Guest Post by Robert Rosenthal: VolunteerMatch Now In the Creative Commons

Submitted by Robert Rosenthal, of VolunteerMatch

After the President’s call to serve during National Volunteer Week, the VolunteerMatch team held lengthy discussions about how the best way for us to help engage a new generation of volunteers inspired by the new President’s words.

Today we have proudly announced that we are releasing our entire database of volunteer opportunities to outside developers under a Creative Commons license to expand the non-commercial use of our free service.

Our board agreed to the decision this yesterday morning in order to support a White House initiative expected to be announced this week.

What Creative Commons Means for VolunteerMatch

The full implications of this are still to be seen, but the move reflects a significant change in strategy for VolunteerMatch in our mission to increase the visibility of volunteer opportunities online and help nonprofits find the volunteers you need.

Certainly, the new decision will better position us to take advantage of emerging trends on the Web — such as making your volunteer opportunities more accessible to Web services including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Beyond these well-known sites, however, the new Creative Commons license will make it possible for anyone who cares about your cause to create innovative tools to connect people to your opportunities. The sky is the limit.

An Exciting Future

Since 1998, our services have helped connect millions of interested volunteers to nonprofit organizations — in the process catalyzing over $1 billion dollars in social value.

From a small network of local nonprofits, we’ve grown to become the top search result for “volunteer” on most major search engines — a reflection of the fact that for a generation of Internet users, the VolunteerMatch service has become nearly synonymous with finding a great place to volunteer.

With our decision to open our database of opportunities , we are stepping proudly into a new era of change for VolunteerMatch.

Sign Up to Learn More

Developers who are ready to begin using VolunteeerMatch’s new Creative Commons license should fill out the form on this page so we can follow up with details. We’ll have more information for you shortly.

This article was originally posted on VolunteerMatch at http://blogs.volunteermatch.org/engagingvolunteers/2009/06/16/just-announced-volunteermatch-now-in-the-creative-commons/ by Robert Rosenthal:

Robert Rosenthal is communications director for VolunteerMatch, the Web’s most popular volunteer network, and a regular presenter on topics relating to technology, the nonprofit sector, and media.