Volunteering
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40 free Volunteering trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Volunteering is older than the word for it. Long before anyone spoke of a voluntary sector, neighbours were putting out each other's fires, feeding strangers and turning up to help after floods and wars. Many of the charities people give their time to today began with one person and an idea that seemed too small to matter. This quiz covers the people and organisations behind that history: the founders of famous relief groups, the presidents and campaigners who built national programmes, and the days of the year set aside for giving time. It also looks further afield, at citizen science, community traditions around the world, a few volunteers from film and fiction, and the story behind the word itself. It is written for volunteer coordinators planning an appreciation event, for charity teams who want an icebreaker, and for anyone curious about how unpaid work has shaped the world. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a round doubles as a quick history of people helping people.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which US state earned the nickname the Volunteer State after its men flocked to fight in the War of 1812?
Tennessee
Tennessee is said to have earned the name when its men eagerly answered a single wartime call for some 3,500 volunteers.
Q 02Which Founding Father helped form the Union Fire Company, a volunteer fire brigade in Philadelphia, in 1736?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin modelled it on the fire societies of his native Boston, but his brigade fought fires for the whole town, not only for its own members.
Q 03The Red Cross emblem was created by reversing the colours of which country's national flag?
Switzerland
Switzerland's white cross on red was flipped to make the symbol, and the Red Crescent was later made the same way from the Ottoman flag.
Q 04Which leader's birthday, 18 July, is an international day when people give 67 minutes to helping others?
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela spent 67 years in the struggle for justice in South Africa, so the day asks for one minute of giving for each year.
Q 05Which charity's bell ringers collect Christmas donations in red kettles, a custom begun in San Francisco in 1891?
The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army's first kettle was a crab pot that Captain Joseph McFee set up at a ferry landing to pay for a free Christmas dinner for the poor.
Q 06Meals on Wheels began when volunteers brought hot dinners to people left unable to cook during which emergency?
The Blitz
The Blitz wrecked so many British kitchens that volunteers began delivering dinners by pram, cart and bicycle, which gave the service its name.
Q 07Which Hunger Games heroine volunteers as a tribute so that her younger sibling Primrose is spared the arena?
Katniss Everdeen
Katniss Everdeen takes Prim's place at the District 12 reaping, and Peeta Mellark later volunteers in the same way to spare his mentor Haymitch.
Q 08Which former US president and his wife Rosalynn give their names to Habitat for Humanity's annual home-building week?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter joined his first build in 1984 on New York's Lower East Side, and the yearly builds have since put up homes in more than a dozen countries.
Q 09Which animals have volunteers counted each Christmas since 1900, in a census proposed to replace a holiday hunt?
Birds
Birds were the quarry of Christmas 'side hunts', so ornithologist Frank Chapman proposed counting them instead, and the Audubon Society still runs the tally.
Q 10Which Christmas gift drive have US Marine reservists run since 1947, when a major's wife sewed a doll to give away?
Toys for Tots
Toys for Tots began in Los Angeles after Diane Hendricks found no charity to take her handmade Raggedy Ann, and Walt Disney's animators drew its train logo.
Q 11Which US president created the Peace Corps by executive order in March 1961, weeks after taking office?
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy first floated the idea in a late-night campaign speech on the steps of the University of Michigan's student union.
Q 12Which Civil War nurse, known as the Angel of the Battlefield, founded the American Red Cross?
Clara Barton
Clara Barton also ran an office after the war that answered tens of thousands of letters and helped trace more than 22,000 missing men.
Q 13Which Latin phrase describes professional work, most often a lawyer's, that is done without pay?
Pro bono
Pro bono is short for pro bono publico, 'for the public good', and it traditionally meant lawyers acting for people who could not afford legal help.
Q 21Which national service programme was created in 1993 by an act that Bill Clinton signed in his first year as president?
AmeriCorps
AmeriCorps absorbed VISTA, a programme launched in 1965 as a home-front counterpart to the Peace Corps.
Q 22Which service organisation, started by Chicago lawyer Paul Harris in 1905, has led a global campaign to wipe out polio?
Rotary International
Rotary International took its name from early meetings that rotated between members' offices, and it launched its PolioPlus drive in 1985.
Q 23Which service organisation took up sight-saving work after Helen Keller urged its 1925 convention to aid the blind?
Lions Clubs
Q 14Which parable figure from Luke's Gospel gives his name to laws that shield bystanders who give emergency aid?
The Good Samaritan
The Good Samaritan lends his name to laws meant to stop fear of a lawsuit deterring passers-by, though most do not cover professionals on the job.
Q 15Which hiking route from Georgia to Maine was built by private citizens and is still kept up largely by volunteers?
Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian Trail was conceived by forester Benton MacKaye in 1921 and completed in 1937, and dozens of local hiking groups now maintain it.
Q 16Which US federal holiday became a national day of service through a 1994 act co-written by Congressman John Lewis?
MLK Day
MLK Day had been observed for only eight years when Lewis and Senator Harris Wofford wrote its service role into law.
Q 17Which actor plays a Yale graduate fleeing gambling debts on a Peace Corps flight in the 1985 comedy Volunteers?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks shared the screen with Rita Wilson, whom he had first met on the sitcom Bosom Buddies and went on to marry in 1988.
Q 18Which sports movement for people with intellectual disabilities held its first games at Chicago's Soldier Field in 1968?
Special Olympics
Special Olympics grew out of a summer day camp that founder Eunice Shriver held at her own Maryland home, and it still relies on volunteer coaches.
Q 19The word volunteer, borrowed from French around 1600, first described a person offering himself for what?
Military service
Military service was the word's only meaning at first, and its use for anyone who freely takes on a task is recorded from the 1630s.
Q 20What kind of charity did John van Hengel pioneer in Phoenix in 1967 to pass on groceries that shops could not sell?
A food bank
A food bank was his answer after a mother of ten showed him how much edible surplus grocers were throwing away behind their stores.
Lions Clubs began in 1917 under businessman Melvin Jones, and eye care has been their best-known cause ever since Keller's speech in Ohio.
Q 24To a gardener, a tomato plant described as a volunteer is one that has done what?
Grown without being sown
Grown without being sown is the mark of a volunteer, which usually springs from seed carried in on the wind or hidden in compost.
Q 25Which religion's temples run langars, free kitchens staffed by volunteers where anyone may eat regardless of faith?
Sikhism
Sikhism treats the langar as an act of seva, or selfless service, and everyone sits on the floor together to eat the same vegetarian dishes.
Q 26Which organisation established International Volunteer Day in 1985, an observance marked every year on 5 December?
United Nations
United Nations members voted the day into being, and the organisation's own volunteer programme leads the celebrations each year.
Q 27Which medical aid group, founded in 1971 by French medics and journalists, won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize?
Doctors Without Borders
Doctors Without Borders grew out of the Biafran famine, which convinced its founders that care should reach anyone, whatever their race, religion or politics.
Q 28Which free weekly 5-kilometre event, begun in south-west London in 2004, is staged entirely by volunteers?
Parkrun
Parkrun's first outing drew just 13 runners to Bushy Park, and founder Paul Sinton-Hewitt managed the morning himself.
Q 29In which Italian city did volunteers nicknamed the Mud Angels rescue art and rare books after a devastating 1966 flood?
Florence
Florence was swamped when the Arno overflowed, and helpers from Italy and abroad dug its damaged masterpieces out of the sludge.
Q 30What do online volunteers sort by shape in a citizen-science effort launched by Oxford astrophysicists in 2007?
Galaxies
Galaxies poured through the site so quickly that within a day of launch the public was logging almost 70,000 classifications an hour.