As you've come to our volunteer page, we want to immediately thank you for your interest in the Refuge, and our animals.

The Morris Animal Refuge is always interested in volunteers to work and help us carry out the mission of the Refuge.

All volunteers must be 18 years of age or older, or at least a high school senior. We are aware that there are many bright and caring young people who wish to assist a Refuge like ours, but due to insurance requirements and liability factors we cannot take on volunteers who don't meet the above requirement. If you're too young to volunteer now we hope you will think of us when you're old enough to qualify as a Morris volunteer.

You should know that among the factors used to choose volunteers to work at the Refuge, the match between the volunteer's available time slots and the needs of the Refuge is very important. Many volunteers aren't available during those times for which the Refuge needs assistance.

We are always on the look-out for new volunteers to participate in all manner of jobs, and provide us with the special skills they might have attained through their education, work and life experience.

Many volunteers wish to work directly with our animals. These volunteer positions are few in number, and especially sought after. If you are considering volunteering to work with our animals you should know that these jobs are intensive and include difficult and literally dirty work. For example, volunteers clean and disinfect the animal rooms and cages and dispose of the wastes. Cleaning and disinfecting the outdoor areas is important and hard work as well. Getting to have direct contact with our animals and occasionally taking them to our outdoor play areas is an occasional fringe benefit of the animal volunteer's work, not the core of it.

Volunteering at Morris to work with the animals can be hazardous, and our volunteers must be mindful of this at all times. The animals which come to Morris just don't come from nice homes, but very often come from the street, where many have lived their entire lives. Animals surrendered to us may claw, scratch or literally bite and wound our volunteers. That's why we invest the time necessary with our animal volunteers to train them in our animal handling procedures for their safety and the animal's as well.

The combined employee and volunteer animal workforce is by its very nature limited due to a variety of factors, included those described above. As a result, animal volunteers are those qualified individuals who also have the ability to volunteer on a regular and consistent basis within the Morris schedule.

We don't accept applications emailed to us or sent via postal mail. We request that prospective volunteers fill in our "Volunteer Application" and submit it in person at the Refuge in center-city Philadelphia. When you come in we'll take your application, talk with you about volunteering at Morris, then give you a tour of the Refuge so you can see first hand what volunteering at the Refuge is all about.

You can download the "Volunteer Application" in Adobe Acrobat® format so you can print it out and fill it in to save you time, before you personally bring it in to us.

You can download a free copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader® here. You will need Adobe Acrobat®, version 5.x to view and print the "Volunteer Application".

Go to our contact page for our address and hours of operation so you can come in to volunteer.

We know that for some potential volunteers this process sounds somewhat onerous, but experience has proved this is the right procedure for the Refuge. We want to know who really wants to work with us.