Community Engagement Time FAQs

The Staff Community Engagement Time policy allows staff 16 hours a calendar year of paid time to volunteer in their communities.  This program encourages NAU staff (administrators, classified staff, and service professionals) to take part in projects that support the communities in which we live and serve.  The purpose of this program is to both to enhance the benefit received as a staff member at NAU and to support community engagement service activities by offering paid time each year to volunteer for a chartable organization.  We hope that by offering this benefit to NAU staff, we can help enrich our communities in a variety of ways.

Yes.  The Staff Community Engagement Time is for regular benefit eligible administrators, classified staff, and service professionals.  Student workers, graduate assistants, part time temporary faculty or part time temporary staff are considered variable hour employees and are not eligible for paid community engagement time.  Regular full-time faculty are not included in this policy.

The 16 hours of Community Engagement may not be taken in increments of less than 2 hours.

Use of community engagement time is restricted to assisting a community service organization. A community service organization is a non-profit, non-partisan community organization which is designated as an IRS Code 501(c)(3) agency, or a human service organization licensed or accredited to serve citizens with special needs including children, youth, and the elderly.

 Political or religious activities do not qualify for community engagement leave. Lobbying/Political Activity policy can be found here.  This does not exclude non-religious community outreach activities of religious organizations, such as distributing food for a local food bank.

No. Each calendar year, beginning January 1 the 16 hours resets.  Any unused hours are not carried into the next year. Any unused hours are not paid out upon separation from the University.

The use of this time must be approved by your supervisor.  Employees should first request use of Community Engagement time from their supervisor in advance to avoid scheduling conflicts and continuity of operations.

The use of the time will be reported in the Employee’s timesheet using the Community Engagement leave code. When reporting time off for Community Engagement, every employee must add to the comment section:

Where I volunteered:

What I did:

To be eligible for this time, the volunteer activities must be performed during scheduled work time.  Employees are also encouraged to volunteer on their personal time, however, volunteering during personal time is not eligible for, nor does it require the use of, the Community Engagement time.

The consideration on approving time should be about the timing of the request and if it has any major impact on the business operations and not about the agency where the employee has requested to volunteer.