Volunteering

Admissions, Access and Outreach

Volunteering activities that encourage young people to apply to Oxford or higher education can count if they are paid or unpaid. The University’s Undergraduate Admissions Office (UAO) employs students to help with lots of projects such as Student Conferences, Teachers' Conferences, local school engagement, and the UNIQ summer schools. Contact your college’s Outreach Officer or Department/Faculty Administrator for more information about outreach opportunities in your college or subject.

Community volunteering

This encompasses a wide variety of opportunities including Schools Plus, Together Neighbours, fundraising activities, working with charities, conservation projects, summer schools, and many more. The expectation is that these activities are not paid.

You can complete your volunteering hours either in term time or in the Vacations, including the Long Vacation.

• Any unpaid internship, whether supported by a Crankstart Internship Bursary or not

• Canvassing for a political party

• Volunteering for clinical trials (either paid or unpaid)

• Any paid College role

• Time spent training for a role, or travelling to an activity

Fundraising activities only count when you are actively involved in the fundraising activity, for example the actual hours spent running a marathon would not count, but any hours spent on committee work (for example, arranging the marathon/competition/event itself) would count.

You have the full academic year and vacations to reach your 25 hour target, including the Long Vacation up to the end of September (even if you're a finalist).

When you log in to Self Service as a Crankstart Scholar you should see a 'My Volunteering' menu at the top of the screen. Selecting this will bring up a summary of the volunteering you have recorded so far via Self Service. To add a volunteering record, select the current academic year and click 'Add a new record'. Once you have entered the relevant details, click save and a new volunteering record will be created. You can also copy, edit, or delete a volunteering record by clicking on the + option at the start of a volunteering record and selecting either copy, edit, or delete. 

No, you can volunteer wherever is most convenient for you. This can be in Oxford during term time, at home during the vacations, online, or anywhere!

Yes, but we recommend that you focus the majority of your volunteering towards projects either in Oxford or your local home area. Volunteering projects undertaken abroad are unlikely to meet the volunteering specifications for the scholarship, but do speak to us if you have any queries or concerns.

Unfortunately, we are unable to reimburse scholars for any expenses incurred while volunteering. However, OxfordHub will provide reimbursement for travel costs associated with their own Oxford-based projects. For more details please visit Oxford Hub's Accessibility page.

For community volunteering questions, or any advice about the opportunities advertised on their website, contact Oxford Hub at [email protected].   

For information about admissions and outreach opportunities in your college or subject, speak to your college's Outreach Officer or your Departmental/Faculty Administrator.

You can sign up for weekly email bulletins about volunteering on the Oxford Hub website.

We appreciate that it can sometimes be difficult to volunteer for a variety of reasons. If you are struggling to volunteer, whatever the reason, please get in touch with us as soon as possible at [email protected] so that we can help. We will never remove a scholarship from a Crankstart Scholar as long as they remain eligible for the financial support, so you will not lose your scholarship if you cannot volunteer.

You aren't asked to volunteer if you are in your clinical years of the Medicine course, on your year abroad, or during a period of suspension from your studies.