I didn’t know much about volunteer visas before deciding to take our gap year to Spain, nor did I know that obtaining one for our family would help us make a way to move there longer-term. For us, having school-aged children attend an American International Christian school in Madrid became the way to move to Spain. So wild! Below I’m going to share more about how we secured volunteer visas for our family of four, the perks of volunteer visas and why this may be a good option for your family, too.

We received our visas to move from the U.S. to Spain as a family of four (two adults, two kids ages 11 and 8 at the time) in less than six weeks from application. When we knew with certainty in early August 2023 the we wanted to make the longer-term move abroad to Spain, we were choosing to leave my husband’s job of 15 years back in the U.S. So why a volunteer visa? Securing a volunteer visa (study visa by name), we were able to work part-time hours (or full-time, if you prefer), get a contract from our children’s school stating the work we’d be doing and have everything we needed to officially apply for our visas.

Now as a reminder, you will need a visa to stay longer than 90 days in Spain from the U.S. And so while there are other options, such as a digital nomad visa, that didn’t apply for us at the time because we did not do remote work. By getting volunteer visas through our children’s American International school in Spain, we were given one year, September 2023- September 2024, to live in Spain. I was exactly the amount of time that we needed to learn more about the culture and to decide if it was right for our family.

The volunteer visa is not the best option for those looking to bring in an income. In fact, on a volunteer visa you cannot make any money in Spain. We were not able to make any money in Spain through any means, but we were able to accept a housing stipend from the school to help offset our costs while living there. For this gap year season of being on volunteer visas, we at first brought in income solely from renting our our U.S. house and through savings account secured back in the U.S., such as through the sale of my car.

Besides giving one year residency in Spain through assigning a TIE number, the volunteer visa comes with other perks like needing to show less monthly income for a family to Spain in the visa application process and less paperwork required up front than other visa types. Because this is in the family of a student visa, other ways you could obtain student visas besides volunteering at your children’s school are:

• studying Spanish at a language school in Spain
• becoming a teacher and being supported by a worldwide organization, such as TeachBeyond

My husband and I are not teachers and have no desire to be – education is not our field, as we both work in business. And so when we met with the Director of our children’s school here in Spain, we were sure to let him know that we’d like to volunteer in areas other than teaching. This year, Logan was their Information Technology (IT) Coordinator, handing daily IT needs and projects. This is his wheelhouse, so he was a great help to the school. I helped in the HR and Marketing departments, helping with recruiting new teacher candidates and running their social media account and events which I truly enjoyed.

Now that my husband has started a U.S. LLC consultant firm and is on a project for a company in the UK, we have stopped our year of volunteerism and are now switching for year two to a digital nomad visa. But I want you to know – if you love being with kids, working in a school or serving, the volunteer visa to Spain may be the visa for you!