What Is The Difference Between Junior Auxiliary and Junior League | Track It Forward

What Is The Difference Between Junior Auxiliary & Junior League and How Can They Benefit from Using Volunteer Tracking Software

Last updated by Kasey Murphy on 03/13/2021

In our experience of finding nonprofit organizations, we have come across some organizations that we have never heard of and some that we have. Junior Auxiliary and Junior League are two organizations that we have heard of, but never really knew exactly what they did. 

We are so happy that we have been able to work with both organizations and helped support their overall mission. Here is exactly what the difference between the two organizations is, and how our volunteer time tracking software can help them with all of their volunteer projects, program organization, and tracking of funds. 

What Is Junior Auxiliary? 

Junior Auxiliary is an association made up of chapters across the southern parts of the United States. They all operate under the national organization and their bylaws. The definition of Junior Auxiliary, from the national website, is:

 “Junior Auxiliary represents a serious endeavor on the part of women to be active and constructive community participants and to assume leadership roles in meeting community needs. Junior Auxiliary provides the member with the opportunity to serve and to be a vital part of the community.”

The main mission of Junior Auxiliary chapters is to arrange volunteer and service opportunities for women in the community to help aid other charitable organizations, nonprofits and education sectors. 

Women in Junior Auxiliary are assigned to a committee that helps coordinate and organize volunteer activities for the women in Junior Auxiliary in accordance with a third-party organization. 

When a woman joins Junior Auxiliary they are making a 5-year commitment to volunteer at least 24 hours a year, with at least 12 devoted to bettering education in the community.

An Example of Junior Auxiliary Projects and Initiatives

Each Junior Auxiliary chapter creates its own projects for women to work on throughout the year or at different times in the year. They also each have a main fundraising event that will fund most of their initiatives! This is usually a charity ball, named differently depending on the area. 

Junior Auxiliary of Greenwood spoke with us going through the different projects they have organized and how they operate. 

An example of a Junior Auxiliary project in this chapter is Clothing Corner. Junior Auxiliary members coordinate with counselors at local schools to see if any children need basic necessities or uniforms. Then, Junior Auxiliary members get a specific child assigned to them where they will go purchase the clothing that they need or want and give them back to the counselor, to give to the child!

Track It Forward presents: Example of Junior Auxiliary of Greenwood Project Flow - How volunteer hour categorization works within committees, projects and specified hour types. Junior Auxiliary - Projects are in 2 committees - Project A & Project B. Examples of Activities lead to: bringing in a certain amount of money which equals one finance volunteer hour, sending emails or designing posters equals admin volunteer hours, going into the community equals one service volunteer hour, going to a meeting is one service volunteer hour, and going into a school or educating is one education hour.

What is the Junior League? 

Junior League is also a national organization under the Association of Junior League International. There are Junior League chapters across the United States, in Mexico, and in Canada. 

The Association of Junior League International defines its mission as: 

“an organization of women committed to promoting voluntarism, developing the potential of women and improving communities through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers. Its purpose is exclusively educational and charitable.”

Junior League focuses specifically on acts of social justice and reform in the area that the chapter is located. Issues that Junior League has addressed include childhood obesity, pollution, illiteracy, and foster children without a safety net. 

When a woman wants to join a Junior League chapter, they will enroll in a provisional year where they can participate in both volunteer and fundraising activities within the organization and the different projects. Then, as they move on they can become more focused in a specific area.

 

Examples of Junior League Projects and Initiatives 

Junior League categorizes the different initiatives into civic leadership and community impact. 

Civic Leadership is focused on bringing awareness and education to a community on certain issues that the Junior League is wanting to tackle. This could be homelessness in the community, focusing on after school programs in a community impact topic, or mentoring troubled youth. 

Community impact initiatives are events and programs that are focused on specific topics of concern. These could be cyberbullying, AIDS, substance abuse, self-esteem, and so much more. Junior League creates programs that help focus on aiding these certain topics and then different chapters opt to focus on them and have volunteer opportunities within their organization for women of Junior League to participate in.

How are Junior League and Junior Auxiliary Similar

Junior Auxiliary and Junior League are similar in many ways - beyond both of them being great organizations. 

  • They are composed of women. 
  • Each individual chapter operates under a larger organization and its guidelines.
  • They bring volunteer and service initiatives to the community.
  • There are provisional years for first-time members to go through to learn about the organization and the different volunteer opportunities. 
  • They have projects that women who are members can join.

How are Junior Auxiliary and Junior League Different 

Junior Auxiliary and Junior League do differ in the fundamentals of the organizations and the different activities they focus on. 

  • Junior Auxiliary focuses on education and youth initiatives where Junior League focuses on specific areas of impact through all communities.
  • Junior Auxiliary Chapters are mostly located in the southern part of the United States, where Junior League is in all of North America. 
  • Junior Auxiliary chapters hold one fundraising event per year, where Junior League chapters can hold many different fundraising events, some of which will be for their community impact programs. 
  • Junior Auxiliary provides committees for women to focus on one particular project where Junior League allows women to focus on civic engagement or community impact, then they can go more specific from that point. 

Junior Auxiliary vs. Junior League venn Diagram Junior Auxiliary has 90 chapters in the southern states of the U.S., focuses on education and youth initiatives, partners with other nonprofits in the community to create projects. Junior League has 290 chapters in 3 countries, focuses on societal issues within the community, and creates volunteer programs from national community impact focuses. Things they have in common: all women members, have projects commiteed to education and providing learning outlets, and organizes volunteer hours into different categories and projects.

The Importance of Volunteering in Junior Auxiliary and Junior League

Volunteering is the key to making a difference in the initiatives that both Junior Auxiliary and Junior League set. Both organizations want to make a difference in their community and in specific aspects of the world through volunteerism. 

In Junior Auxiliary and Junior League chapters, when women volunteer they are showing that they can make a difference. Junior League and Junior Auxiliary are the platforms that allow women specifically to get involved and create good from volunteering. 

Junior Auxiliary and Junior League, like so many other nonprofit organizations, rely heavily on their volunteers to help execute their mission and create a strong environment for women leadership and volunteers through the projects they create. Having such a strong relationship with volunteerism in an organization requires a commitment to creating a personal connection to these volunteers and being able to see all of the work that has been done in different areas of service. 

Having a volunteer tracking software is a great way to free up a volunteer manager’s time and organize the different types of volunteers and volunteer hours an organization offers. 

Tracking Volunteer Hours in Junior Auxiliary 

Junior Auxiliary tracks volunteer hours for a few different reasons.

  • To make sure members meet their requirements 
  • To showcase time spent in different committees
  • To categorize hours in education, fundraising, administrative, and service 
  • To run reports on all hours spent volunteering 

Tracking Volunteer Hours in Junior League 

Junior League may want to track hours for similar reasons and for some more specific ones. 

  • To track the number of hours put in for the International database.
  • To motivate volunteers
  • To categorize community impact and civic leadership hours 
  • To prioritize community impact topics based off of current statistics 

How Track It Forward Can Help Junior Auxiliary and Junior League Chapters 

Is Track It Forward Right For You? If these are the features you are looking for, then yes, we're the perfect match! 1. Volunteers Track Their Own Hours Volunteers log the hours they've volunteered Organizers can easily approve or reject those hours Everyone gets their own login with access to their time reports and requirement progress 2. Reports Help to Maintain Requirements Charts give you a high level overview of your volunteers’ requirement standing show which volunteers hit their goal, which are working on it and which haven’t started Easy export features for end of the year reporting and grant funding 3. Mobile App for every kind of user Log hours on the go - convenient for the super busy ones Easy to use and super intuitive - perfect for even the least tech savvy 4. Organized Community Service Events Manage community service events in one spot Make it easy to sign up for opportunities and shifts Communicate directly with your attendees We are not like all the other complicated platforms! If our grandmas can use it, then so can your volunteers.

Track It Forward specifically helps organizations like Junior Auxiliary and Junior League not only when it comes to tracking their member’s volunteer hours, but also in helping administrators focus less on the tracking of volunteer hours and more on input towards initiatives. 

Track It Forward provides volunteer time tracking software that easily logs volunteer hours or puts them into an approval queue for the admins to approve. Then, admins can set up categorization or customized fields so the hours will automatically log under a specific category. For Junior League or Junior Auxiliary, this could be a specific project or a category in community impact. Then, Track It Forward reporting software can instantaneously create a report from the information. 

Track It Forward even has a mobile application that makes logging hours extremely easy for volunteers. The ease of the software helps free up time for volunteer coordinators, managers and admins of Junior Auxiliary or Junior League chapters, so they can focus more on the impactful parts of the organization- the volunteering itself! 

Our support success team and help library are full of examples of the different ways that organizations like Junior League and Junior Auxiliary can efficiently set up their Track It Forward software.