Benef-Action is Skidmore’s only student-led community service club, dedicated to creating opportunities for service and engagement with Saratoga Springs as a whole. They organize volunteers, host fundraisers, and plan events to help students get involved in helping both Skidmore and the greater Saratoga area. With an all-new slate of leadership in the 2025-26 academic year, they’re committed to ramping up event frequency and member engagement as they move towards a more action-oriented schedule; they currently have about 35 active members and over a hundred students engaging with their larger events. 

“Our main purpose is to provide our members with as many opportunities to engage in any community service that we find or that they want to do,” says Isabella Bryant, ‘27, the club publicist. Highlights of the club’s activities in the Fal of 2025 included a letter-writing campaign for the Scarlett Fund, in which club members wrote over 40 letters of support for kids battling chronic illnesses, as well as the well-attended and widely enjoyed “Pie a Hockey Player” event where they sold whipped-cream pies to raise money for RISE Housing & Support Services. They’ve also putt on a regular volunteer dinner service at the Saratoga Senior Center, a hub for aging Saratogians to socialize and access communal resources. “:It's really nice to see how much other people like giving back to their community.” says Shelby Gellman, ‘27, the club president. “And they were very grateful. We got… a round of applause when we left, which was very sweet… They just love to have people around, so that was really nice.” Other community partners that Benef-Action has been collaborating with include the Wilton Food Pantry, the Wellspring Women’s Shelter, and Skidmore CARES. 

As a student-run volunteer organization, Benef-Action acts as a bridge between students and local organizations looking for volunteers, able to connect peer-to-peer in a more effective way than, say, emails about the same opportunities from faculty members a student may have never even met. The club’s philosophy is about making volunteering approachable and accessible for all, and moving past the “service hours as a chor” mindset that students might bring to campus from a high school environment. Through the power of organized collaboration, they can make a difference for local stakeholders and support Skidmore’s institutional mission of giving back to the community. 

In the Fall, they had an action-packed semester, including a collaboration with Cooking Club for a “Meals On Wheels”-style delivery of homemade food for the holiday season. They also participated in the Community Garden Work Party on December 2, and ran their annual Candy Cane Cards campaign at the end of the semester, which let Skidmore students and family members purchase cards to send to their friends during finals season to wish them luck as we close out the semester. Anyone interested in getting involved with the group can find them tabling at Club Fair, or on Instagram (@benefactionskidmore), or through their event postings on SkidSync.