Generally a staff member or student helper of the center is available to assist visitors in using the resources and to control access and lending procedures. A physical office space in which the library and other resources and supplies can be kept is of great importance to all the centers. Most stress the value of having a place that students and other community members can come to for information and advice on how to become involved in community service. The student leaders of organizations or volunteer groups benefit from having an area where they can hold meetings, access a computer to type up information and make posters, make phone calls and leave messages for other volunteers. Volunteer centers provide the background Link to Community Agencies which make many of the above activities and the involvement of many college students, faculty and staff in community service possible.
Most centers work with community agencies on a number of different levels.
Additional activities such as matching student volunteers with agencies, training them, and monitoring their involvement can increase the quality of the service provided to the agencies and allow them and the students to serve the local community more effectively and efficiently. The building of close relationships to community agencies can be especially important for the implementation of a service learning program, as professors may not have the time or resources to seek out an appropriate service site on their own. The various volunteer centers are all run in different manners, which involve greater or lesser degrees of staff or student involvement. The number of paid staff members is certainly related to the size of the center, the range of its activities and of course to its financial resource base. Many centers seems to go through different stages of organization often moving from having part-time staff advisors to having a full time director.