Information for the Ithaca Health Alliance Volunteers

The Ithaca Health Alliance is primarily a volunteer organization. We have a small staff of four employees who are responsible for day-to-day operations, and everything else the organization does is thanks to volunteer effort. Our board of directors are all volunteers. The Ithaca Free Clinic is staffed by volunteers, for both administrative work and healthcare services. If you are reading this, be assured that we can use your help!

Prospective volunteers are asked to fill out the Ithaca Health Alliance volunteer application to provide us with information about how to contact you and let us know about your areas of interest. All volunteers are also required to read, agree to abide by, and sign our Code of Conduct. The volunteer application packet is available for download by clicking the link above. If you are a healthcare professional interested in volunteering at the Ithaca Free Clinic, we will require a copy of your current licensure and certifications for your volunteer file before you begin providing care at IFC. We will ask for professional references, and you may be asked to speak with our Medical Director, or Holistic Medicine Director prior to your first shift.

After you complete your volunteer application and sign the code of conduct, these can be mailed to: Ithaca Health Alliance, Attn: Volunteer Applications, PO Box 362, Ithaca, NY 14851. You can email your information to clinic@ithacahealth.org. Once your application has been received, we will try to get back to you as soon as possible.

A lot of useful information is presented in the Welcome Packet for IHA volunteers. We encourage you to download this document and read through it. This will help to answer many of the questions typically asked by people as they get oriented to their new roles within IHA.

Thomas Hoebbel Photography

Who are we looking for? Anyone who feels that they have something they can offer. We need volunteers for every service session at the Free Clinic. In addition to physicians and other practitioners to staff the clinic, we need volunteers to help with the operation of the facility. Each open session of the Free Clinic is 4 hours time. We are looking for people who can volunteer for one shift monthly or bimonthly. On a typical open day at IFC, we need two or more volunteers for reception and follow-up scheduling and providers who handle clinical care — nurses, doctors, and alternative medicine providers. Clinic volunteers are not limited to open hours — if you can volunteer at other times for paperwork, keeping the space clean, or other tasks we can also use the help!

Administrative volunteer shifts at the Free Clinic are filled 3 months in advance, to ensure consistency of operations.

We also need volunteers for all of our committee projects. See our Committee information page for descriptions of these opportunities.