Best Websites to Promote Volunteerism
Monday, May 9, 2011 at 09:43AM 
Did you know that in 2010 volunteerism increased by 11%, according to a study by Cone? Volunteers also reported giving close to $2,600 as compared to non-volunteers who gave just $230, according to study by VolunteerMatch. Furthermore, 67% of those who volunteer say they donate money to the same organizations where they volunteer.
It’s no secret that providing meaningful volunteer opportunities is a terrific way to engage activists, donors and members. It gives these important stakeholders a better window into how organizations run and the important work nonprofits do to fulfill their mission.
While engaging existing members with volunteer opportunities is a great way to deepen your relationship, it’s 
also important to expand your volunteer network that will help your organization connect with new people who care about your issue. Check out these six organizations that help connect nonprofits and volunteers.
All for Good
Inspired by the call of President Obama to engage more Americans in service, and Craig Newmark founder of Craig’s List and craigconnects.org, All for Good facilitates volunteerism and community service via a custom volunteer opportunity oriented search engine that is powered by the largest database of volunteer opportunities across the web. All for Good offers nonprofits free access to their search engine via their website, mobile apps, gadgets, and their search API to power volunteer opportunities directly within their own websites and gadgets. Click here to post your volunteer opportunities.
Hands on Network
HandsOn Network partners with nonprofit and government agencies to provide compelling volunteer opportunities and to effectively utilize the talents of people who serve. As one of the United States leading volunteer organizations, HandsOn offers training, resources, and networking opportunities that equip agencies to engage volunteers in meaningful service.
Last year, HandsOn Network mobilized over 30,000,000 volunteer hours across the country valued at $626M in human capital. Pretty impressive.
To promote your volunteer opportunities, nonprofits will first need to apply for membership here.
LikeMinded
LikeMinded is a new initiative to connect people with stories of how others are strengthening their neighborhoods through local action. It’s currently in beta and has enormous potential.
Currently, volunteers can discover two kinds of information about local issues they care about.
1. Resources such as articles, videos, tools, and audio from around the web related to local community change.
2. Projects that outline the story behind community change. What issue was addressed, how did the team do it, and did it work? Projects include visibility for the volunteers and organizations that did the hard work and info about where and when it all happened. It's a great way to get a snapshot into how volunteers and organizations addressed issues in their neighborhood.
You can discover information through the topics on the LikeMinded homepage, and you can explore more deeply through their full search page.
Sparked
As a nonprofit you probably have many needs, but limited resources. Perhaps you have a Google Adwords grant and have been trying to ramp up your click-through rates on your ads, but you are just not seeing results. Or perhaps, you would like to make your next fundraising appeal design much more compelling. Check out Sparked, an online volunteer network.
“Sparked is your place to get incredibly skilled and passionate workers for your next project... with a minimum of fuss. From copywriting, to research, to graphic design, these folks know their stuff! Of course, you can invite your own members too. Best of all, it's entirely free for nonprofits!”
Nonprofit’s can create their profile here.
VolunteerMatch
VolunteerMatch’s mission is to make it super easy for people and good causes to connect. The organization offers a variety of online services to support a community of nonprofit, volunteer and business leaders committed to civic engagement. Over 77,000 nonprofit organizations use VolunteerMatch to promote their volunteer opportunities.
Organizations will first need to register their nonprofits before submitting volunteer opportunities here.
Repair the World
Repair the World inspires American Jews and their communities to volunteer and help those in need. They have a search engine for Jewish service and service learning which connects Jewish individuals with local, regional and international service opportunities, as well as immersive service learning programs, while assisting Jewish organizations in attracting volunteers and participants. The search engine has some pretty cool features including:
- Profiles of participating organizations as well as individual service opportunities
- Online application and volunteer management framework
- Integration with national service databases including All for Good, VolunteerMatch and Serve.gov.
- Widgets that seamlessly integrate with organizations’ websites, providing embedded service listings.
- Analytics that present participating organizations with a detailed dashboard of visitors, signups and search engine usage.
- Individual user profiles with saved search criteria to identify new opportunities of interest.
- Integration with Facebook and social networking platforms to share stories about participation.
- Rating system to provide feedback on organizations and opportunities.
Reader Comments (7)
Volunteer recruitment and management are subjects that are often ignored in mainstream nonprofit blogging and other capacity building resources. For example, even you rarely cover volunteering compared to your other topics (7 posts in your archive versus 160 for social networking and 84 for online marketing). At VolunteerMatch we’re able to focus our resources primarily on these issues, and to contribute the knowledge and experience we build to make sure posts like yours are as rich and informative as possible.
So in the spirit of collaboration, I’d like to offer a few suggestions:
First, I think that an even better title for this post would be “Best Websites to Recruit Volunteers,” as opposed to “Volunteerism” in general, since very few organizations actually do “promote volunteerism” in the U.S. Instead, I would say these are web services where nonprofits can get more visibility for specific volunteer needs. Our research shows that our nonprofit members are mainly focused on recruitment efforts, anyway.
Second, while the Cone study provides some interesting data about attitudes toward cause marketing by companies, it does not actually report on general volunteerism, and definitely not in significant numbers. Instead, here’s the lead from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which looks at US Census data:
“The volunteer rate declined by 0.5 percentage point to 26.3 percent for the year ending in September 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today …. The volunteer rate in 2010 was similar to the rates observed in 2007 and 2008.”
That’s a big difference from “up 11%,” and more importantly, the real numbers are less likely to discourage to volunteer coordinators who have NOT seen their volunteer recruitment attain such equally impressive heights and are wondering why. There’s a lot of disinformation right now about volunteer rates that could lead nonprofits astray.
Third, I feel you’re missing some of the key differentiators between these services you’ve listed, for example:
- At VolunteerMatch, we hand-screen and review all organizations to check that they are working for the public good and are vetted by the IRS (which is safer for volunteers); we act to shape up or remove violators (also safer for volunteers); we delete old content to avoid duplication or irrelevancy (which makes for higher quality content); and more than 40% of volunteers from our network come from the many corporate programs with whom we partner, many of which match the volunteer hours with grants (which means a deeper pool of skilled and incentivized volunteers).
- At All For Good, they aggregate from lots of sources, including many for-profits, so they are good for bloggers who need widgets or marketers who just want to drop a search box onto a page. Also, they are the private contractor of Serve.gov.
- Sparked is focused on enabling microvolunteering (ie, short term, networked, digital, crowdsourced projects that can be completed on their site). So to refer to them as an “online volunteer network” doesn’t really describe their strengths or limitations.
- While LikeMinded is an exciting new platform for nonprofits and individuals to share resources and success stories about local community projects, it lacks any real track record for volunteer recruitment – certainly not as much as the others on your list. I’d say if you want to recruit volunteers from a site associated with Craigslist Foundation, you’ll have far more success using a site that has tens of millions of visitors every month: Craigslist.org.
- Final note, Repair the World doesn’t integrate with VolunteerMatch. They use All For Good’s feed, which we no longer distribute through.
Wow, long comment! But I do hope you’ll receive these suggestions in the spirit they are intended. Keep up the good work!
Robert (Twitter: @volmatch)
I wanted to add that OurVolts just launched a volunteer tracking tool they built with Drupal - it helps nonprofits and grassroots organizations track volunteer hours and activities, share data, and ultimately empower their volunteers. Right now, OurVolts is working with several gardens in the City of Oakland and in the San Francisco Bay Area, and would love for more volunteer organizations to try out the new site and give us feedback.
Robert - very thorough comments, good to read your thoughts.
They have more than a million volunteers hrs served.
VolunteerSpot is focused on recruiting, scheduling and reminding volunteers for your group.
They're local to Austin but known nationwide... Gotta represent for my home town :-)
Also they are women run too by the faboo Karen Bantuveris!
Cheers,
Silona
For those interested in international volunteer opportunities, I'd also like to mention the America's Unofficial Ambassadors program. AUA is working to encourage more Americans to volunteer abroad in the Muslim World - to partner with community leaders in addressing important development challenges and to make positive cross-cultural connections with local citizens. The AUA Directory is the most comprehensive resource on volunteer opportunities specific to Muslim-majority countires.
We can all do more to build peace, both through service abroad and dialogue at home. Check out the AUA Directory (www.unofficialambassadors.com) to find a volunteer opportunity that is right for you!