Available to volunteer? How to connect with charities on i-volunteer

Welcome to i-volunteer! As a social network we have a unique ability to connect volunteers with organisations looking for new recruits. One of the ways that we do this is to register available volunteers which charities can search through to find the skills and help that they need - a bit like head-hunting. The other way is to search our volunteer opportunity listings. Here we tell you how.

Getting started
To register the first thing you need to do is sign up and create a profile. The profile summary will tell other people on i-volunteer who you are and will allow you to choose the kind of volunteering that you’re interested in - don’t just restrict yourself to things you’ve already done, volunteering is a great chance to branch out and try something new.

Tell us what you're looking for
If you want to volunteer, the key thing is to then write your ‘full profile’- you can find this in your account settings. This is your chance to say what you’re looking for from a volunteering opportunity – organisations will be able to read it and see if they’ve got anything that might interest you.

It’s probably best to keep it concise, but don’t be shy to say what you’re looking for from a volunteering opportunity – training, new skills, a good time – as well as what you have to offer. You can add pictures if you like, or you could post a short video introducing yourself or highlighting previous volunteering.

Let charities know you're available
The next step is to set your ‘volunteer status’ to ‘available to volunteer’ - and choose the appropriate skills tags – these tell recruiters what you specialise in and have to offer. For example we have some charities looking for IT, business planning or marketing skills so if you have these make sure you add them to your profile. If you have a skill that’s not listed in the tags you can add on your own custom tag. Skills don’t necessarily have to be ‘professional’ skills, you can include information about your life experience or hobbies.

Let charities know where you are
Then you’ll need enter your location so that organisations recruiting can find you in their locality. i-volunteer only shows your rough location, so even if you enter your full postcode this will never be shown to other members.

And now you’re done. Organisations looking for volunteers will now be able to access to your full profile via the Volunteers channel on i-volunteer. They’ll either contact you by posting something on your profile wall, inviting you to apply for an opportunity or sending you a message. Make sure you check in to see if anyone’s made contact or set your notices to email you when they do. And rest assured only signed up charity members of i-volunteer will be able to contact you, plus we will never share your personal data outside of the i-volunteer network.

Browse opportunities
Remember, you can also search the Opportunities section to see the voluntary work vacancies that have been posted. These get updated daily and you can filter results by location, interest and skills required.

Or you can follow charities that you like the look of to keep up with what they are doing. And, by reading blog posts and making connections on i-volunteer you will be able to learn about organisations and people who might be worth approaching for volunteer opportunities.

Tell us when you've found something
And once you've found a volunteering role make sure you switch off your 'available' volunteer status so charities will stop contacting you. And if you change your mind about volunteering right now you can change it at any time.

Be safe
Make sure you've read our Site Safety suggestions before you make any connections or apply for an opportunity.

Good luck!