Volunteering could add £50B+ to the UK economy per year or around 3.5% of the annual UK GDP according to the Bank of England. This value could be significantly higher were key barriers to entry reduced or overcome. People wanting to volunteer have a poor experience and face numerous barriers to entry. The key barriers to entry are: 1. Being unable to find the right role 2. Lacking response from the charities 3. Not having enough time Because of these barriers to entry and the fragmented nature of the market, charities struggle to acquire new volunteers and volunteers struggle to know where to start. We aim to solve the problems for volunteers and charities through one platform which will manage a volunteers journey all the way from finding an opportunity to the ongoing management of their volunteering. Volunteero is a digital volunteer management platform helping charities increase the impact of their volunteer engagement through technology. After launching in 2021 we have won grants and received national press for our innovative technology. We now support 35 charities and over 4000 volunteer users. Our project intends on developing a front end interface for people wanting to volunteer. Volunteers would be able to use Volunteero to find charities/opportunities that best suit their needs, see the types of activities/tasks available and apply all in one place. After this, all their volunteering would be managed through Volunteero. Essentially by creating this volunteering ecosystem that supports the end to end lifecycle of a volunteer, we can offer volunteers a level of flexibility and accessibility that was previously unattainable. In doing so we will increase the number of people who volunteer and the amount that volunteers can do. Our vision is to create a world where there are far fewer barriers to entry to volunteering. By doing so we expect to increase the rate of volunteering in the UK and beyond and as a result increase, the positive impact volunteering can have on society.

Volunteero is a platform to make volunteering as easy as clicking a button. As anyone who has tried to volunteer can tell you, it is a minefield laced with red tape. 90% of people claim to want to volunteer, only 20% do. Why is that? Volunteering isn't easy, here are some of the most commonly stated reasons for not doing so: * Cannot find the right organisation * The sign up and training process is slow and inefficient * Volunteering opportunities are often inflexible * People are fearful of making long term commitments If these are true for anyone reading well, we are changing all that. Volunteero is an app that allows you to: * Find the organisation whose social cause is one you are passionate about * Sign up and complete required training all within the app itself * Find individual tasks that can be completed in isolation, tasks that best fit your ability and schedule * Complete tasks and record your experience Whether you complete 1 task or 1000, you are able to make a real difference! We believe that no one who wants to volunteer should have a valid excuse not to. We have ambitions to improve the global rate of volunteering but also to make sure each volunteer can access the opportunities to which they care most and are best suited. Volunteero is being built by 3 friends all in different countries across Europe, all volunteers themselves and all with a genuine desire to make the world a better place. -- ADDITIONAL INFORMATION HERE -- The Extension for Impact funding will help us further develop the platform and make it accessible to more organisations and therefore get more help to those in need as a result. Working with our initial partner Age UK Gateshead and conversations with over 100 other charities has provided us with an improved insight into the requirements of charities. System fragmentation is a key concern for charities, firstly because of increased strain on budgets but also because of the added strain caused to staff due to double handling, training etc. As such the charities require our platform to be able to satisfy ALL tasks volunteers can conduct for them before it is feasible for them to adopt Volunteero. The focus of our extension for impact funding will be to support essentially all possible tasks that volunteers conduct at any charity. We will build a flexible framework whereby charities can create task types and add any functions that are required to support that for example, phone calls, approval workflow, location services, file upload etc. This will mean Volunteero can sell to essentially any of the 168,000 volunteer organisations and will allow us to work with charities that are interested but have asked for this new functionality. To demonstrate the success of what we have built so far in supporting telephone befriending, below I include highlights from our case study with Age UK Gateshead. - 280% increase in volunteer productivity - One week per month saved per staff member - Number of active volunteers increased by 70% Julie Latimer, Head of Business Development at Age UK Gateshead, had this to say about the platform. "Volunteero has saved us so much time and allowed us to focus on things we have previously been unable to work on. Our volunteers love it, they are far more active, we have most befriending at all times. We now know what volunteers are doing at all time and we are able to get instant notification of any health concerns or actions for us to take. The team react quickly to our feedback and have already delivered so much of what we have asked for"