Hello and Welcome!
If you are interested in volunteering with CCMT, Inc., please read the following process carefully and then visit the Contact Us page and indicate your preference to apply as a STUDENT OR AN ADULT.
All volunteer opportunities are filled on a first come first serve basis.
This means the first people to fill in all their forms completely and provide a photo will be granted a zoom meeting interview and then be able to volunteer if they are a good fit for CCMT and vice versa.
SENIORITY DATE
The date we complete your interview with you (and your parents) will be considered your seniority date if we accept you as a volunteer. It could be the difference as to whether or not you will be able to volunteer for a specific project especially if there are a lot of applicants applying for the same projects.
STARTING THE PROCESS
Applicants must notify us in writing if they are applying as a student or an adult when filling out the Contact Us page. We will then email you the appropriate application to fill out in its entirety. The applications are explained below.
ADULT APPLICATION PREFERENCE
If you are a high school student who is 18 years of age already and insist on filling out your own forms without any parental signatures or involvement and be treated more as a legal adult, you will have to fill out an ADULT volunteer application.
This application is much more lengthy and you may be subject to fingerprinting and criminal background checks which also requires a fee during non-pandemic times and activities. These fees have been waived during the pandemic as we are not doing indoor or in-person activities at this time. This is what we do for adults as they work with minors.
CCMT takes security measures very seriously.
STUDENT APPLICATION PREFERENCE
If you are a high school student who is 18 years of age and have no problem letting your parents sign in the appropriate places, let us know that as well and we will have you fill out the STUDENT volunteer application (Part 1) with no fees, fingerprinting or criminal background checks required.
If you have a job or a sport in addition to being in school, you will be required to fill out part 2 of the student volunteer application.
THE APPLICATION
All applicants are required to complete their volunteer application in its entirety. We will be going over this application during the recorded Zoom interview with your parents to make sure everything is correct.
MANUAL OR ONLINE APPLIICATION
On the contact us page, you will be required to indicate whether you need an application you can complete online and email back to us, or if you will need a manual application that you will print from your printer to be filled out with a pen and mailed back to us via USPS.
If you do not have access to a scanner and cannot email it back to us, you will be able to fill out a manual application which will require non-typed, "wet" handwritten dates and signatures. You will then need to return your application back to us via USPS. Our U.S. mailing address is:
Christmas Caroling Ministry Tour, Inc.
3000 Whitney Avenue #201
Hamden, CT, 06518 - 2353
This may delay your seniority date. Typed signatures are acceptable when you click on the "yes, I agree" phrase on the application prior to all signatures on the application until we are able to purchase an online signature service. If you click "no" or forget to click the "yes, I agree" phrase, prior to all signatures, the application will be considered incomplete and will be returned to you for correction prior to any interview.
LIABILITY WAIVER AND RELEASE FORM
All applicants (both students and adults) are required to complete their Liability Waiver and Release from with legal "wet" handwritten signatures and dates. Typed signatures are NOT acceptable on this form and will be returned to you for legal "wet" handwritten signatures and dates until we are able to purchase an online signature service. This means you will need to print this form, fill it out manually and return it back to us via scan and email, or via USPS.
(Sorry for any inconveniences).
ELECTRONIC / EMAIL SUBMISSION OF FORMS
When you email any documents, please make sure they are the actual size scan of 8 1/2 x 11.
Photos of such documents are NOT acceptable as they are not printable 8 ½ x 11 and they are too small and fuzzy to read.
Your application will not be accepted in this fashion. Having to correct or start a new application could affect your seniority date as well.
YOUR PHOTO
All applicants must provide a JPG headshot photo for our recognition ceremonies.
JPG images are the only format we are accepting at this time. If you submit your photo in any other format that we cannot convert, you will be required to resubmit your photo. Remember, we do not grant interviews without your photo.
Each form / request (application, Liability Waiver and photo) will be sent in a separate email for record keeping purposes.
We ask that you respond to each email specifically and separately for record keeping purposes. Please pay close attention to the instructions for the subject lines and formats in each email.
SCHEDULING YOUR INTERVIEW
After we receive your forms and photos, we will schedule a 30-60 minute zoom interview with you (and your parents) so everyone is on the same page and of the same understanding of which opportunity you are most interested in and what tasks will be required to complete that opportunity (if that opportunity is still open at the time of the interview).
PARENT - STUDENT INTERVIEWS
The parent who signs your application and Liability Waiver is the parent we require to be present at the online interview with you. However, both parents can attend the interview. We love meeting all parents!
Please have only one parent sign ALL the forms in all the appropriate places for the sake of consistency. However, if insisted upon and both parents want to sign all the forms, that is also acceptable. However, if both parent sign all the forms, it is best that both parents attend the Zoom interview with you.
If one parent signs the application and the other parent signs the Liability Waiver, this will not be acceptable.
All Zoom meetings and interviews are recorded for safety reasons.
Due to the amount of inquiries we receive, we ARE NOT ABLE to grant interviews until ALL forms and your photo have been received. We do allow one 15-minute phone call for questions prior to receiving your forms and photos.
One thing CCMT also does is credit you for the time of your interview if you are accepted as a volunteer into CCMT and if you complete the projects you sign up for in their entirety with excellence by the due dates of the projects. If you abandon a project, you will not be granted the time for your interview or the time you put into an uncompleted or untimely project. (More on this in the sections below.)
RECAP AND CONFIRMATION OF ASSIGNMENTS
After your interview, we will send you an email recapping your interest in the assignment along with the nature of the assignment to make sure everyone has the same understanding of what is involved, including deadlines.
You will be required to respond with a statement that you agree and understand the assignment. You will also be given the opportunity to tell us if we misstated or misunderstood something, and if we did, we will correct the error and send out a corrected copy of the recap and ask for your affirming commitment of the assignment via email.
VERIFICATION OF HOURS
CCMT is different than most other nonprofit organizations in the fact that you are signing up to perform or complete several tasks to complete a project over a specified period of time that could take days, weeks or months. Due to the nature of what we do, we have very very few projects to where you can do 1 or 2 hours and get credit and then be done with your assignment.
Soup kitchens, food pantries and some city clean up projects may offer such opportunities, but CCMT has projects that take longer to complete. We also give extra time to complete your projects so you are not rushed for time. Therefore, we do not grant any hours until the assignments are completed in their entirety, by their due dates and have been done with excellence.
Letters to verify hours are granted twice a year (Janurary and June) depending on how quickly you schedule your exit interview with us along with turning in your timesheet by the deadline date we request it. If you fail to respond by the submission date, your letters could be delayed up to 30 - 90 days after we receive them due to the nature of our compliance schedules as an organization.
SERVO.CITY
We suggest that you do not enter in any of your hours onto Servo.City or with your guidance counselor until you have completed your assignments in their entirety. You will be provided a timesheet during the interview that we have developed and then we go over them at the "Exit Interview" via Zoom at the end of your project or service time. We also help you record your hours onto Servo.City if you desire some assistance with that. This means you also get to claim the time of the exit interview as part of your hours as well.
LETTERS OF DISMISSAL
If you are accepted as a volunteer and do not start any projects, you will be considered as "dismissed" and will not receive any hours / time for the interview. If you receive a letter of dismissal and change your mind and want to volunteer with us, you will be required to start the application process over from the beginning. These letters will be sent to your guidance counselor, New Haven Promise and / or the National Honors Society or other organizations you have indicated to us and will become a permanent part of your files.
LETTERS OF REFERENCE
If you do a timely and excellent job on your assignments, we will include 2 professional and personalized reference letters that you can use for college applications, other organizations or job applications. These letters will be emailed to you, your guidance counselor, New Haven Promise or the National Honors Society or other organizations you have indicated to us and will become a permanent part of your files.
LETTERS OF ABANDONMENT
If you quit or abandon your projects, do a poor or messy job to where we have to find or recruit another volunteer to “clean up or correct your mess” or if you miss a deadline, no hours will be granted whatsoever, and a Letter of Abandonment will be sent to your guidance counselor, New Haven Promise or the National Honors Society or other organizations you have indicated to us and will become part of your permanent files.
COMMUNICATION
If we cannot reach you via the contact information you provide to us on your application and that we verify during the interview and you miss important steps, changes or instructions to assignments or due dates, you may be putting your hours at risk. If you do not return our communications within 48 hours, we will contact your parents. If your parents do not respond within 24 hours, we will contact your guidance counselor. If they do not respond within 48 hours, we have the right to terminate your volunteer status. If this happens, we may consider you to have abandoned your assignment and a Letter of Abandonment may be issued and become a permanent part of your files.
If you are having trouble completing an assignment, have or experience other unexpected / extenuating circumstances that have come up, succumbed to a sudden illnesses or have changed your contact information, it is your (or your parent's) responsibility to keep us informed and updated with such changes in order to remain in good standing with CCMT and protect the hours you are earning. This is especially crucial around the time of additional zoom instructional meetings, update meetings, deadlines or tour dates.
OPPORTUNITY SEARCH
If you have not visited the VOLUNTEER TAB, go to https://ccmt30ct.org/opportunities-all-ages as it might give you a better idea of some of the opportunities that exist.
COMPUTER FILES
When you fill out your application and Liability Waiver and Release form, you will need to download them both onto your computer. You should add your first and last names to the name of the documents when you save them onto your computer. We will include a subject line for each of your submissions, which may be a good name for each of the documents you save onto your computer. Just make sure you save them both in a place on your computer where you can find them quickly and easily.
SUBMITTING YOUR FORMS
Once you have filled them out in their entirety with your parents' typed wet signatures, you can scan and email them back to us at info@ccmt30ct.org
ALL EMAILS YOU SEND SHOULD HAVE A SUBJECT LINE ON THEM. WE USUALLY PROVIDE SPECIFIC SUBJECT LINES IN THE BODY OF THE EMAIL THAT YOU SHOULD COPY AND PASTE INTO THE SUBJECT LINE.
Again, whenever you email any documents, please make sure they are the actual size scan of 8 1/2 x 11.
Photos of such documents are NOT acceptable as they are not printable 8 ½ x 11 and they are too small and fuzzy to read.
Thank you for your attention to these matters .
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
