Serve Your Community
Join the Sanford Hospice volunteer team in our mission of providing peace and comfort to patients and their family. No matter your skills, you can make a difference in the lives of others through end-of-life care.
You’ll get the training you need to feel comfortable in your role, including in communication and care. We’ll make sure you have a basic understanding of your patient’s condition. You won’t take part in any hands-on care such as bathing, feeding or moving the patient.
You can work in the patient’s home, the hospice office or a long-term care location. We have locations across southeast South Dakota and southwest Minnesota.
We recommend volunteers visit at least once a week to build a relationship with patients and their families.
Choose from a variety of opportunities to find what best fits your talents and schedule. View all hospice volunteer opportunities.
Volunteer Qualifications
Application Process
We require volunteers to complete the following process:
- Application: Apply for a hospice position
- Phone interview
- Criminal background check
- Provide an updated vaccination record
Requirements
Volunteers must be at least 16 years old. Some positions require a minimum age of 19 years old.
Volunteers must be able to communicate clearly in English.
We cannot accept volunteers who are meeting court-mandated community service hours.
Our patients and families deserve the very best. We need people who:
- Display competency – can learn the position and remember the details
- Are compassionate – understand the stress of a hospitalization
- Defend a patient's right to privacy – our volunteers are held to a strict code of confidentiality
- Are respectful – we ser
Hospice Volunteer Opportunities
Administrative Volunteer
Volunteers interested in working behind the scenes can serve by helping with simple administrative duties. These duties may include:
- Assisting with mailings
- Putting informational packets together
- Sorting
- Filing paperwork
- Making copies
Art Enrichment Volunteer
Art enrichment volunteers provide comfort, entertainment and distraction to hospice patients and families through art.
Bereavement Volunteer
These volunteers work closely with the hospice location’s professional bereavement staff. They assist in duties such as working as a support group facilitator or assisting with mailings to clients and families.
Hair Care Volunteer
Many hospice patients are unable to leave home to go to a salon or barbershop to get a haircut. We need licensed cosmologists or barbers who can provide styling or haircuts to patients in their homes.
Integrative Health Volunteer
Integrative health volunteers provide relaxing and anxiety-reducing therapies for end-of-life patients. These therapies include Reiki, Healing Touch or aromatherapy. Volunteers in this position must be licensed.
Legacy Volunteer
Legacy volunteers preserve patients’ stories and memories. They make several visits to a patient’s home or wherever they live to facilitate the telling of their life story and record it. Once the visits are complete, the volunteer will transcribe the story into a memory book, add pictures and present the finished project to the patient and their family.
Legacy volunteers also help to capture the patient’s fingerprint on bookmarks or memory stones that can be shared with family and friends.
Massage Therapy Volunteer
These volunteers provide therapeutic massages to hospice patients. Volunteers in this position must be licensed.
Music Therapy Volunteer
Music helps reduce stress and anxiety while connecting patients to their favorite memories. Share your talents either through song or musical instruments to help enhance patients’ quality of life.
Patient Visitor Volunteer
Provide companionship and bring smiles to the faces of our patients as a patient visitor volunteer. You’ll visit hospice patients in their home, assisted living facility, nursing home or at our hospice houses.
Volunteers perform a variety of activities to help bring meaning and happiness to patients in their end stages of life. You can play games or cards, provide hand massages, help with simple chores, read out loud, watch movies and more to care for patients. We will try to match similar volunteers and patients, so the time spent is valuable for both.
Volunteers don’t provide personal care or administer medications.
Pet Therapy Volunteer
You and your furry friend can provide joy to hospice patients and their families through pet visits.
Pet certification and vaccination are required.
Photography Volunteer
Sanford Hospice needs volunteers with a passion for photography to capture portraits of our hospice patients and their families. This volunteer can join special events, such as a veteran pinning ceremony or another special day that must never be forgotten. These portraits and photos are a treasured gift to a hospice patient’s family.
Please provide your own equipment.
Respite Volunteer
Respite volunteers give families and caregivers a chance to take care of necessary errands and get away from the house while knowing someone is with their loved one. Family members also appreciate visits from a compassionate, understanding friend.
These visits are often a greater length of time than a normal visit.
Spiritual Care Chaplain Volunteer
Chaplain volunteers provide spiritual care for patients, visitors and staff. These volunteers play a vital role in helping patients and their families through difficult times, regardless of an individual’s faith background or belief system.
Chaplain volunteer responsibilities:
- Provide religious support for individuals who feel fearful, depressed or anxious
- Help people find a sense of hope, meaning or purpose
- Actively listen to patients, visitors and staff
- Aid prayer and other religious rituals
- Provide religious materials and resources
Veteran Volunteer
Many veterans receiving hospice care appreciate connecting with other veterans. This is true even if their veteran volunteer served in a different time or place.
Sanford Hospice is part of the We Honor Veterans Program.