<p>My son’s big activity is with a non-profit. One of the other volunteers has always raived about him and has offered to help him with anything he needs help with and even tried to get another non-profit to give him a job. Since he has done this instead of more obvious leadership type activities, I think a letter related to this activity would be good. I’m sure she would say wonderful things about him, but don’t know how closely it would conform to the type of letter they get from teachers. Her husband is on the board of the non-profit, if that makes a difference.</p>
<p>Outside letters should be done on official letterhead if appropriate. (Not sure that a volunteer at the non-profit would be writing in official capacity.) They don’t need to follow the format of the teacher recommendations. You should make sure that in addition to your child’s name they also have the birthday in case there are kids with the same name applying. I think it’s well worth it to have a good outside letter. In my older son’s case he had two. In my younger son’s case, they way he wrote about his volunteer activity was so effective, a letter seemed completely unnecessary. (He wrote about the activity as the short EC essay on the Common App.)</p>