What does it mean if Volunteer Scholars rejects one of your activities?

Volunteer Scholars have been using the online member portal for six months to track their community service efforts. From time to time, activities submitted by members are reviewed but ultimately rejected by the Volunteer Scholars team.

What you should know about rejected activities?

First, a rejected activity is not a statement or judgement about your commitment, your effort, the nature or area of your work, or whether or not we like or believe you. It simply means that one of your many activities does not meet the criteria for one of our award programs. It might mean that you need to complete a few more community service hours of a different type in order to meet your goal or award threshold.

The Volunteer Scholars team strongly encourages members to submit hours early and often so you can receive timely feedback. If an activity is rejected, you still have time to work some additional community service hours.

To avoid having community service activities rejected, members and prospective members should always read the award guidelines, including what activities “count” and do not count for each award. Below are some statistics on rejected activities in the first 6 months of the new portal:

Total Activities Submitted (April 15- Nov 15, 2024): 10,747

Number of Activities Rejected: 422 (3.9%)

Reasons activities were rejected:

  • Student Leadership Role1: 77 (18.25%)
  • For-Profit Business: 76 (18.01%)
  • Out of Date Range: 63 (14.93%)
  • Illegitimate Organization: 60 (14.22%)
  • Performing Arts Rehearsal: 55 (13.03%)
  • Member’s Own School/ Club: 37 (8.77%)
  • Fundraiser for Own Club/School: 21 (4.98%)
  • Attended Education/Awareness Effort: 14 (3.32%)
  • Duplicate Entries: 9 (2.13%)
  • In-Kind Donations: 6 (1.42%)
  • Lobbying: 4 (0.95%)

If members are unsure whether an activity will count for a particular award or not, they are welome message Volunteer Scholars for some guidance beforehand.

Note: 1: Many members hold leadership roles in their schools, extracurriculars, etc, but were having noteworthy work rejected because it was not community service. To honor these members, Volunteer Scholars now offers the National Distinguished Student Leadership Award for leadership activities!