VolunteerMatch.org

Background

Founded in 1998, Impact Online created VolunteerMatch.org to make it easy for volunteers and nonprofits to connect with each other. Based in San Francisco, Impact Online is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with 25 paid staff and a $3.2 million annual operating budget.

Early marketing partnerships with America Online, Snap.com, iVillage, Looksmart, AltaVista and Go! propelled VolunteerMatch.org's promotional efforts, so its registered user base grew rapidly. As a result, by late 1999, VolunteerMatch had already connected 100,000 volunteers with nonprofit organizations that needed them.

In 2000, VolunteerMatch began adding corporations to its roster of partnerships, beginning with Gap Inc. and later including Levi Strauss, Nike, Coca-Cola, PaineWebber, Dun & Bradstreet, Arthur Andersen and Bank of America, among others. Through these corporate "channel partnerships," VolunteerMatch helped companies advance their corporate citizenship goals by connecting their employees to volunteer opportunities.

By October 2006, VolunteerMatch.org had facilitated more than 2.6 million volunteer referrals between 700,000 registered volunteers and 42,000 nonprofit organizations. Website traffic grew to as many as 65 million pages annually.

Thus, VolunteerMatch revolutionized volunteer recruiting — by successfully leveraging millions of dollars in startup funding from The Surdna Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The W. K. Kellogg Foundation, The AOL Foundation, and The Atlantic Philanthropies.

That considerable early support helped turn VolunteerMatch.org into the leading matching service for volunteers and nonprofit organizations. This leadership attracts as many as 25 calls per week from organizations wanting to partner with VolunteerMatch.