Lillian Landberg

Illustration by Lillian Landberg

Community service and volunteering are some of the core values in many clubs at Mounds View. Yet, this year, sophomore Audrey Stenzel and junior Sofie Olhoft plan to bring a well-known volunteer organization, Key Club, to Mounds View students during the 2025-26 school year. One of the oldest high school national clubs, Key Club is an international, student-led organization that focuses on community and leadership.  

First established in Sacramento High School in California in 1925, Key Club was created as a youth version of Kiwanis Club. Kiwanis, a club focused on serving the community, strives to create better lives for citizens. Today, Kiwanis and Key Club continue to share the same goals, with Key Club gaining over 200,000 members in over 5,000 chapters across many schools around the globe since its founding. 

After joining Key Club, members participate in a variety of activities. “We most commonly do volunteering in Key Club, but we also help students explore service projects, along with opportunities to become a leader,“ said Stenzel. 

Similarly to the National Honors Society (NHS), Key Club will seek to aid the community and bring leadership experience to the members. However, Key Club does not require a minimum GPA to join. “A big pride in Key Club is giving all students access to it. Sometimes it can be disappointing for students who want to be involved with NHS but haven’t met the academic standard, so we hope students can find a place in Key Club either way,” said Stenzel. Other differences between NHS and Key Club come in the differing hourly requirements with Key Club having none, along with the volunteer events themselves.

Unlike NHS, Key Club is not limited to national institutions and hosts yearly international conventions focused on leadership and service seminars, project planning workshops and networking. “Every student in Key Club gets to connect with students across the country and across the world at these conventions,” said Olhoft. “So I think it has a lot more opportunities than NHS with all the conventions, especially at an international level.”  

Some of the many activities Key Club provides are volunteer trips to the community, such as going to nursing homes, food shelves and other community staples. Although similar in core values, Key Club and NHS differ in how their clubs run. Stenzel and Olhoft hope that with the difference, students will find just as much enjoyment and fulfillment through Key Club.     

Stenzel heard of Key Club through a friend from another school. “One of my good friends from Youth in Government and Model United Nations, Malik Bah… asked me to explore starting it at Mounds View,” said Stenzel. 

After Stenzel recruited Olhoft, both students have been working to get a Mounds View chapter chartered through the official organization. “We have to become a club at Mounds View, which isn’t necessarily the hardest part, but we have to get basically chartered through Kiwanis,” said Olhoft. “We would be chartered through the Minnesota-Dakota district and get funding as well from the Kiwanis so that we can go on the trips and etcetera.” 

Key Club is expected to form its first Mounds View chapter in the next school year. “For now, we’re going to have an interest form, and once we get started, we’ll have biweekly meetings, and so we’ll just have people apply through us, and then it comes with a $25 fee,” said Stenzel. With their goals to build the community, Olhoft and Stenzel are optimistic for the coming year for Key Club.