Are you one of those individuals who always seek an opportunity to indulge in volunteer work? If yes, then my next question to you would be - Do you encourage volunteerism? I know most of us do, when I was a kid my dad used to help those who required help; the sick, the hungry and the homeless. I never understood the point until I grew up and started doing volunteer work, myself. It was then that I realized why my dad used to do that and why he used to encourage us to do that and still does; and that is the joy of making others smile. Time and again I participate in volunteer work but lately I've started enjoying it the most and so do the people around me. Want to know why? All because of GoVoluntr.

I stumbled upon the GoVoluntr website by chance and once I started exploring it, I was really amazed by the good work that it has been doing for everyone. Wondering what GoVoluntr is all about?

GoVoluntr is a social platform that connects volunteers, non-profits and businesses together into one engaging community of Do Goodrs. Whether you are a volunteer, non-profit, business or school all that you have to do is signup with GoVoluntr and let it do all the work from there.

GoVoluntr matches individuals who are looking for volunteer opportunity and by keeping track of their service hours through their Volunteer ID (VID) system. For every volunteer work a person does he earns points called 'VPins' that can be redeemed in the company's Reward Store for items like gift cards, t-shirts, eBooks etc. You can also spread a word about the good work that you have been doing with the world via social media.

In case, you are a business GoVoluntr gives you an opportunity to stand-up for a cause, support it and do some community service.

"GoVoluntr provides a new way for businesses to interact with non-profits and champion causes in their community. We give businesses a turn-key employee volunteer program, a powerful cause-related marketing platform, and on-demand reporting of all their activity."

Young Han, Kevin Zittle and Michael Fogelstrom are the co-founders of GoVoluntr. To know more about GoVoluntr we got in touch with Young Han and here is what he has to say about it.

Happy reading!

1. Hi Young, please introduce yourself to the E-junkie readers.

Hi! My name is Young Han and I am the co-founder of GoVoluntr, a social good startup that brings together volunteers, non-profits, and businesses to engage in the community. I act as the CEO for GoVoluntr but my official title is 'Professional Do Goodr' a title we all share as it reminds us that we're here to show businesses how to make impact in their community while growing their business.

2. What is GoVoluntr and the concept behind it? What inspired you and the co-founders to come up with GoVoluntr?

We were all avid volunteers and had firsthand experience with the problems faced when volunteering: trying to find a cause you care about, something that fits your schedule, knowing what to expect going in, etc. It's not just volunteers though, non-profits run into issues too: finding new volunteers, managing and tracking their existing ones, etc. They spend more time on admin functions and less time sourcing, engaging, and developing hardcore volunteers. We knew it had to be changed. Both Kevin and I were working in tech at the time and wondered how we could infuse all the great technology out there, into the social and public sector? At the same time, our third co-founder, MJ, was working for local government and realized there weren't many effective solutions for the public sector. GoVoluntr was born out of this to make it easier to do good. It's our tagline: Good for All.


Haha, we get this question a lot. We are a for-profit business. However, we don't charge our non-profits or volunteers to use our service. This is really different from a lot of our competitors who do. The revenue comes from the third piece of the puzzle: the businesses. We integrate businesses into the community by having them provide rewards for our volunteers. (Did we mention you get free stuff for volunteering?) It's a way of bringing cause-related marketing to every business. We charge a monthly fee per employee to access the data that we collect when volunteers redeem rewards and employees volunteer. Information like hours volunteered, age ranges, causes they care about, etc.

4. What sort of traction are you seeing as far as members is concerned? What is the biggest compliment that you have received for creating the website?

We're really excited where we are so far. We just celebrated our second birthday and had a great gift: over 20,000 hours have now been tracked on GoVoluntr! We also work with about 500 organizations and thousands of volunteers. We're also just starting to grow. We really wanted to start hyper-local in the Bay Area and fine tune the volunteer experience. Now that we've tackled the process, we're starting to branch out to select cities and are really excited to expand into new markets in the upcoming months.

The biggest compliment we receive is when we're out volunteering and we meet do goodrs that don't realize that we're from GoVoluntr and they excitedly tell us how they found this volunteer opportunity from GoVoluntr, the VPins they've earned and the rewards from businesses they get. The best compliment is when they tell us we need to get on it for all our volunteering efforts.


Aww, thanks! You look at the numbers and every chart says that the number of next generation volunteers is stagnant. Yet, it also says that volunteering is more important now than ever -- Not just for nonprofits and doing good, but for tasks like getting into good colleges or finding a job. It's becoming much more important in a lot of different aspects of our lives. We wanted to find a way to interact with our generation and grow the number of next generation volunteers by speaking their language. We chose to add elements of social networking as it's so embedded in our lives and culture, and we've seen first hand how quickly things can spread. So why not volunteering? Plus, volunteering just feels great and we wanted to share that feeling and know that others would feel the same way!

6. How are you guys promoting GoVoluntr? What do you think is the ideal mix of social, online and offline promotion? What about word-of-mouth promotion?

We promote GoVoluntr on almost all of the social networks as well as have a monthly newsletter and blog, but we also mix in a lot of offline promotions. We are all avid volunteers in the community serving on boards, cmtes, and chairs for fundraisers and events. Being out in the community volunteering and being able to share GoVoluntr has been just as powerful if not more impactful. We've found great success in engaging and exciting do goodrs about GoVoluntr through a mix of both online and offline outreach.

In reaching nonprofits and businesses, we've found much more word of mouth promotions and most of our organizations are introductions from current businesses and nonprofits.

7. What is the fondest memory that you and the co-founders have of the process, from conceiving GoVoluntr to having it up and running ? What issues/difficulties did you face initially?

My co founders may have differing memories that they hold as their fondest, but personally mine is at the very beginning. When we were flushing out the idea and dreaming up ideas to make it incredibly fun and rewarding to do good, whether you were a volunteer/employee, nonprofit or business.

The major issue that we faced initially was how difficult it was to engage the social sector with a new technology and convince them that we were free. Even though we're in the Silicon Valley, we found it a bit hard to convince nonprofits to try us out, even after we told them we were free and were there to help. We learned a lot about this tech apprehension the first few months of GoVoluntr and changed the way our site looks and works off of that initial understanding that nonprofits are less likely to try a new technology and don't trust the word "free". Don't worry, we still don't charge and don't plan on charging in the future, they'll just have to learn that we're free and here to help. :)

8. What sort of activities do you like to pursue in your free time? Which of these do you find to be most de-stressing?

Um, volunteering? ;) No but seriously, we love to volunteer and do so every month. We all have dogs and so we spend a lot of time with them as well. We also all have our hobbies that we partake in. Kevin and MJ are both into baking and cooking, we all play guitar, and I like to pretend that I'm a photographer, although Kevin is much better at it.

The most de-stressing activity is being a volunteer. Not the chair, lead, or planner, just coming in and volunteering for an opportunity in a cause you care about in a role that you enjoy doing.

9. If you could have one superhero (or magical) power what would it be and why?

This one is so hard for me, as I wish I had so many super powers! If I had to choose one though, I'd love the power to teleport, imagine how much more I could volunteer!

10. What are your future plans for GoVoluntr? Any new feature(s)/enhancement(s) in the pipeline?

We're always building! We get a lot of great feedback from our users and work hard to implement them - like our new opportunity search filters. We usually try to push out one new feature a week - with Kevin as our entire "Development Team" I'd say we keep him pretty busy. We're also working on our new community page for the regional expansions and starting the process of dreaming up version 3. Stay tuned, lots of exciting updates and new features incoming!

Want to know more about GoVoluntr, here's an introductory video:





Young, thanks for such an extensive interview. It was a great experience learning about you and GoVoluntr. Wish you and your team at GoVoluntr good luck! 

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