Awards and Hours FAQ

As an Impact Forward member, your dedication to community service is highly valued. To ensure your hard work is properly recognized, we support two distinct national volunteer awards: the National Service Honor and the American Volunteer Service Award (AVSA).
Because these two awards are managed differently, please review the processes below to ensure your hours are certified and your awards are ordered correctly.

AVSA Process

This award requires independent action. You will manage your own membership, tracking, and ordering directly through the Volunteer Scholars platform.

Eligibility Period: Sept 1 - Aug 31

Registration: Each student must independently purchase their own AVSA membership at volunteer scholars. There are different levels of membership. Premier Level ( - A basic membership option for a volunteer who wishes only to pursue the AVSA award is required.
Tracking Hours: Students are responsible for logging their volunteer hours directly into the AVSA online portal.They are also responsible to ensure they secure the beneficiary documentation required timely for the events they volunteered.
Ordering & Delivery: Impact Forward does not order these. Once your hours are approved by Volunteer Scholars, AVSA will ship your medal directly to your home address.

National Service Honor Process

Impact Forward manages the submission and ordering process for this award collectively on behalf of our members.

Eligibility Period: All activities must be done within a set 12 month period (ex. August 1, 2025 to August 1, 2026)

Tracking Hours: Each student is responsible for maintaining a personal spreadsheet documenting all volunteer hours completed over the 12-month eligibility period.
Submission: In September, Impact Forward will send out a Google Form to collect all completed spreadsheets.
Verification:The hours that are certified by AVSA are automatically verified for the National Service Honor submission. Hours that are not certified by AVSA will be verified by the Impact Forward leadership team, so please make sure you have your documentation ready for verification.
Ordering: Once all submissions are reviewed and verified, Impact Forward will place one collective bulk order for all eligible members to receive their National Service Honor Awards.

If you are pursuing the AVSA, Volunteer Scholars has strict guidelines for logging hours. Please keep the following rules in mind to ensure your service is approved:

Discrete Entries Are Required: Volunteer hours must be entered individually. You must note the specific date, exact hours worked, activity description, and the benefiting organization. You cannot aggregate or combine hours over a range of dates (e.g., you cannot submit "12 hours for Thank you cards all month").
Report Actual Hours Only: You must report the exact elapsed time you worked. Commuting or drive time, meal breaks, and personal time must be subtracted from your total.
No "Bonus" Time: Promotional hours (e.g., "Earn double hours on Sunday"), time awarded per item (e.g., "2 hours per hat knitted"), or "on-call" time do not qualify.
Age Brackets: The AVSA categories are split into Youth (ages 6–12), Teen (ages 13–18), Young Adult (ages 19–24), and Adult (ages 25+).
Beneficiary Organization Signed Hours: Volunteers are responsible to secure the documentation for volunteer hours from the beneficiary organization (not the coordinating organization). If the event is organized by the Impact Forward, the event lead will be responsible to get the documentation from the beneficiary organization but it is students responsibility to ensure the hours are timely submitted to the lead.

Critical Guidelines for the AVSA (Volunteer Scholars)

FAQ