Already Broken that New Years Resolution? Vollie Can Help!

Volunteering is one of the top 10 New Year’s resolutions that finds its way onto lists each year, but with only 8% of individuals reported to succeed at their resolutions, we think that bucking the trend this year is going to be a little easier thanks to Vollie.

As an online volunteering platform, our current not-for-profit family are seeking a broad range of skilled professionals Australia-wide and around the world to help donate their time and expertise.

Take one of our most recent volunteers, Miranda Dix, a 2015 RMIT graduate who is remotely volunteering her skillset to help design a costume for a child with a life-threatening medical condition.

The project posted by Make-A-Wish Australia on Vollie was seeking a costume designer to create a ‘Pirate Princess Costume’ for a four-year-old girl and her 11-year-old sister.

After meeting a Make-A-Wish recipient at her previous job, Miranda was inspired to be involved with the organisation but wasn’t sure how to utilise her skill set.

“I felt like doing something to help out and learnt about the costume design they needed via Vollie so got involved straight away; it was a perfect fit.”

Make-A-Wish Volunteer Services Coordinator Tess Melville said all of the organisations’ wishes are unique and bespoke to the child’s imagination.

“This pirate princess has such a vivid imagination, she knew exactly what her costume should look like.

“In order to make this little girls imagination come to life, we needed a designer to create a custom-made costume. Vollie has enabled us to reach out to the community to help make this wish as unique as the child,” said Tess.

Projects posted on Vollie by not-for-profits can range from copywriting, marketing plans, bookkeeping, and social media all the way through to full website builds, with each project having a clear start and end date, meaning volunteers aren’t locked into a long-term commitment.

Since launching in November last year, Vollie has already signed on 25 not-for-profits including high-profile names such as Foodbank, Make-A-Wish Australia, Starlight Children’s Foundation, Earthwatch and The Butterfly Foundation.

In under two months of operation, we have seen over 30 projects posted that total 688 hours of work and are valued at saving charities using the platform $35,631 – and counting!

Our vision for Vollie is to set a precedent for a new style of volunteering, one that utilises the opportunities that can be created by the sharing economy and digital technology.

Tess agrees, saying Vollie is opening up a stream of skilled project-based volunteering that many organisations are yet to utilise due to the resource heavy management of these opportunities.

“The volunteering sector is heading towards specific skills-based project volunteering. Vollie enables us to keep up with the trends of the sector while being able to utilise our network of skilled professionals in an online way.

“Vollie has made us start thinking about every aspect of the organisation and has helped us identify projects that could use volunteers and be enhanced by volunteers’ experiences,” she said.

Tess said Make-A-Wish sees a spike in enquiries in December and January, as it’s a time people reflect on what they are doing with their lives.

“It’s going to be really exciting to see the effect Vollie has as it’s providing that missing piece for millennials to get involved in volunteering,” said Tess.

Check out Vollie’s available projects now, and make sure you sign up to a Vollie account to stay abreast of our available opportunities.