Summary: Changing the world around us is as simple as finding the people who are willing to volunteer to make such positive changes in our world, as well as creating the surrounding community. When there are enough people working together for a single cause, it is easier for us to realize the positive changes in the world around us. Even more so when millions of people are working on thousands of causes that make their world a better place. VolunteerMatch is an online networking platform that allows you to connect with millions of volunteers that have a genuine willingness to help others and improve their environments.
For any organization that has a noble cause to achieve, it is very important for them to find the right people who are willing to help them to work on such a cause. No matter what your organization is trying to achieve, whether it is about art and culture, animal protection, children and youth, environmental protection, and any other goals, working together with other like-minded people is the best way to reach such goals quickly. The problem is that it is not quite easy to find such like-minded people that will be willing to help your organization reach the noble goals that you have set.
This is where the volunteering network is needed. With a good volunteering network, you can help change the lives of others around you by working together with like-minded people who have the same goals as you. You can simply find the people who are willing to do such work in this network and connect with them to build a community of people with the same causes and goals. VolunteerMatch is there to provide you with such type of networking platform.
The good thing about this platform is that it is not only geared toward helping non-profit organizations with the noble causes that they have. It can also help businesses to give back to the communities as well. It gives businesses the right channel to participate in the betterment of their environment and the world around them through the help of highly qualified volunteers to make it happen. Finding volunteers for your noble causes has never been easier.
How Businesses Can Take Advantage of the VolunteerMatch Network Subscription
The VolunteerMatch platform provides Network Subscription for businesses who want to take advantage of its big network of volunteers. Julie VanDeLinder, Chief of Strategy and Business Operations of VolunteerMatch, said, “The VolunteerMatch Network Subscription is a service that provides businesses real-time volunteer needs within a community, for a particular cause and/or with specific skills. We also have designations that allow users to see which opportunities are best for groups, children, teens and 50+ age. Given the number of opportunities and the volunteers needed by them, we had nearly 4.7 Million volunteer needs active as of July and expect that number to increase as we head into the Autumn season.”
With more than 5 million of volunteers available within your grasp, you can give back to the communities by finding the right people to work on a particular cause that you would like to participate in. The filtering system helps you to find your potential volunteers even more easily based on various categorization, which ensures that you get the right people that fit for the work to be done to achieve your goal.
VolunteerMatch Has Been Helping Non-Profit Organization to Work on Their Causes
Starting back in 1998, VolunteerMatch has gained a positive reputation in helping various types of non-profit organizations to further their causes. It is one of the earliest volunteering platform available in the United States, and it is still growing up until today. With the growing number of volunteers, as well as the expanded categories of causes that you can explore, many more non-profit organizations can join the cause and make the world a better place by working together with the right people.
Julie VanDeLinder further said, “VolunteerMatch is the largest volunteer recruitment network, both in the number of nonprofit organizations (150,000+) using our services and in the number of volunteers (5+ million) who have access to those real-time needs. For nonprofits, it’s a simple system to post a need and have it accessible via www.volunteermatch.org, numerous individual company platforms and third party platforms such as CyberGrants, YourCause/Blackbaud, America’s Charities and BrightFunds as well as the general world-wide web.
With over 150 companies and higher education organizations having access to the VolunteerMatch network, nonprofits are ensuring their needs get high visibility and are able to attract the right people with the rights skills at the right time, including those with professional skill-sets such as bookkeeping, graphic design, medical care and mentoring. And since VolunteerMatch enables virtual volunteering, nonprofits can work with anyone rather than being bound only to their geographical location. Habitat for Humanity, Girl Scouts USA, American Red Cross are just a sample of the nonprofits who utilize VolunteerMatch to find volunteers.
For those who register on www.volunteermatch.org as a volunteer, they benefit from seeing real-time opportunities (we expire opportunities after a period to ensure they are fresh) and receiving notices when opportunities fitting with their interests are posted.”
Since VolunteerMatch is integrated with other related platforms, it will give your non-profit organization the necessary access to use various third-party organizations, services, or companies to get you working immediately for your cause. For instance, there are many donation platforms that you can use to make it easier for you to fund your cause further when necessary.
VolunteerMatch Extends to Worldwide Communities of Volunteers
While it might be true that VolunteerMatch primarily focuses for the United States area, it doesn’t mean that international volunteers cannot participate in their causes. This platform has networks that span to international countries in South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. However, since the platform needs a valid information for each volunteer to ensure that they are highly qualified, international volunteers require submitting certain documentations to be added to their profiles.
“Our services extend beyond the USA including North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Europe. We ask for some documentation to ensure we are working with legitimate NGO’s. We also work with many international partners of the Fortune 500. We expect to continue growth in this area,” said Julie VanDeLinder.
Group Solutions to Find Better Volunteers via VolunteerMatch
As one of the largest volunteer networks, the Platform offers group solutions and opportunities for non-profit organizations. In this way, the non-profit organizations can give different causes for groups, and in so doing, find more volunteers just in a single search. With the available filtering system, you can specify if your cause is geared toward the individual or group volunteers. This way, you can find the best match for your cause immediately.
Julie VanDeLinder stated, “VolunteerMatch offers solutions to groups in a number of ways. Nonprofits can tag their opportunities as good for groups which can be filtered for more specificity. The VolunteerMatch network is available through some of the largest Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) platforms. We also offer direct services including direct network access for a proprietary solution and YourMatch which helps smaller companies with less formal giving programs plan and organize volunteer events.”
Organizing your group can also be done easily because the the network is integrated with various other services that make it easier for you to plan and organize your cause, whether you do it with individual volunteers or groups.
The Opportunities Given for the Volunteers
VolunteerMatch is a volunteer networking platform that provides a win-win solution for all parties concerned. For the non-profit organizations, they can get the benefit of being able to start and progress in their causes. For the volunteers that participate in their causes through this platform, there are also many benefits given to them, such as being able to meet with like-minded people that share the same vision as them in changing the world around them.
There are also many opportunities available for volunteers through VolunteerMatch, as explained by Julie VanDeLinder, “Volunteers can find all sorts of opportunities. They can find onetime only event like opportunities to help with a park cleanup or a festival, ongoing opportunities like helping in a hospital or hospice, mentoring a child or teaching English as a second language. They can also explore virtual opportunities where they can be a consultant for a nonprofit on a particular type of software or communication skills such as writing for a newsletter. We even found our own Salesforce volunteer consultant through our network.”
The win-win solution offered by this platform will ensure the best partnerships between non-profit organizations and businesses with the volunteers that they choose, helping them change the world around them and give back to the communities as best as they could.