June 1, 2000 | Read Time: 2 minutes
In the last three months of 1999, VolunteerMatch put more than 55,000 potential volunteers in touch with non-profit organizations that needed assistance, almost doubling the number of matches it had made in the first 18 months it was online. Five months into 2000, the total number of matches made since the program started in April 1998 is now approaching 185,000.
Jay Backstrand, president of ImpactOnline, the Palo Alto, Calif., charity that runs VolunteerMatch, believes that the most important factor behind the program’s growth is the increasing number of volunteer opportunities listed on the site. For example, in December 1998 there were just 6,397 volunteer opportunities posted, compared with 22,368 a year later.
The organization has also entered into agreements to add VolunteerMatch’s database to other Web sites, thereby increasing the number of people who see the service’s volunteer opportunities. The most important of these arrangements is VolunteerMatch’s partnership with the AOL Foundation’s Helping.org Web site, which accounts for 5,000 volunteer matches a month — 20 to 25 percent of the service’s total.
VolunteerMatch has also negotiated for its volunteer opportunities to appear on commercial Web sites, such as Snap and iVillage. com. In addition to increasing the number of potential volunteers who see the service’s listings, the deals also generate money to support VolunteerMatch, in the form of either licensing fees or shared advertising revenue.
The database also appears on the corporate Intranets of various companies, such as Bank of America, Gap, and Nike, for which the companies pay a yearly membership fee.
Mr. Backstrand says that pursuing partnerships with companies allows VolunteerMatch to reach more volunteers even as the organization works to ensure its long-term viability.
“Great, we’ve got those 5,000 people every month from AOL, but we’ve also got to pay for this thing long term,” he says. “So we try to work on all these partnerships, really going after both our mission, but then also our business, making sure that this is sustainable.”
To get there: Go to http://www.volunteermatch.org.
