Sadly, we are not taking applications right now, but please check back to see if applications reopen. We also appreciate helpful input on our message boards.

Would you like to volunteer for Scarleteen?

• Do you love Scarleteen?
• Are you a regular Scarleteen user?
• Do you have at least 8 hours a week you can commit to us?
• Do you have a burning desire to provide some of the most accessible, inclusive, and absolute BEST sex education available online?

If your answer is YES, we would love to consider you for our volunteer staff!

Who We’re Looking For

We welcome applications from anyone who is interested in volunteering with us! We are deeply committed to serving our diverse, global user base as well as we possibly can. We need and love the breadth of our team, and we particularly appreciate applications from people whose experiences, perspectives, and skills expand that diversity. We are particularly looking for applications from:

• Young people, especially regular message board users
• BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color)
• Transgender, non-binary or gender-nonconforming people
• LGBTQIA+ people
• Neurodiverse people
• People with disabilities
• People who live outside of the United States (particularly India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, the Pacific Islands, or South America)
• Immigrants, refugees and undocumented people
• People who have experienced (or are currently experiencing) homelessness and/or low-income situations

Even if you don’t see yourself on this list, please apply -- you might be just who we’re looking for!

What Can I Do As A Volunteer?

All volunteers will usually need to do some work in one or more of our direct services (that's our message boards, live chat, and text/SMS service). Previous experience is welcome, but not required. You should, however, be familiar with Scarleteen's materials and methods. Training will be provided, and team support, guidance and close co-working is ongoing. Volunteers have a large amount of freedom in individual work schedules and areas of particular interest; in return, volunteers must have a high level of personal responsibility in keeping work commitments, contributing to the team, and independently pursuing knowledge and skills as a volunteer.
Other things you have the opportunity to do as a volunteer:

• Tech Help (helping on the backend of Scarleteen’s website -- we primarily work in Drupal)
• Social Media
• Writing (includes writing advice columns, updating articles on the website, translating materials into other languages, or editing pieces for the website)
• Research/Data
• Fundraising
• Graphic Design/Layout
• Other: maybe you have a skill we don’t know we need!

Do you have any urgent volunteer needs?

We certainly do! We have an urgent need for:

• Tech Help
• Direct Service volunteers who can give us at least 8-10 hours per week
• Saturday and Sunday availability (weekends are often our busiest time in direct services, and also the time when we have the fewest available staff)

Before You Apply:

• Please carefully consider your schedule and existing commitments. Are you realistically able to give 8 hours a week, for at least six months, to this volunteering commitment?
• If you aren't an active member of our message board community already, please create an account on our message boards, and get your feet wet in a few threads as a community member over a period of at least a couple of weeks. This isn't an audition: just be yourself and follow your own interests. This is to help you get a clear sense of if this is a right place for you, and for us to be able to get to know you a little bit, too.

How Our Application Process Works:

• You fill out and submit your application.
• We send you a message to let you know that we got your application and give you a timeline on when to hear about next steps. (If you don’t get a confirmation email from us, make sure to check your Spam folder!)
• We consider all applicants through a peer-review process, which means your application will be shared with the whole Scarleteen staff and volunteer team, with all personal and identifying information redacted. We review the applications, have conversations about them as a group, and then vote on them. (Our Executive Director only participates in this process if they have any objections to the team’s decision or a tie needs to be broken.)
• If your application is approved, we’ll contact you for a Zoom interview with the People Manager and another staff member. After that, we'll bring you on for training, which includes a Scarleteen orientation, training in the foundations of the Scarleteen approach, and guided practice on the message boards. The training process will take place over the course of 4-5 weeks and will involve one 2-hour virtual group training session per week and one individual virtual skill practice session with your training buddy per week. You'll get more details about training when we talk on Zoom!
• If everything goes well during your training period, we’ll set you up with everything else you need to be a full-fledged Scarleteen volunteer!

Will I get paid to volunteer for Scarleteen?

Volunteering for us is a primarily unpaid position. We do compensate all volunteers at the end of every fiscal year with a stipend based on what we have available in our budget, and on a person's number of active hours and tenure. Yearly stipend amounts currently range between $100 and $500. Volunteers are also offered opportunities for short-term paying freelance work at Scarleteen when it is available.