Focus Area
Housing & Homelessness Volunteer Opportunities in Central Oregon
Matching organizations, in a different order on every visit
Furnish Hope is a Bend-based nonprofit furniture bank working to end furniture poverty in Central Oregon. It collects gently used furniture and household essentials and delivers them to individuals and families moving into stable housing, turning empty houses into furnished homes that foster permanency, comfort, and pride. Its boutique resale store, Furnish Hope & Home, along with home staging and design services, helps fund the mission.
Volunteers drive and co-pilot furniture deliveries, connect with recipients as community liaisons, gather and sort donations at the donation center, staff the Furnish Hope & Home resale store, and help remotely with admin work, events, and fundraising. Regular weekly shifts are offered, many roles don't require heavy lifting, and groups can schedule a team volunteer day.
Central Oregon Veterans Ranch
also known as COVR
Central Oregon Veterans Ranch is a working ranch near Bend where veterans find community, purpose, and healing, offering housing and care for aging veterans in a peaceful rural setting and hands-on farm, garden, and animal work for veterans of all ages.
Community volunteers keep the working ranch running: providing meals for veteran workdays and partner gatherings, admin and outreach help, technical (IT) support, gardening and greenhouse work, and seasonal workdays such as roadside clean-ups and garden teardown. Veterans can join weekly veteran-led workdays on the ranch, covering harvest, garden and project work, followed by a community lunch.
A nonprofit serving Crook, Deschutes, and Jefferson counties through food access, housing stability, child care, and financial services, empowering individuals and families to succeed.
Volunteer opportunities include sorting and packing donated food, supporting warehouse operations, and helping with group service days for corporate and community groups across food, housing, and family support programs.
Community Alliance of Tenants is Oregon's grassroots, tenant-led renters' rights organization, offering a statewide tenant hotline, education on renter rights, and support for tenants organizing for safe, stable, affordable housing.
Volunteers are trained to answer the tenant hotline and help renters understand their rights, and support tenant organizing, outreach, and education events.
J Bar J Youth Services, Inc.
also known as J Bar J; J Bar J Boys Ranch
Founded in 1968, J Bar J Youth Services is the largest provider of services to at-risk youth and families in Central Oregon. Its programs include J Bar J Boys Ranch and J5, the J Bar J Learning Center, Cascade Youth & Family Center, Grandma's House, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Oregon, Kindred Connections and the at: project anti-trafficking program. The Oregon High Desert Classics horse show is its major fundraiser.
Volunteering at J Bar J happens through its programs. Adults mentor children through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Oregon. Volunteer families and church communities support families in crisis through Kindred Connections, mentoring parents and providing temporary housing for children. J Bar J does not publish a single volunteer page, so contact the program that interests you or the main office to ask about other ways to help.
Companion Animal Medical Project
also known as CAMP
Companion Animal Medical Project (CAMP), founded in 2020, provides free and low-barrier veterinary care for pets of people experiencing homelessness or financial hardship across Central Oregon, through no-cost wellness and vaccine clinics from Madras to La Pine, low-cost spay/neuter and emergency care, transportation help, and its Ready Together program that helps unsheltered pet owners move into shelter or housing with their animals.
Volunteers help run CAMP's free pop-up wellness and vaccine clinics around Central Oregon, checking in clients and pets, handling animals, organizing supplies, and supporting veterinary teams, and help with transport, pet-supply drives, and events. Veterinary professionals can volunteer clinical skills.
Soroptimist International of Bend
also known as SI Bend, Soroptimist of Bend
Founded in 1943, Bend's longest continuously running women's service organization. SI Bend gives Live Your Dream cash awards to head-of-household women pursuing education or training, funds local programs that help women leave domestic abuse, trafficking, and food and housing insecurity, and supports partners like Bethlehem Inn, Shepherd's House, Grandma's House, and KIDS Center.
Members review and celebrate Live Your Dream Award applicants, collect baby items for families through the annual community baby shower, make and sell holiday wreaths to support local shelters, and help with grants to partner nonprofits. Women who want to join a hands-on service club are welcome to visit a meeting.
Abi's House
also known as Women and Children's Center, Shepherd's House Women and Children's Center
Shepherd's House Ministries' faith-based, long-term recovery home where women and their children heal together. Serving up to 10 guests at a time, residents move through a six-stage program of counseling, mentorship, life skills, and spiritual growth toward independence and stable housing, with graduate homes for the transition back to work and community. In 2026 Shepherd's House was awarded $3 million to expand services for women and children experiencing homelessness.
Volunteers build genuine, ongoing friendships with the women in the program, mentoring them and helping plan for life after graduation. Professionals can share their skills through classes and life-skills support, and childcare helpers care for residents' kids. All roles are guided by staff to support safety and healthy boundaries, and the program looks for people ready to invest in relationships, not just fill a shift.
Voices Against Trafficking is a Redmond nonprofit founded by attorney, author, and survivor advocate Andi Buerger to raise awareness of human trafficking and teen homelessness, even in smaller communities like those in Central Oregon, and to give survivors a voice. Through speaking, education, and advocacy, it helps community members recognize the signs of trafficking and abuse and find the courage to step up.
Volunteers help raise awareness of human trafficking and teen homelessness in Central Oregon by supporting community talks and events, outreach and education efforts, and fundraising.
The Salvation Army Bend Corps serves thousands of Central Oregonians each year through a client-choice food pantry, emergency assistance with rent and utilities, holiday food and gifts through the Red Kettle and Angel Tree campaigns, youth after-school programs, and visits to seniors, as part of its faith-based mission to meet human needs without discrimination.
The Bend Corps has roles for almost every age: helping in the client-choice food pantry, visiting residents of assisted living centers, assembling gifts for veterans and people experiencing homelessness, and supporting youth programs. Each holiday season, volunteers ring bells at Red Kettles outside stores in Bend, Redmond, and La Pine; families, groups, and businesses can sign up for shifts.
A Bend-based nonprofit providing zero-down, zero-interest affordable homeownership loans to families at or below 80% of area median income throughout Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, founded by Hayden Homes in 1998.
Volunteers help raise walls and build homes alongside builder partners at community events, and support wall-signing and home dedication ceremonies celebrating new homeowners.
Central Oregon Guardian Assistance Program
also known as COGAP
Bend nonprofit providing pro bono court-appointed guardianship and conservatorship services to incapacitated adults of limited means across Central Oregon, helping people who can't make their own medical, housing, or financial decisions move out of hospitals, jails, or unsafe situations into appropriate care. It also offers community education on planning for incapacity and end-of-life decision-making.
Visitation volunteers regularly visit clients living in care facilities so they feel cared for and not forgotten, with training and shadowing provided and a background check required. Volunteers can also help with donation drives and fundraising, community outreach, and administrative support.
You haven't seen them all yet. There are more organizations below.