How tech can boost volunteering

Technology is already widely used to support charities’ volunteering. There are dozens of volunteering recruitment platforms to help charities promote opportunities and for prospective volunteers to find out more about how they can give up their time to help good causes. Workplace management tools are also available to better manage volunteer teams and allocate tasks. 

But more can be done to ensure technology is more useful, suggests recent evidence. Volunteers are struggling to find opportunities. Research from software firm Access Group in 2025 found online searches for volunteer roles had increased by 13% over the year. 

Meanwhile, an estimated 140mn workplace volunteering hours offered by employers are unused, with staff unable to find the right placements, according to analysis published in 2025 by the Royal Voluntary Service (RVS). Similarly, in 2024 a survey to promote the Big Help Out volunteering push found that more than two in five young people were unable to find opportunities.  

This is a major problem given increasing interest in volunteering among tech-savvy young people. In 2025, analysis by nfpResearch found that the under 35s age group had seen the biggest increase in volunteering over the previous 15 years. 

Here we look at the important role of technology in volunteering as well as ways its use among charities can be improved, including whether less could be more in terms of the array of online platforms available.  

Tech’s role in volunteer recruitment 

Recruitment apps are playing a vital role in matching volunteers with charities. While some offer a general array of opportunities, others can be sector or region specific.  

The Media Trust has a platform specifically for promoting communications, media, creative and technology opportunities.  

Meanwhile, Link UP London’s Skilled Volunteering programme connects skilled professionals to charities across London for short term projects and Quartet Community Foundation’s ProHelp service connects skilled volunteers with voluntary and community groups in the West of England. 

More general volunteering platforms include Vinspired’s array of opportunities from home readers to charity shop workers, and Do it which has thousands of roles and where over 750,000 people have volunteered to date.  

Among those on the horizon in 2025 is RVS’s Volunteering Marketplace platform, which aims to offer “thousands of flexible, inclusive roles to suit modern working patterns”.  

Tech’s role in managing volunteers 

Workplace management tools increasingly play an important role in managing opportunities, so that they fit into people’s busy lives. Better management of opportunities also helps retain volunteers in the long term. 

Among volunteer management software used is Rosterfy, which helps manage and engage with volunteers as well as collect insights into work being carried out and support the application process.    

Another is app-based PAAM, where charities can set up a new event or project, add details, and then turn on applications to notify suitable applicants. Volunteer attendance and engagement as well as training opportunities can also be added.  

A useful tool for small charities is Volgistics, which has the capability to be expanded across multiple sites for those with large groups of volunteers. Volunteer recruitment, screening, customisable volunteer forms and messaging for volunteers are among features.  

How tech’s role in volunteering can be improved 

One way that technology’s role in volunteering can be improved is to make finding opportunities easier for the public.  

Consultancy nfpResearch suggests one way to achieve this is a “less is more” approach, with a handful of high-profile applications available to the public rather than a multitude.  

In a blog post it acknowledges that “smartphone-based apps are an obvious way through which people who are keen to volunteer can seek out volunteering opportunities” and “currently there are around a dozen possible apps or websites that people could use to find opportunities”.  

But it warns “there is no clear market leader, or market leaders – equivalent to the market dominance that Just Eat or Deliveroo have in home deliveries of take-away food”.  

“Without one or two market leaders who have widespread public recognition, it is difficult to see how apps can increase the overall number of the public who want to volunteer, and the ease with which people can find volunteering opportunities,” it adds.  

Another way to improve tech’s role in volunteering, suggested by nfpResearch, is for volunteering to be given a higher profile within charities.  

While directors of fundraising are commonly appointed in the sector, “here are many, many charities who use volunteers extensively but don’t have a director of volunteering on the senior management team”. 

Shaf Mansour, Senior Product Manager at Access Assemble says “flexibility is also key” when promoting opportunities online.  

“Even if someone doesn’t fit a traditional volunteer role, they can still make an impact – for example, by ‘micro-volunteering’ a few hours at an event or completing tasks remotely."