The Royal Voluntary Service (RVS) is urging charities to sign up to its volunteer recruitment platform, which has received £5m in funding support from the People’s Postcode Lottery and aims to promote thousands of opportunities.

Charities signing up to promote roles will be able to help the RVS to further test the platform ahead of its launch to the public in the autumn. From this point volunteers will be able to browse, search, filter and link up with good causes for opportunities to give up their time for free.

The platform is free for charities to use and has been created following charity feedback and testing from among others animal charity Blue Cross and health charity Partnerships for Wellbeing.

“This collaboration is set to continue, with the functionality of the platform being continuously improved over time, and developments such as free criminal record checking and integration with existing volunteer management systems to be introduced at a later date,” said the RVS.

Partnerships for Wellbing manager Jeff Zycinski said: “Small community-based charities like ours are always looking for new ways to recruit volunteers.

“It’s been so great to be involved in the early development of this project which has the potential to be a game-changing tool for people looking for ways to include an element of voluntary work in their lives and so make a difference to the lives of others."

Recruiting young volunteers

It is hoped the platform will be particularly useful in recruiting young volunteers, with three quarters of 16- to 24-year-olds saying that app or digital platform would make them more likely to volunteer.

"I know many in the sector will agree that it’s time we did things a little differently when it comes to volunteering and volunteer recruitment,” said RVS chief executive Chatherine Johnstone

“It needs to be more accessible and more inclusive. The new platform will help to address what we know to be barriers to active citizenship and will enable volunteering to fit readily into modern lives so that we can empower more people to give their time and to click and connect to the causes they care about.

“Working with others, we want to create something to support the public, sector and businesses to transact volunteering. We are passionate about ensuring as many charities, causes and support organisations are a part of it as possible.

"It’s immensely exciting to think about what we could collectively achieve for Britain as a sector, if we inspired a new wave of volunteering, and thanks to support from Postcode Lottery players that vision feels within reach."

Earlier this month analysis commissioned by the RVS found that 140m workplace volunteer hours went unused as staff struggled to access the right opportunities.

Further analysis by volunteer software provider Access Assemble published last month found online searches for roles had increased by 13% over the last year. Its senior product manager Shaf Mansour urged charities to ensure they were offering flexible roles to attract volunteers.

“Even if someone doesn’t fit a traditional volunteer role, they can still make an impact – for example, by ‘micro-volunteering’ a few hours at an event or completing tasks remotely,” he said.

---