Center for Student Engagement & Leadership strives to connect students with opportunities for meaningful service at the campus, local, and global levels.
We provide opportunities on all campuses for students to help make an impact in the world through service, volunteerism, and servant leadership.
Activating Community Transformation (A.C.T.) is your gateway to getting involved and making a real impact in your community. Through A.C.T., students can participate in weekly service trips, connect with local nonprofit partners, and receive information about community volunteer opportunities that align with their schedule and passions.
Join the movement. Make a difference. A.C.T. NOW and help spark community transformation.
Weekly Service Opportunities
Dahlonega Campus
Feral Cat Program of Georgia
Volunteers will help with weekly cleaning, laundry duty and cat care. Volunteers will also have time to play and cuddle with the cats.
Vickery House
Volunteers will assist with gardening, cleaning and historical projects.
Gainesville Campus
Hall County Animal Shelter
Volunteers will assist with tasks around the shelter, including walking and bathing dogs, and playing with cats and dogs.
Note: If a student wishes to participate in a trip they must sign up for that specific trip every single time they wish to participate
Service Saturday is your chance to dive into hands-on service and make a difference—one Saturday at a time! Hosted once a month by the Center for Student Engagement and Leadership in collaboration with Âé¶¹´«Ã½’s incredible community partners, each event offers a fun, meaningful way to give back. With service opportunities rotating across campuses, there’s always a new place to serve and new people to meet. Show up. Give back. Make an impact.
Days of Service
CSEL offers multiple Days of Service through the school year that work to bring together students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community members to serve together. Everyone can find an opportunity to fit their interests and connect further with the Âé¶¹´«Ã½ Community!
Join the Center for Student Engagement and Leadership as we partner with the Georgia Mountain Food Bank and help to pack thousands of meals for our neighbors in need. It is our goal to bring students, faculty/staff, and community members together to package 50,000 meals to feed our Âé¶¹´«Ã½ communities. Let’s continue making a difference in our community!
MLK Day of Service
Join us as we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy by giving back to our community!
As Georgia’s state-designated leadership institution, the Âé¶¹´«Ã½ prepares students to lead well beyond their college years.
Our co-curricular leadership programs offer hands-on experiences that help students strengthen their core values, teamwork, collaboration, communication, and other essential skills for success.
GivePulse is Âé¶¹´«Ã½’s official online platform for tracking impact (service hours), finding volunteer opportunities, and reporting community engagement. Both students and faculty/staff can use GivePulse to connect with service initiatives, log hours, and highlight the impact of volunteer work at Âé¶¹´«Ã½.
Âé¶¹´«Ã½ Connect and GivePulse are integrated to streamline service event management and participation across campus. This integration allows students, faculty, and staff to:
Easily find service opportunities - Browse events posted by Âé¶¹´«Ã½ departments, student organizations, and affiliated community partners.
Register for events once, track everywhere - Signing up in either platform automatically records your participation in both GivePulse and Âé¶¹´«Ã½ Connect.
Log and track service hours - Students can document completed service hours in GivePulse, which will also sync to Âé¶¹´«Ã½ Connect for convenience.
View service records - Participants can see pending, approved, and denied hours, along with a list of all events they’ve been involved in, on both platforms.
Support complex event registration - Faculty and staff can manage multi-day events or time slots primarily in GivePulse while keeping the Âé¶¹´«Ã½ Connect listing updated automatically.
This integration ensures accurate tracking of service opportunities, simplifies registration and reporting, and provides a centralized way for the Âé¶¹´«Ã½ community to engage with meaningful service experiences.
Follow the regular event creation procedures to set up your event. To have your event appear on the Service Tab in Âé¶¹´«Ã½ Connect:
Select the “Service” theme when choosing event themes.
Only events that qualify as service opportunities should be marked with this theme.
If your event does not provide service hours, please deselect “Service” to maintain accuracy.
Integration with GivePulse
When you mark an event as a service opportunity, a separate event will automatically be cloned into the GivePulse account of the individual who created the event.
The GivePulse event is connected to the Âé¶¹´«Ã½ Connect event, so registrations on either platform will appear on both platforms.
Complex Registrations
If your service event requires more complex registration (e.g., multiple time slots or multi-day events), we recommend using GivePulse primarily for registration to simplify tracking.
Following these steps ensures that students can easily find legitimate volunteer opportunities. This process keeps the Service Tab accurate, clear, and useful for all students looking to get involved.
Service hours and impacts go hand-in-hand, but there are a few differences.
Impacts: Every time you volunteer, serve or donate (items or monetarily) to a social impact initiative, you are making an Impact. Adding impacts, or "sharing information about what you did in the community that made an impact of some kind," empowers you to record your engagement with the community. Impacts help provide data for reporting purposes, to get feedback on the quality of the experience, and to better understand the impact of the work and how we are moving the needle.
At the Âé¶¹´«Ã½, service is an important part of the student experience. This page provides information about how to track your impact (service hours), where to find opportunities, and what counts as a service event.
*Not everything you submit will be approved. Approval is subject to the Center for Student Engagement and Leadership.
The Center for Student Engagement & Leadership defines service as intentional action that contributes to the common good and creates a positive impact on communities at the campus, local, and global levels. Through service, students engage with meaningful opportunities that support community organizations, address critical needs, and foster a culture of civic responsibility.
Students and Faculty/Staff can find upcoming volunteer opportunities through Âé¶¹´«Ã½ Connect on the “Service” tab. This tab is located on the left menu side of the Âé¶¹´«Ã½ Connect platform. This tab is reserved exclusively for events that qualify as service opportunities.
Here you can find events that are either run by a student organization, department, or an affiliated community partner.
Participation in any service activity posted by Âé¶¹´«Ã½ or by a community partner who is affiliated with Âé¶¹´«Ã½ on GivePulse.
Service completed as a part of a service trip (only hours spent doing service on the trip).
Time spent doing community service with a faith-based organization, if the services are provided to the public with no faith requirement (i.e., building a home through Habitat for Humanity, assisting at a local food bank, etc.).
Non-partisan political activities, such as voter registration drives or volunteering for a voting site on election day.
Work completed for any Âé¶¹´«Ã½ department, student organization, or athletic team that does not directly serve a need beyond Âé¶¹´«Ã½’s campuses.
Indirect philanthropy or fundraising activities (i.e., tabling to raise money for an organization, walking/running for charity, attending a meeting to plan/organize a fundraising event, etc.).
Work completed for a for-profit organization that is not an affiliate of KSU on GivePulse.
Time spent collecting money or items for donation
Any work for which is paid (i.e., cash, gift card, etc.) or for which other compensation is received (i.e., course credit, unless the course is designated as a service-learning course).
Travel time (car, train, airplane, etc.) to and from a service site, sleep on any service trip, or any time spent on an excursion during a service trip.
Self-improvement experiences, including attending a conference or webinar, shadowing experiences, or professional development.
Participation in a research project either as a participant (i.e., focus group) or a researcher (i.e., lab assistant).
Assistance with any partisan political activities.
In addition to tracking service hours, you can also track other forms of impact in GivePulse, such as donated items or money.
To do this, change the type of impact you are making using the drop-down feature on the impact submission form. Then, enter a list of items or the amount of money donated.
When attempting to log an amount of money donated, you will be asked to submit a copy of the receipt to verify this donation.
Local Community Partners
Available volunteer partners/opportunities are not Âé¶¹´«Ã½ sponsored activities.