Volunteer Opportunities

<Click here for our printable volunteer sign-up form>

The Rye Nature Center owes much of its success to its Friends, and the volunteer support we receive in all areas of our operation.  We have over 350 volunteers who collectively give over 4,000 hours of service to the community each year.

We ask our volunteers to give according to their TIME and TALENT.  And everyone and anyone has at least some of each to contribute! 

In return we offer an the chance to work in a family friendly environment with a dedicated staff.  Orientation, training and guidance are available for all of the volunteer jobs.  Students can apply their volunteer experience to community service hours for school, scout badges or confirmation, bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah requirements.

Event Volunteers:

If you can only give one or two days per year, come for our Spring or Fall work days or for a special community event such as Old Fashioned Winter’s Afternoon, Earth Day, Strawberry Sunday or Fall Festival.

Program Volunteers

An interest in natural history and love of children are pre-requisites for joining our Program Volunteer Team.  Program help includes assisting our educators present our weekday youth ecology programs and to help with weekend and evening family events.

Habitat Volunteers

Habitat Volunteers adopt special projects, join in on work days, or come on a regular basis to help with our long list of repairs and improvements.  Any experience with household maintenance, gardening or landscaping are talents we value in our Habitat Volunteers.  We especially need adults with light carpentry experience for a variety of maintenance tasks.

Animal Care:

Our Animal Care Corps helps to keep our collection of 50 animals happy and healthy.  All these animals are used in programs with children, so they need some human contact each day.

Office Helpers

Our Office/Administration Volunteers helps in was as simple as answering the phone and greeting visitors at our front desk to helping with grant writing and publicity.  We need volunteers who can sort, file, maintain a data base and help with periodic mailings.