A scientific community consists of scientists working in a particular field of science and, most importantly, of their relationships and interactions. Beyond the traditional publication of research projects, discussions occurring during conferences, seminars, and even online through social networks or blogs enable ideas to spread more efficiently and are essential for building a lively and dynamic community. Activities such as organizing conferences and workshops, answering questions and discussing scientific ideas online, contributing to a scientific blog, or participating in open source software projects are typically thought of as outside classic research activity. Having scientists involved in those activities, however, is very important for the community to be dynamic and to promote fruitful discussions and collaborations. Scientific associations have an important role in enabling science by bringing people together and giving them a voice. Moreover, being involved in such activities is individually very rewarding because it enables scientists to acquire new skills not typically taught and to expand their network and interactions. For those reasons, I encourage young scientists to get involved in their scientific community. However, it should be noted that this involvement takes time during which you are not directly contributing to your research projects and publications. It is thus essential to balance those activities. The purpose of this paper is twofold: i) illustrate some of the benefits of being involved and, most importantly, discuss how to get there; and ii) give some concrete advice and rules to keep this involvement as effective and controlled as possible in order to serve the community and receive benefits in return without hampering your research activity. In scientific societies or associations, many tasks are accomplished by individuals who volunteer their time. Even tasks that appear to be merely administrative or clerical are essential for the scientific community and will make a difference in your field. In those volunteer organizations, projects are often driven by a single person or a very small team. Consequently, volunteers often have to take initiative and take things into their own hands. That is the context in which these rules should be of particular interest. I have been involved in the Student Council of the International Society for Computational Biology for five years, progressively taking on more responsibilities, in particular in the organization of conferences (co-chair of the symposium in Boston in 2010 and chair of the first European symposium in Ghent in 2010), but also more generally in the Student Council (I was secretary—one of the elected leaders—of the Student Council in 2009). In addition, I created the French Regional Student Group (RSG-France), which I chaired for two years. This paper is based on my experience in the bioinformatics community, but also on associative involvement I had outside science. Most examples are taken from the bioinformatics community, but I believe the rules are rather general and apply for other communities.