Washington and Lee University
EN-13: Community Service

While the institution does not have a formal program to support employee volunteering during regular work hours, part of the W&L wellness program, LiveWell, focuses on encouraging and making available volunteering opportunities for employees to engage in. This program is a formal program, but the majority of the opportunities to volunteer are left up to the employee to engage in on their own time, outside of work. 131 employees recorded community volunteering through the LiveWell program.

W&L also uses GivePulse for both students and employees to see what volunteer opportunities are offered through W&L. They can use GivePulse to sign up and track volunteer hours. https://www.givepulse.com/group/170184-Washington-and-Lee-University

W&L does not have an accurate system for tracking student volunteer hours at this moment in time. Years ago we had a staff member who tracked this, but she has since retired and we no longer track these numbers across the university.

Currently, we do track a portion of student volunteer hours through GivePulse, but this is optional for students and most do not record their hours through this service unless they are required through a service learning class or motivated to keep track for other reasons.

Some other areas that are not currently tracked are:

1. Student clubs and volunteer groups. We have many student clubs on campus that do volunteer work through their clubs and do not record these hours; these include groups like 24 (a group of about 60 athletes who are required to do volunteer work throughout the school year), Engineering Community Development (who built a bridge for a therapeutic riding center last school year), and Feel Good (which raises money every year that goes to organizations working towards ending extreme hunger and poverty).

2. Comprised of all sorority members, the W&L Panhellenic Council represents about 76% of the women on campus; it is the largest women's interest group at Washington and Lee University. An important aspect of sorority life is giving back to the community. Our sororities sponsor over 25 community service activities. They also provide opportunities to participate and serve in other campus-wide organizations. The majority of students in sororities are required to participate in community service each year. These numbers are not tracked.

In a survey for the 2018/2019 school year (put together by W&L Institutional Effectiveness), out of 405 seniors, 23.95% said they participated in a service learning class through W&L and 63.46% said they volunteered while they were at W&L.