Information for Not for Profits
Welcome to VolunteerMatch You are already one step closer to connecting with the thousands of skilled professional volunteers registered with VolunteerMatch who are keen to add value to your organisation.
Feedback to Pro Bono Australia has indicated that there is a ground swell amongst professionals wanting to give back to the community using the skills they have gained over years of working in their professional fields. Because of this, VolunteerMatch focuses on providing the resources for skilled professionals - such as lawyers, accountants, IT and marketing professionals - to connect with Not for Profit organisations such as yours.
Skilled professional volunteers can add incredible value to your organisation. Through the goodwill and effort of volunteers you can save legal fees, improve your accounting systems, even increase your fundraising ability. And all these skilled professionals are out there, just waiting for you to ask for their help!
Since 2005 VolunteerMatch has had an ongoing relationship with Professions Australia – the peak body for professional member groups in Australia. This partnership enables us to market your opportunities to more than 400,000 of their potential volunteers.
VolunteerMatch, like the other Pro Bono Australia services, is Australia-wide. Just like Not for Profit organisations, potential volunteers are in every part of Australia, and we want to ensure that your access to volunteer services is not dependent on where you are. Because some of the skilled opportunities that you post may not require the volunteer to actually be in the same location as you, we have included the option for ‘online and remote’ volunteering opportunities.
If you are an overseas aid organisation based in Australia, you can also advertise your overseas opportunities – just remember all our volunteers are based in Australia.
If you want to know more about VolunteerMatch, please email us on volunteermatch@probonoaustralia.com.au or call Sivonne Binks on 03 8080 5650.
Finding Volunteers
Once registered, there is no limit to the number of opportunities that your organisation can post.
When posting an opportunity, approach it as you would if you were advertising a paid position. The opportunity posting form includes fields to ensure you provide enough information to volunteers for them to assess if they are suitable for the role. The more useful information you provide, the better.
When filling out the opportunity form, some important things to consider are:
WHERE the opportunity needs to take place.
If the volunteer assistance can be provided from the volunteer’s location without them needing to come into your offices, this may increase the number if volunteers around Australia who are able to assist you, and may also save your office resources.
WHAT you need the volunteer to do.
VolunteerMatch provides a link to skilled volunteers, such as lawyers, accountants and IT specialists. If the volunteer position you want to fill does not require professional skills, you may have more success posting it on a site such as GoVolunteer.
Be clear and specific about what you need - a professional volunteer will be expert in specific areas of their profession. An auditor may not know much about tax; a commercial lawyer will only know a little about intellectual property. So the more information you provide in your volunteer job description the better the match will be with your volunteer.
WHEN you need someone to volunteer, and for how long.
Be mindful that a skilled professional volunteer may well have other responsibilities, so it is very important to be very clear as to how many hours of work you require them to do, and for how long.
STEP 1: Post your opportunity
Once you have posted an opportunity, it will be available for search online, and will be included in our Volunteer eBulletin for one month. Soon,you will start receiving applications!
STEP 2: Receiving Applications
Once you receive applications, they will be flagged in your home page as ‘pending’.
When you receive an application for your opportunity you can choose to either ‘accept’ the application or ‘reject’ it based on whether you think the applicant will suit the role. This allows you to only contact those applicants who you think are most suitable for your opportunity.
You need to either ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ each application, otherwise it will remain ‘pending’. It is best to respond to the applicants within 7 days; although most volunteers understand the time and resource constraints of most Not for Profits, it is common courtesy to get back to someone who has voiced an interest in your organisation.
STEP 3: Contacting accepted applicants
Once you have accepted a volunteers application, you will be able to see their address to email them. It is now that you should contact them to discuss the opportunity and find out if they are suitable for the opportunity.
Make sure you get a clear understanding of their skills and experience, and also that amount of time they are able to commit to your organisation.
STEP 4: Awarding the opportunity to a volunteer
When you find the perfect volunteer, it is important that you return to VolunteerMatch and ‘award’ the opportunity to the successful applicant. This removes the opportunity form search results so no more volunteers will apply.
Once you have found the right applicant for your opportunity, you need to ‘award’ the opportunity to them. To do this you need to select their application form your home page – at the bottom of the page you need to select ‘Position awarded’.
If you have accepted more than one application, you need to mark the position as not awarded for the unsuccessful applicants. This will allow them apply for other volunteer opportunities.
If you are not immediately successful in finding your volunteer you can simply leave the opportunity up on the VolunteerMatch website. Opportunities can be advertised for up to 6 months. Opportunities are available for you to edit and re-post for 12 months.
If you have difficulty finding a candidate, you may want to look at your position description and ensure you have included sufficient information. Perhaps the work could be done remotely or online, or could be broken into a series of smaller volunteering opportunities. If you would like to discuss your volunteering opportunity, please email us volunteermatch@probonoaustralia.com.au
