RV Park Volunteers

[StevL]

I'm just curious about the volunteers we have seen at parks around the country/region.

• What do you receive for your time volunteering?
• A site?
• Any other income?
• About how many hours a day or week do you work?
• How long do you typically stay in one place?
• Do you simply love doing this or does it help with your financial situation?

Thx!
Steve

[plasma800]

I don't have any first hand knowledge, but I do know that you can view a listing of all government parks volunteer positions open, and they list what you receive in exchange.

https://www.volunteer.gov/

For instance, you can click a state to view all needed positions, then select more info on any posting.

[450Donn]

Volunteering means no salary.
Within the Oregon Parks system the deal is 20 Hours per week per person for a couple or 30 hours a week for a single. For that you get a full hookup site. 5 days on 2 days in a row off. It is not, at least to us the site or what we get, but what we give back to our great park system.

[twogypsies]

We volunteered during our full-timing years but not for any perks. We did it to give back to the places we enjoyed staying.

You generally get a campsite and maybe some other things like firewood, community coupons for meals, propane and lots of thanks! They really appreciate volunteers, not so with paid gigs. National parks require the most hours we found - 32 hr. They have no trouble finding people to fill the spots. Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park utilizes over 1,000 volunteers a year. Naturally, being so close to civilization many of those just come in during the weekends from neighboring communities. It's not all work and you get to live in fantastic places. Other places require about 16-24 hr. It varies.

We only took positions for up to two months at a time. By then, we were ready to move on. However, for Sleeping Bear Dunes Nat'l Lakeshore we loved the whole area so much we did the lighthouse tours in summer and went to their Platte River campground for the beautiful fall season. Did that for 9 seasons before it dawned on us that there were other awesome places to be in the fall! It was hard to give up though.

In Oregon we gave the lighthouse tours at Heceta Head Lighthouse which we loved. In Michigan we gave lighthouse tours on an island in Lake Michigan part of Sleeping Bear Dunes Nat'l Lakeshore. In both places after the tours the rest of the time was ours. No campground duties.

We gave tours at Kartchner Caverns in Arizona and were campground hosts in beautiful state parks that we purposely chose because we wanted to be in the area. We also volunteered at a fish hatchery for Fish & Wildlife.... feeding the fish! There are many needs for volunteers and they can be fun. You meet some great people.

We highly recommend it. It's an eye opener at just how much work needs to be done in the parks you enjoy. If it weren't for volunteers you wouldn't have many needed things. The parks just don't have the money to do it all themselves. Give those volunteers a 'thank you' when you see them. They are needed.

[jbrv]

Originally Posted by StevL

I'm just curious about the volunteers we have seen at parks around the country/region.

• What do you receive for your time volunteering?
• A site?
• Any other income?
• About how many hours a day or week do you work?
• How long do you typically stay in one place?
• Do you simply love doing this or does it help with your financial situation?

Thx!
Steve

You may want to move the post to the workamping forum.

What do you receive for your time volunteering? If it is a volunteer position we get a site and most every time it has power and water and sewer. Some are nice, other not so nice. We have done paid positions that included a site and minor pay. It should be min wage pay for hours worked and then reduced rice for the site. Not all do it that way. They should but they dont. Some volunteer spots have some perks like tours and such that we get for free or very reduced ricing


Any other income? The place we are now it was not to hard to find paid work nearby, Not always the case.

About how many hours a day or week do you work? 24 hours per week per person for a couple, 31 for a single at most postision on volunteer.gov. One we re doing now is only 20 hours per couple for the smaller less desirable sites, 30 hours per week per couple for the nicer sites. Best site we have ever had for volunteer or workamping.

How long do you typically stay in one place? 5 months at most

Do you simply love doing this or does it help with your financial situation? Both. We take postions that we know we would like to do. Free site helps with the finances.

[grindstone01]

We started Full Timing at age 55 and came up with a plan to volunteer in all lower 48 states for at least a month over the next 15 years. This plan was to prevent us from doing repeats and getting a chance to see what it feels like to live in different states. We like volunteering and being part of the crew which allows us to get behind the scene and see the real park. Usually there are min hours required which we always put in more by choice. We usually seek out extra projects that improve the park appearance, like painting road lines, making new signs, power washing tables. We find that 2 months is ideal, first month to learn the ropes, second month to apply our skills. After that it can start being a job. Having FHU's in a place most people consider a vacation spot is not all bad. 5 1/2 years out and 20 states covered.

[StevL]

Good info.....sorry I had no idea there was a lworkamping forum. Now I have more reading.


Thx!
Steve

[luckyd]

There are a lot of Canadians "volunteering" in RV parks.
We are NOT allowed to accept payment in any form,
whether it is cash or a free site.
Most of it is under the table and I would not want to
be caught doing it.

Any Canadian that tells me they are doing it for
something to do, I just nod my head.

Yes, I am Canadian......and understand the rules.

We are not allowed to take a job that an American
citizen could fill. We also need to file income tax
for any form of income in the USA.