Volunteermatch Newsletter Published by Carnegie Corporation of an Online Service Helps Everyone New York
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Carnegie ResultsFALL 2008 Carnegie Results is a quarterly VolunteerMatch newsletter published by Carnegie Corporation of An Online Service Helps Everyone New York. It highlights Find A Great Place to Volunteer Corporation-supported At the height of the dot-com boom, Jay Backstrand, a young Silicon Valley organizations and projects insider with a social conscience, first witnessed the power of the Internet to get that have produced reports, big groups of people involved in vital community causes. He dreamt of starting a Website to expand that human capacity long-term and nationwide, recruit- results or information of ing three of his best friends to help make it happen. It was the right idea at the special note. right time, and in 1998 they launched VolunteerMatch—now the country’s biggest, most popular Web-based volunteer recruiting service—which has since racked up more than 3.67 million referrals of “good people to good causes.” Citizen involvement is the lifeblood of democracy, most Americans would agree. Millions of us do our bit for causes ranging from literacy to homeless- ness, health care to the environment, the arts, immigration and hunger to animal rescue and domestic violence. Yet even with volunteering reportedly at a 30-year high, 70 percent of Americans are still watching from the side- lines, while two-thirds of the country’s 900,000-plus nonprofits struggle to find the volunteers they need. The online recruiting service VolunteerMatch (www.Volunteermatch.org) aims to fill this need with best-in-class technolo- gy and resources that make it easy to connect people with opportunities that Carnegie Results suit their passion, motivating them to get out and What prevents millions of would-be volunteers make a difference. Carnegie Corporation, (along from getting involved in causes they care about? with Atlantic Philanthropies and the David and Conventional wisdom suggests apathy is the an- Lucile Packard, Surdna and John S. and James L. swer: people don’t volunteer because they don’t Knight foundations) was an early supporter of care passionately enough. But research in the the cutting edge nonprofit, providing $800,000 to field points to a lack of information about volun- help get the enterprise off the ground and add- teer opportunities as the most significant draw- ing another $150,000 several years on to fund its back for individuals. Connecting with the right efforts to become self-sustaining. organization or volunteer opportunity can be a time consuming and frustrating experience. Peo- This issue of Carnegie Results traces the develop- ple have to find out which organizations address ment of VolunteerMatch from home-based start- causes they are interested in, learn when specific up to nationwide network, with opportunities events are happening and where to report to in every zip code in the U.S.A.. Now located in help out. Faced with this bureaucratic challenge, downtown San Francisco, the two-time Webby many individuals simply opt out. Award winner, named one of Time magazine’s top-ten Websites in 2007, has 1.8 million regis- At the same time, most nonprofit organizations tered members and averages over 54,000 active are focused solely on their missions and cannot volunteer opportunities on any given day. Its afford the time or resources it takes to get more single, scalable network enables communication people involved. Advertising and recruiting are and collaboration among volunteers, communi- costly and hard to justify when there are more ur- ty service organizations and socially responsible gent needs to be met. As a result, no matter how businesses. With just a few clicks, volunteers can hard they work, nonprofits often miss out on the find local opportunities to match their strengths; support of willing and able individuals in their organizations can vastly reduce the cost and own communities. In addition, many nonprofits challenge of volunteer recruitment and busi- have been slow to adopt technology-based solu- nesses can help employees get involved in their tions that could help them to access volunteer communities. Many of the country’s most recog- resources right in their communities. In short, nized charities are among the service’s 59,800- there is a longstanding knowledge gap between plus nonprofit members: American Red Cross, worthy organizations that need help and indi- National MS Society, Peace Corps, Easter Seals, viduals who want to provide that help. Girl Scouts of the USA, Senior Corps, America’s The founders of VolunteerMatch were aware of Second Harvest and Habitat for Humanity, to that gap and were determined to close it. They name a few. Today the network also includes began with the assumption that every person has more than 60 corporate partnerships—business- talents, skills and assets to offer. At the same time es using the service to link their employees with they recognized that even though people want to local charities. commit to a cause, significant communications barriers discourage them from getting involved. Closing the Gap They decided to take a fresh approach to solving the problem and, instead of trying to convince The VolunteerMatch story starts with a question: people of the virtue of volunteering, they drew 2 on their Internet expertise to make it easier for also interested in giving back to the community. would-be volunteers to leap the usual barriers I was lucky to be working in the Internet when it and find the right opportunity. All they needed was taking off as a consumer application. It just to make their high-tech approach possible was clicked that it could help people like me who funding—which brought them to Carnegie Cor- wanted to volunteer but found it difficult to deter- poration. mine where to go.” “Supporting VolunteerMatch was a no-brainer,” Backstrand’s co-founder was grad school friend says Cynthia Gibson, who at the time headed Craig Jacoby, who also gave up his job with San a Carnegie Corporation program dedicated to Francisco law firm Cooley Godward to join the strengthening nonprofits. Helping to build a vol- project. Both were passionate about the idea and unteer work force, in this case using the power had been working from home mornings, nights of the Internet to bring together would-be work- and weekends—until 1998 when they decided ers and understaffed nonprofits, was clearly to change careers and become full-time entre- aligned with programmatic goals. When the Vol- preneurs. In 1999, Greg Baldwin, a friend from unteerMatch team presented their idea, “They Backstrand’s undergrad days at Brown Univer- blew me away!” Gibson recalls. “It was one of sity, who had worked for the Leo Burnett adver- the first times I’d been presented with a real busi- tising agency before founding his own technol- ness plan: the whys, the hows, projections for ogy startup, joined the team to hotwire the site. the next five years, benchmarks—they had it all. So did fellow Brown alum Andrew Smiles, who Even a PowerPoint. For every question that was had directed Community Impact!, a college ac- fired at them, they had an answer that was re- cess program for Washington, D.C. high school ally thoughtful. I’d been in the nonprofit sector students, and who came on board to head the long enough to develop an intuition about these fundraising efforts. “By 2000 we had raised sig- things. It was clear to me this idea was meeting nificant capital, hired peripheral staff and started a need that was out there. Here was a service out to prove our idea worked,” Backstrand re- that was cost efficient and user friendly. It was calls. “But it turned out to be much bigger than I especially good for small nonprofits, which are had ever thought about at the time.” always under resourced, because they could use At its core, VolunteerMatch is a national database the site to market themselves.” of nonprofit organizations and their current Jay Backstrand headed up the team that wowed volunteer openings. To recruit volunteers, orga- Gibson, having left a full-time position at Sun Mi- nizations first register with VolunteerMatch by crosystems to turn his dream of an Internet-based providing basic information about their organi- nonprofit into a reality. Backstrand’s first taste of zation’s mission, management and tax-exempt Web/community synergy came in 1996 when status. Once approved, they have 24-hour, he was a key organizer of NetDay, a community password-protected access to their account to service initiative sponsored by Sun, which mo- publish volunteer opportunities on the network, bilized 25,000 volunteers to connect nearly 3,000 providing details about purpose, time commit- California schools to the Internet in a single day. ment, skills requirements and logistics. A built-in “Coming from Palo Alto I was already well aware email system allows interested volunteers to of the Internet’s potential,” he says, “and I was respond to opportunities by notifying the non- 3 Carnegie Results profit organization’s contact person. This basic tionships with potential competitors early on. As a package of free services is available to all non- result, they could attract a rapidly growing group profit members, and can be upgraded to various of users along with a diverse set of investors and levels of fee-based subscriptions, which include funders. They adopted an ambitious approach enhanced listings and more extensive adminis- toward expansion and service improvements, trative tools. routinely seeking new ways to increase nonprofit participation, to build civic engagement by grow- People who want to volunteer can simply log on ing the number of volunteers who use the service to the site and enter their zip code plus a keyword and to enlarge the revenue stream to ensure sus- for their preferences, such as causes they care tainability.