Volunteer
Volunteer Opportunities at RPBO
Whether you are a leader or supporter, introvert or extrovert, night owl or early bird - RPBO may be the place for you!
Rocky Point Bird Observatory is always looking for enthusiastic, self-motivated, committed individuals to augment our team. Your valuable skills and experience will help further our mission to support bird conservation through research, monitoring and public education. Join us and help us to be the best we can be!
RPBO is a volunteer-run registered charity. Volunteers can work at the public-site banding station doing a variety of tasks, or off-site on activities such as serving on the RPBO Board of Directors, net repair, fundraising, or public presentations.
To learn more about our Bird Monitoring programs, click here
Pedder Bay Marina in Metchosin is home to our public-access banding station. For more information on visiting the sites as a registered volunteer, click here.
If you wish to volunteer in the field for our monitoring projects or public education activities, you must become an RPBO member by filling out our online Waiver and Volunteer Application Form. If you prefer, there is also a PDF version, suitable for printing.
If you'd like to find out about other areas where RPBO could use your skills (Education, Outreach Events, Operations), please contact our Volunteer Coordinator at volunteer@rpbo.org. You might be surprised how your diverse or unique skill set could be helpful!
Resources for Volunteers
Online Scheduling: We use WhenToHelp.com to let registered volunteers choose their shifts. Please review our instructions (PDF) on how to use this system, and be sure to add "whentohelp.com" as a safe email sender in your email application to ensure that you get important messages about scheduling. You can also email volunteer@rpbo.org to be added to the schedule.
Transportation: The nature of bird banding is that it starts very early in the morning or ends very late at night (owls) or occurs in locations well outside of the local public transportation offerings. If you do not have your own transportation, you may be able to find other volunteers with whom you could carpool or ride-share. However, volunteers are responsible for arranging their own transportation. You may contact other volunteers through our "When To Help" scheduling system.
Mileage donation tax receipt: RPBO is not able to reimburse people for their driving expenses; however, we encourage you to keep track of the dates you volunteered, and the number of kilometers traveled per trip, to and from our sites. If you submit a signed mileage claim form (PDF) with this information to our Treasurer, RPBO will issue you a tax receipt for a charitable donation at the end of the season.
RPBO Bird Checklist: While volunteering at our field stations, volunteers will be asked to contribute their sightings of bird species and numbers to the daily observations summary. This is a great way to brush up on your local bird observation skills! Bird Checklist of Southern Vancouver Island (PDF).
You must be a member in order to volunteer.
