Fulfilling Service Hour Requirements through Zooniverse

We are incredibly grateful to the many individuals who volunteer through Zooniverse to fulfill service hour requirements for graduation, scholarships, and more. This is a fantastic way to meet your requirements while contributing to significant research and discoveries, helping teams worldwide better understand ourselves and the universe. 

Below are instructions for participants (students), followed by instructions for Organization Leads supporting students in these efforts. 

Instructions for Participants: 

Step 1: Share this opportunity with your Organization

Contact your organization to see if participating in Zooniverse can fulfill your volunteering or other participation requirements. A good approach is to share this blog post with your organization so they understand what you will do and how you will document your participation. We strongly recommend checking with your organization before you start to ensure your efforts are recognized.

Step 2: Register at Zooniverse.org

Create a Zooniverse account by clicking ‘Register’ in the upper-right corner of the Zooniverse.org homepage. Only your name and email are captured, and we do not share email addresses outside of Zooniverse. 

Note: Registration is not required to participate in Zooniverse, but it is useful in this case to create a volunteer certificate documenting the number of hours you spent classifying and the number of classifications you did. Volunteer certificates are often required documentation for service learning hours.

Step 3: Participate!

Dive into any project and start classifying! There are typically over 80 active projects listed at zooniverse.org/projects. You can filter by different disciplines (history, space, nature, climate, etc.) to find projects that align with your interests. Every project’s ‘classify’ page has a brief tutorial to guide you on what to do and how to do it. 

Be sure to be logged in while you participate so that your stats and hours of participation are recorded and can be included in your certificate.

Step 4: Generate your Volunteer Certificate

Go to zooniverse.org, sign in, and click ‘More Stats’. Use the drop-down options on the upper-right of the stats bar cart to filter to a specific time period and/or project of interest. Then click on ‘Generate Volunteer Certificate’ (the button to the bottom-right of your stats bar chart).   

Share your Certificate with your Organization. We’d love it if you continue participating!

By following these steps, you can fulfill your service hour requirements while making meaningful contributions to scientific research. Happy classifying!

Instructions for Organization Leads:

Step 1: Get to know the Zooniverse

When sharing this opportunity with your volunteer community, we recommend emphasizing the benefits volunteers gain beyond just contributing time and classifications. Instead of creating busy work, encourage participants to reflect on how their efforts (and the community’s collective efforts) contribute to our understanding of the world and the broader universe. 

Watch this brief introduction and video for more context about the Zooniverse, the world’s largest platform for people-powered research, with dozens of active projects and millions of participants worldwide. 

Each Zooniverse project is led by a different research team, covering a wide range of subjects:

• Identify planets around distant stars – Planet Hunters TESS
• Study the impact of climate change on animals – Snapshot Safari and the ocean – Plankton Portal
• Help in understanding biological functions – Science Scribbler
• Transcribe handwritten documents – Deciphering Secrets: Unlocking the Manuscripts of Medieval Spain
• …and more! 

The collective efforts of Zooniverse projects have resulted in hundreds of research publications to date.

Step 2: Share Zooniverse with your Network

Share the instructions above for the simple steps on how to participate and generate a certificate.

If you need to reference a 501(c)(3): Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, one of the hosts of the Zooniverse Team, is a 501(c)(3). Organizations that need to link explicitly to a 501(c)(3) for their volunteering efforts use the Adler Planetarium as the reference. Documentation of the Adler Planetarium’s 501(c)(3) status is provided here. Note: Zooniverse is a program within Adler, Oxford, and the University of Minnesota; it is not a 501(c)3 of its own. 

Step 3: Create a Group

If you’re interested in tracking your participants’ engagement, setting group goals, and more easily telling your story of collective impact, check out this blog post for details and instructions.

Step 4: Share your Stories of Impact with Us

We’d love to hear about your experience and share your stories of impact with the broader Zooniverse community to spark ideas and inspiration in others. See this Daily Zooniverse post as an example. Email us at contact@zooniverse.org with your stories, and don’t hesitate to email us if you have any questions or need additional information. 

By following these steps, you can include Zooniverse in your volunteer opportunities and help your participants fulfill their service hour requirements while making meaningful contributions to scientific research. Thank you for including Zooniverse in your offerings!