#Volunteer project
##What it's about:
Non-profit organizations typically need volunteers to assist in meeting the organization's mission. Yet there may be potential volunteers in the community who are unaware of all of the non-profit volunteer needs. This application helps bring together non-profits and potential volunteers.
This project grew out of an effort by the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation to do just that - bring together non-profits and potential volunteers. They sponsored a project that included building a website that allowed non-profits to list available opportunities and notify registered volunteers when new opportunities were listed. After a wholesale rewrite of that code using current technologies this application becomes available.
Matching of volunteers and opportunities is based on sets of Focus and Skill criteria. Focus criteria describe characteristics of a non-profit's mission and a volunteer's areas of interest. Skill criteria describe characteristics of the skills required by a non-profit's volunteering opportunity and skills offered by a volunteer. When a non-profit organization registers it identifies its focuses, and when it registers an opportunity it identifies skill criteria. When a volunteer registers he or she specifies both focus and skill criteria. Note that use of focus and skill criteria is optional, but the default setting is for both to be active.
As new opportunities arrive, the site administrator is alerted. Upon logging in to the site the administrator sees the list of new opportunities and can simply click a button to e-mail all volunteers whose focus and skill characteristics match up with a non-profit's focus and its opportunity's skill requirements.
For more information, see Project Features.
##Target audience
Community foundations and other organizations chartered with engaging volunteers in meeting the mission of non-profit organizations.
##Getting started
The Match Project is built on the Symfony framework. A good understanding of Symfony development and production environments is necessary for implementing the application. For questions related to this project, please visit the project issues page.