A team at CTC17 focusing on creating greater awareness around volunteering, and making it easier to match skilled volunteers to organisations
There are a few existing solutions working on the model of charity has an opening for something and theylist it on the site. Potential volunteers browse through (possibly with signing up for notifications for some things), and then contact charity for things they might be interested in.
Local one for Aberdeen: https://www.volunteeraberdeen.org.uk
Run as part of https://www.volunteerscotland.net They have a salesforce system that SCVO can add things to. Aberdeen site is pulling from that to get back the Aberdeen specific.
Is presented as a big list (with some search/filter features). Possibly could do with a better front end. Volunteer Glasgow has different front end to the same system.
One Ian pointed out that was built at a hackathon at Calgary.
Universities have their own lists of volunteer opportunities for students.
Could possibly do a better job of tying in to this so that things are cross posted to these and volunteer Aberdeen.
We think it would be useful to have the mirror version of the above listings where people with tech skills can register their interest in helping out charities, and then when charities need such help they can search and match to volunteers.
Draft user stories were created to describe the scenario we were attempting to address. A prototype website and database were created to allow the input and retrieval of charities and individuals needs.
Upon entering the homepage the user presses a button to say if they are an individual volunteering their services or a charity to looking for digital skills.
The user is then direct to a page:
- for an individual - they are requested to say what type of services they can provide and which type of charities they would prefer to assist.
- for a charity - they select the skills they need and state which sector(s) their charity is within.
Once the user has completed the webform they are directed to a page which acknowledges their submission.
The system then searches for a match between the charities and individuals. If a match is found, the charity is directed to a page which shows the matches and allows the charity to contact the individual.