a letter stating how many hours your have
Heyy! Another Fellow from Michigan!
A simple solution for this is to set up a Presidential Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) coordinator or piggyback on one in your area.
The reason to do this is multi-fold:
1. CAP time counts towards the PVSA, which you can add on your college applications.
2. Non-CAP time counts towards the PVSA AND the CAP Community Service Award.
3. You now have one place where all your records are.
https://www.presidentialserviceawards.gov/vo/Default.aspx
No one, especially colleges, cares about the time-wasting / made up / PVSA.
Quote from: Eclipse on May 28, 2019, 07:38:23 PM
No one, especially colleges, cares about the time-wasting / made up / PVSA.
Well aren't you just a ******* ray of sunshine!
Quote from: Holding Pattern on May 28, 2019, 07:11:24 PM
A simple solution for this is to set up a Presidential Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) coordinator or piggyback on one in your area.
The reason to do this is multi-fold:
1. CAP time counts towards the PVSA, which you can add on your college applications.
2. Non-CAP time counts towards the PVSA AND the CAP Community Service Award.
3. You now have one place where all your records are.
https://www.presidentialserviceawards.gov/vo/Default.aspx
I mentioned this to the Deputy Commander of Cadets at my squadron. I feel like this should be added as an award.
Quote from: xSpecialist on June 18, 2019, 11:14:03 PM
Quote from: Holding Pattern on May 28, 2019, 07:11:24 PM
A simple solution for this is to set up a Presidential Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) coordinator or piggyback on one in your area.
The reason to do this is multi-fold:
1. CAP time counts towards the PVSA, which you can add on your college applications.
2. Non-CAP time counts towards the PVSA AND the CAP Community Service Award.
3. You now have one place where all your records are.
https://www.presidentialserviceawards.gov/vo/Default.aspx
I mentioned this to the Deputy Commander of Cadets at my squadron. I feel like this should be added as an award.
But CAP already has a community service award. What do you want this one to be for?
It is the President's official community Service award.
Quote from: xSpecialist on June 25, 2019, 02:02:05 PM
It is the President's official community Service award.
About as much as the Presidential Physical Fitness Award is the President's official fitness award.
It's really from a non-profit and a tangential Federal Agency.
Only the lifetime awards have the Presidential signature facsimile.
It's self-certified, self-actualized, and the recipient has to pay for the Award elements.
Hardly a PMOF.
But the PVSA isn't a CAP award.
I mean, it's a nice accomplishment. But we dig into CAPR 39-3, and there are already CAP awards that exist for this very thing.
I get it though. CAP can help support other award programs; that's fine. Just be careful about making sure that you're counting everyone's hours and not just one or two individuals in your unit. Make it fair.
Also be cautious with calling CAP cadetting "volunteering." They aren't volunteers if they're showing up to weekly meetings doing Cadet Programs stuff. That's paid membership for a youth leadership program. There's more to being a volunteer than that. Consider Wreaths Across America, color guards at Veterans Day ceremonies, public outreach...those sort of things. It needs to be meaningful to the community, not learning AE in a classroom, doing drill, or a bivouac.
It has to be community service outside of CAP.