Brigham Young University
EN-13: Community Service

Day of Caring is an annual partnership with the United Way of Utah County, where BYU employees can volunteer for up to four paid hours of a BYU shift and/or donate through the workplace. Each year, hundreds of BYU employees volunteer at elementary schools, food banks, and elsewhere. As active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, BYU's sponsoring institution, many BYU employees actively volunteer in their communities and within their local congregations on a weekly basis. BYU asks that its employees demonstrate a commitment to the mission of Brigham Young University and the aims of a BYU Education through excellence in teaching, scholarship, mentoring, and citizenship, and a commitment to campus culture of unity, love, and belonging. Community service hours are not tracked.

BYU's 2022 full-time equivalent student enrollment number of 34,737 excludes non-credit, part-time, continuing education, and distance education students. On page 12 of its 2022-2023 report, BYU's Center for Service and Learning, (Y-Serve) provides service hours (46K) and volunteer totals (15.5K) but notes on page 2 that data collection is difficult: "An annual reminder on stats: While we strive to collect data to accurately represent the service being done, we have tried to do so in the most convenient ways possible for our volunteers. Over the past two years, we’ve gradually been relying more upon the submission of service hours using the Y-Serve feature on the BYU app. It has been noted that not every volunteer has chosen to enter their service hours on the app and consequently, our statistics do measure lower amounts of participants than in past years. We are actively seeking to find ways to portray the most accurate numbers possible. In 2022-23, progress has continued to be made and we’ve been able to collect 100% of each programs’ stats each month" (see https://yserve.byu.edu/00000188-0136-df93-a1a9-6137b0b40001/2022-2023-annual-report).

As is the case with many other campus units, BYU's Sustainability Office hosts multiple service projects per year but does not track volunteer hours.

Uniquely, the majority of BYU students (an estimated 98%, or 34,042) identify as members of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, BYU's sponsoring institution, and therefore serve within their congregations, stakes, or temple districts year-round (see Y Magazine). Assignments include childcare, building cleanup, compassionate service, temple service, family history, self-reliance, addiction recovery, gospel instruction, church administration, and any number of other needs. Here, a very conservative 4 hours per member-student per year, or 136,169, has been counted.