Intern & Volunteer
VolunteerMatch: Volunteer Recruitment for the 21st Century
By Jason Willett
Director of Communications
ImpactOnline
Shortly thereafter, the group named itself ImpactOnline, incorporated itself as a nonprofit, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how to harness this technology for the greater social good. By 1998, they had figured it out.
Just two years later, ImpactOnline's VolunteerMatch Web site www.VolunteerMatch.org has leveraged the Internet to match 200,000 volunteers with 10,000 nonprofits across the USA.
How It Works
VolunteerMatch is the largest public-service Web service matching volunteers with opportunities at national, regional and local organizations. This service, free to both nonprofits and volunteers, effectively and efficiently generates real-world assistance for disaster victims, children in need, the homeless and hungry, endangered animals, the environment -- any cause, issue, problem, or population of concern, that might need the services of volunteers.
VolunteerMatch allows prospective volunteers to enter their ZIP codes to receive lists of available opportunities in their areas. They can then scan those lists to identify opportunities of interest to them, and express their interest about an opportunity directly to a nonprofit by email from the VolunteerMatch website.
A Boost for Nonprofits
Nonprofits are invited to use VolunteerMatch to broadcast their missions, descriptions of their organizations and, of course, as many up-to-date volunteer opportunities as theyd like to list. Of course, the more opportunities a nonprofit posts on VolunteerMatch, the wider an audience that organization can appeal to, and the more volunteers it has the potential to recruit.
Based on a VolunteerMatch study of self-reported data from nonprofits, and information gleaned from the Independent Sector's 1999 National Survey, ImpactOnline estimates that the VolunteerMatch service generated $9.4 million in volunteer hours and recruitment cost savings for the organizations using its service last year.
Solutions for National Nonprofits
Recently, Junior Achievement, the world's largest nonprofit economic educational organization, integrated the VolunteerMatch service on its national website (www.ja.org). This integration will boost volunteerism nationwide by making it even easier for people to learn about opportunities to volunteer with JA.
JA's national site now features a customized version of VolunteerMatch, allowing anyone interested in volunteering for JA to find out about local opportunities. By allowing each JA affiliate to post volunteer opportunities in one centralized location via VolunteerMatch, JA reduces administrative costs and boosts exposure for each of its affiliates.
VolunteerMatch Corporate
ImpactOnline offers "VolunteerMatch Corporate" to for-profit corporations committed to community service. VolunteerMatch Corporate grants customized access to the VolunteerMatch database in the form of a licensing agreement, allowing civic-minded for-profits to achieve their business volunteering goals more capably and efficiently.
Companies like the Gap, Bank of America, PaineWebber, Levi Strauss, and Coca-Cola have already implemented VolunteerMatch Corporate on their internal networks to encourage employees to volunteer.
Budgeting issues for nonprofits rarely evaporate and we're no exception. VolunteerMatch Corporate provides a creative and reliable revenue solution for ImpactOnline, helping ensure that this public service remains free to all nonprofits and volunteers.
Internet Partners
VolunteerMatch also serves as the volunteer-matching engine on Internet portals including Looksmart, AltaVista, Go! and AOL's helping.org site. The nonprofits using VolunteerMatch benefit by having their volunteer opportunities broadcast across these portal networks, bringing their missions and their volunteer needs to the attention of millions of people potentially interested in lending assistance.
To learn more about VolunteerMatch, see www.VolunteerMatch.org.