Bright One is busy, busy, busy as usual. We’ve got lots of exciting charities looking for our support and we always need to find lots of high quality volunteers (as many charities and non-profit organisations like us us do…).

We regularly list our current volunteering opportunities, as well as retain a general application for volunteers not sure about what project they’d like to help on.

But where else can you list volunteering roles to attract more volunteers for specific positions, and generally?

We’ve compiled a list of places where you can find and promote volunteering opportunities below. Got a site to add? Let us know in the comments!

General volunteering opportunities:

• Do It
• Charity Job
• i-volunteer
• Guardian Jobs
• Third Sector Jobs
• Worldwide Volunteering
• Volunteer Match
• Media Trust’s Media Matching

Sector specific:

• YPHR – Human rights volunteers
• Work 4 MP Jobs - Politics volunteers
• Environment Job – Environmental volunteers
• Oneworld.org.uk - Ethical roles, e.g. international relations, environment, human rights, etc
• Vinspired – 14-25 year olds
• Project Dirt - Green and environmental

Location specific:

• Volunteer England
• Team London
• Volunteer Development Scotland
• Volunteer Scotland
• EVOC - Opportunities in Edinburgh
• Project Scotland
• Retired and Senior Volunteer Program in Scotland
• JVN - Volunteering within the Jewish community in London and main regional cities

LinkedIn has just released a new Volunteer Experience & Causes section, giving the ability for individuals to highlight relevant volunteer experience at charities and non-profits, including the skills and functional areas in which they worked.

And there’s more: If an organisation has a Company Page on LinkedIn, the volunteer will also be linked to that Company Page, firmly establishing that volunteer time with that organisation.

Over 120 million professionals and some two million companies and organizations currently use LinkedIn, making it the largest social network for professionals. As one LinkedIn team member put it, “LinkedIn is putting a stake in the ground that volunteerism can and should be a part of everyone’s professional brand.”

This is great news for our volunteers at Bright One and for those who volunteer elsewhere, as they can now count their time spent volunteering on the world’s biggest social network for professionals.

We’ll be encouraging our volunteers to add their time spent volunteering with Bright One to their LinkedIn profiles, as we already know that volunteers who add us to their CV get lots of interest from prospective employers.

You can also follow @LinkedIn4Good on Twitter for updates on how LinkedIn is “connecting talent to opportunity to change the world.”

Bright One socials are great opportunities for volunteers and friends of Bright One to meet on a regular basis for some drinks, food and chat. We had a great one earlier this summer in Clerkenwell and with the summer being (almost) over we feel it’s time to kick-start this autumn with a good catch-up. Come and meet new as well as old volunteers, the Bright One team, and other nice peeps within the Bright One community!

The September Social will take place in Central London on Thursday 29 September and you’re welcome to come and join us for some after-work drinks from 6.30pm onwards at:

The Old Crown Public House         

33 New Oxford Street, London, WC1A 1BH

Nearest tube stations:            

Tottenham Court Road (400m)
Holborn (400m)
Covent Garden (600m)
Leicester Square (750m)
Goodge Street (900m)

RSVP here (or just show up on the day!)

Hope to see you there!

We’re delighted to announce the launch of BrightWorks, a microvolunteering app from Bright One.

Bright One has achieved great success in the past two years, all through the passion and determination of its volunteers (as we have no paid staff). But teams of volunteers can only achieve so much, and demand overwhelmingly outstrips supply when it comes to supporting the amount of charities that approach us on a daily basis for support.

This is where BrightWorks, a microvolunteering app that allows projects to be broken down into smaller tasks and completed online, will help us to scale the amount of support we can give.

BrightWorks is a microvolunteering app that allows nonprofits to get tasks completed for free online by a global volunteer community. It is an effective, simple-to-use and easy-to-get-started micro volunteering platform.

For charities and non-profits, BrightWorks is a way for nonprofits to outsource a range of tasks from a range of disciplines, including PR, Marketing, Social Media, Design, Multimedia, Copywriting and more. By outsourcing projects and tasks, non-profits are freed to concentrate on core activity elsewhere and greatly increase their capacity.

For volunteers, BrightWorks allows them  to work freely on causes that they are passionate about from wherever they are and whatever time is convenient, with tasks geared towards their specific skill set Volunteers can benefit by learning new skills as they complete projects, create stronger networks through working collaboratively on tasks with other volunteers, and give back to the community by supporting nonprofits in their valuable work.

The idea at the heart of BrightWorks that it will be a self organising, ‘peopled’ service, breaking down projects to ensure that many hands make light work, in a visually appealing format so that volunteers feel comfortable in working in the environment. We envision that the app will act as a conductor, allowing volunteers to work moving freely on causes that they’re passionate about from wherever they are and whatever time best suits.

We are currently in the ‘beta’ phase in the site’s development. so the project is still being fine tuned and we’re looking to iterate quickly. We think it’s vital to get real feedback from users on what is a new approach for us, so please email us with any comments you have.

And of course there’s much more to follow, so make sure to sign up to our email newsletter, subscribe to the blog, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

 
Founders Note
 
If Bright One’s first year was all about testing the concept of an organisation that used PR professionals and students to help charities meet their own PR and communications needs, then our second year has been about making this concrete: firming up our processes, building up our volunteer community, and embedding ourselves into the very fabric of the PR industry. We’ve helped more charities, had more volunteers working with us, and completed more successful campaigns for organisations that really need our help.

Charities such as The Pixel Project, our longest running client of nearly two years. Volunteers such as Alisha, who came all the way from Harvard University in the US to undertake an internship with us. Campaigns such as Refugee Week, which we were delighted to work on for a second consecutive year.

It truly is humbling when we look back at some of the more familiar charities we have helped over the past year: Amnesty International, Centrepoint and the Social Enterprise Coalition to name a few. That’s not to mention some of the younger but equally as exciting charities that we’ve worked with: The Choir With No Name and Seeducation have bright futures ahead of them.

We’ve also made some strong partnerships in the sector, working with fantastic organisations such as the PRCA and CharityComms to achieve our aims. PRCA director general, Francis Ingham said about the partnership: “Bright One is an initiative we’re keen to support, as not only does it help charities with their communications needs, but also helps develop the next generation of PR professionals – the future of our industry.”

Helping future professionals get their career going was the focus at Impress London, an event for the next generation of PR professionals, which Bright One ran in November 2010. It truly was a fantastic event (or so the feedback from attendees went). Thanks go to Edelman and Unicorn Jobs for making the event possible.

On a personal note, I was delighted to be awarded the Young PR Professional of the Year 2010, a large part due to what we have achieved with Bright One so far over the past two years. I truly appreciate each and every single person who has contributed to Bright One’s success and thank you all for your efforts . This award is for all of us who believe in Bright One’s aim: to give charitable organisations access to valuable and affordable communications resources.

So what’s coming up in year 3? Well, there’s lots in store so stick around and I’m sure you’ll find out.

Ben Matthews
Founder

2010 Clients

• Amnesty International
• Centrepoint
• LearnAsOne
• WYSE International
• Grassroot Soccer
• The Pixel Project
• Computer Aid International
• Refugee Week
• Lasa
• Social Enterprise Coalition
• Bold Creative
• Pants To Poverty
• Choir With No Name
• Sreepur Village Cards
• Seeducation

2010 Volunteers

As we frequently remind ourselves, Bright One would not exist without its volunteers, and we are grateful for the dedication of the 90 volunteers who gave up their time to support us in 2010:

Zubair Ahmed, Luke Alexander, Sarah Allison, Zoe Amar, Tom Antoniw, Helen Beckett, Jeremy Bennett, Tim Bond, Melanie Bradley, Paul Brandenburg, Deborah Burrage, Sally Chambers, Selena Chan, Ross Chater, Tracey Chatters, Hayley Chow, Cecilia Clarke, Kate Clarkson, Abigail Colley, Alvaro Colon, Emma Conway, Hannah Cornford, Jaz Cummins, Agnes Daloisi, Andrea Davids, Sophie De Alberquerque, Jasdeep Deol, Gemma Dudley, Chris Elliott, Sarah Espiner, Lindsay Freeman, Anna Funnell, Katy Galasinski, Jenna Gifford, Joe Hall, Emma Hanson, Katie Harris, Rick Hawkins, Becky Heath, Oscar Holland, Tanya Holloway, Dan Howe, Keri Hudson, Elaina Ifill, Linda Jim, Nicola Jones, Olivia Jones, Alexander Judd, Agnes Jumar, Gerry Kiernan, Sophie Lam, Annette Leach, Anna Magee, Luica Mak, Luke Malcher, Emily Mathewson, Ben Matthews, Cassandra Miners, Sarah Moffat, Devi Mohan, Helen Munro, Isabel Napier, Jennifer Nevill, Eva Novillo, Ada Nworgu, Alison Paul, Jon Penny, Ines Quina, Alisha Ramos, Katy Robinson, Amanda Rose, Ghislain Rubio De Teran, Corinne Scotland, Tania Smith, Rachel Steed, Emily Swanson, Vicky Taylor, Katy Thompson, Laura Vergani, Faizel Vohra, Tazeem Weljie, Louise Wheble, Becky Whitehead, Stuart Wragg, Helen Wurae, Lucy Yeatman, Gem Young.

We thought that it’d be good to let you all know how we here at Bright One use the internet to reach out to people, so we’ve made the below Bright One Online guide(using the excellent online tool Prezi). It shows you where you can find and connect with all of Bright One on the internet, and keep up-to-date with what we are up to. To watch the guide you can either navigate through it manually (by clicking on the arrow which takes you through each point) or hover over it until you see “autoplay” and it will take you through it..

You can find the links to all our online presence below…don’t be shy, come and find us!

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