CATCHAFIRE
Matching Professional Volunteers with Organizations
In the beginning was 1-800-VOLUNTEER and Volunteer Match. Today the Web sites devoted to matching volunteers with organizations and/or tasks is blossoming. Given the low “match” rate from Web sites volunteer programs need to list volunteer opportunities everywhere possible in cyberspace.
A notable new site is Catchafire. It might be just the ticket for busy boards who need ex officio volunteers to assist with special projects. Catchfire is a scalable professional skills-based matching platform. It is currently beta testing its model.
In the beta test they have matched over 70 organizations with professionals who have volunteered over 3,000 hours to provide over $500,000 in services. The new site will do this on a much larger scale.
Some of Catchafire's site features include:
- Dashboard - users can view and act on all of their Catchafire volunteer matches through a single page
- Project Logs - users can keep track of their progress on Catchafire Projects
- Project Qualification Quizzes - volunteers are required to pass a short quiz before they are approved for Catchafire Projects
- Facebook Connect Login - users can use their Facebook credentials to access the Catchafire site
- New projects – users can now select new projects in areas including strategy, finance, technology, marketing, public relations, social media, multimedia, and design.
There is good news also for those who manage volunteers in a corporate environment. Catchafire has Corporate Solution which provides companies with a pipeline of skills-based volunteer opportunities for their employees and tracking and reporting tools allowing them to measure the impact their employees are having on their community.
Catchafire is a New York City-based for-profit social mission technology company that connects skilled volunteers with nonprofits and social enterprises that need them. Catchafire's volunteer projects are packaged as off-the-shelf solutions to address common organization needs and to make it easy for professionals to volunteer in the midst of their busy lives.
http://catchafire.org/user_reg