Support Us
How Can I Volunteer?

We need you. Volunteers and interns do a great deal of the work of the ACLU of Colorado. We invite you to join these outstanding people and contribute your time and talent. No matter how little or how much time you have—from a few hours a month to several hours a week—we have important and satisfying work for you to do.

Contact us at info@aclu-co.org or click here to sign up as a volunteer for the Colorado ACLU.

If you live outside the Denver metro area, there’s still plenty of work for you to do! We need contact persons, lobbyists, speakers, and fundraisers from around the state.

We're in particular need of volunteers to help us at a variety of summer festivals and events. Click here to learn more about them.

Administrative support:

Office: The ACLU of Colorado accomplishes a lot with a small staff. It relies on volunteers to answer phones, file, manage mail and our database – all the tasks that it takes in a busy office. We need reliable volunteers who will commit to work on specific days for a specific number of hours each week.

Fundraising/Membership: The ACLU Foundation of Colorado needs volunteers who can do internet research, work with databases, assist in writing fundraising letters and articles for the newsletter, manage mailings and make follow-up calls to members and donors. We need people to help research, write, and shepherd grant proposals. Volunteers can work on a short-term basis, for a specific project, or on a long-term basis in the general fundraising area.

Intake: The ACLU of Colorado gets thousands of phone calls a year from folks requesting our help. We need volunteers to answer those calls. Depending on the nature of the problem, they may give information about services provided by other agencies. If the problem is a civil liberties issue, the volunteer will explain that requests for ACLU assistance must be in writing, and our procedures for reviewing requests.

The volunteers also read written requests, summarize them for the legal staff, put the information into our database, and ensure that all written requests receive a written response. Some of these requests may result in legal cases or non-litigation advocacy by the ACLU Foundation of Colorado. These volunteers need good telephone and personal skills and should be comfortable working with computers. Intake requires training and we ask for a six-month commitment for a specific day(s) and time(s) from these volunteers.

Internships: We need students from all disciplines, including public relations, journalism, political science and history, marketing and business to work on important and substantive projects.

Law student internships: Law students are encouraged to apply for intern positions at the ACLU of Colorado. Please click here for more information.

Legal Department: If you have paralegal or legal training and want to volunteer for research or case work in the office, please send a resume and cover letter, and include information about the frequency and expected duration of your availability: approximately how many hours a week you can volunteer, whether you can volunteer on a regular basis, and any special background or interests that you might have which would be relevant. You may be interviewed to determine whether we have projects that suit your skills.

Lobbying: We need people to keep track of issues and specific bills, research legislation, write briefing papers, and prepare testimony or attend legislative hearings. We also need people who will write, call and/or visit their elected officials.

Special events and projects: The ACLU of Colorado participates in several summer events like People’s Fair, displaying leaflets on various topics and talking to visitors about the ACLU. We also march in parades that celebrate various events, such as Martin Luther King Day, PrideFest, Cinco De Mayo and others.

In the fall, we celebrate the founding of the ACLU Foundation of Colorado with a gala dinner and silent auction. The Whitehead Dinner is held in Denver, features a keynote speaker and honors Coloradans who have made a difference for civil liberties in Colorado. We need volunteers to help plan all aspects of the event from publicity, selling tickets, soliciting sponsors for tables to getting items for the silent auction. Volunteers at the event manage registration, create and decorate auction displays, manage the timetable for the evening and more.

From time to time other events or special projects arise and we need volunteers for these, too.

Speakers Bureau: Qualified and trained (we will train) ACLU speakers give presentations to students, community organizations, service organizations, professional associations and a variety of other groups. Topics include Understanding the ACLU, Freedom of the Press, Speech and Assembly, Rights of Students and Capital Punishment.

Please click here to sign up as a volunteer for the Colorado ACLU.

Can I support the ACLU financially?

Yes! Defending civil liberties and civil rights is expensive. One important way you can help is by donating to the ACLU Foundation of Colorado. Your tax-deductable gifts go to support the ACLU of Colorado's education and litigation programs. We depend on the support of our friends and members to be able to carry out our mission. Send your check, money order, or MasterCard or VISA information to:

ACLU Foundation of Colorado
400 Corona Street
Denver, CO 80218