Volunteero: Volunteer Management & Recruitment Platform Case Study
Volunteero secured £250,000 in non-dilutive funding through Innovate UK’s Smart Grant, helping continue its mission to redefine volunteering management and recruitment for charities.
Grantify teamed up with Volunteero to help the business secure £250,000 in non-dilutive funding through Innovate UK’s Smart Grant. These funds were pivotal in assisting Volunteero to revolutionise how charities and nonprofit organisations manage, engage, and recruit volunteers.
Company
Volunteero
Industry
SaaS
Service
Innovate UK Smart Grant
Quick Summary
£250,000
Secured in non-dilutive funding
Challenge
Many charities and nonprofit organisations struggle with inefficient volunteer management, relying on outdated spreadsheets, manual coordination, and inconsistent communication. These challenges create:
- Administrative bottlenecks
- Low volunteer engagement
- Difficulties tracking the social impact of volunteering programmes
Solution
Volunteero developed an intuitive digital system for volunteer management that has:
- Digitalised volunteer recruitment, onboarding, and management
- Streamlined communication to boost volunteer engagement
- Simplified volunteer database management for easy reporting and insights
Impact
With £250,000 in Smart Grant funding, Volunteero is:
- Saving 100+ hours per month for nonprofit organisations
- Leading to 100% more volunteer applicants
- Helping nonprofits boost volunteer productivity by 3x
- Speeding up volunteer onboarding, making it 2x faster
Volunteero is a volunteer management platform designed to help charities and nonprofit organisations streamline their operations.
Often referred to as the ‘Uber for volunteering’, Volunteero replaces outdated admin processes with an intuitive digital system. It already supports hundreds of organisations and almost 100,000 volunteers, making it easier than ever to give back and tackle society’s challenges.
Volunteero’s three core aims are to:
- Save organisations time and money, giving them the tools to cut back on tedious administrative tasks and scale their volunteer programmes.
- Improve the volunteer experience, leading to better retention and productivity.
- Attract more volunteers to support nonprofit organisations and maximise the social impact of their work.
Created to address challenges the founders faced first-hand while volunteering and developed in close collaboration with UK charities, Volunteero is set to become the go-to platform for all aspects of volunteering — including corporate and public volunteering, rewards, donations, and more.
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Before winning the Innovate UK grant, Volunteero raised pre-seed investment but needed further funding to obtain the resources and impetus required to expand its service offering, aiming to take it from a B2B SaaS platform to a volunteering marketplace for both organisations and volunteers.
Due to the specific focus on research and development, Innovate UK funding was the perfect fit. However, the competitiveness of the grant landscape led Volunteero to entrust Grantify with supporting its grant application, especially because of our high success rate and experience.
Grantify: Simplifying the Grant Application Process
Tailored Application Strategy
Identified the best grant opportunities for the project
Developed a structured technical innovation story
Built a compelling business case
Expert support
Provided a dedicated grant specialist
Offered technical writing assistance
Guided detailed budget preparation
Tailored Application Strategy
Established a clear application timeline
Conducted regular progress reviews
Performed quality assurance checks
“One of the main deciding factors in working with Grantify was its high success rates. Grantify clearly knows what it’s doing, and they’ve been doing it for a decent amount of time.
“I see the grant writing space a little bit as a winner-takes-all scenario, so it’s important to work with the best because they see more applications, they receive the most feedback and, therefore, they're able to learn and offer the best possible advice when it comes to new clients.”
Working alongside Grantify, Volunteero submitted a winning grant application and secured £250,000 in non-dilutive funding, which enabled it to develop and implement a marketplace element within its SaaS platform.
Initially, the company lacked the resources and immediate capacity to build out the platform to help actively attract new volunteers or enhance recruitment beyond streamlining onboarding processes. While the idea of incorporating a marketplace had been on the roadmap, it required development support to become a reality.
Securing the grant allowed Volunteero to accelerate this development at an opportune moment. Starting with a relatively small client base of approximately 50 organisations, it has laid the foundation for a robust infrastructure that now supports 200 organisations and counting.
“I’ve used Grantify a couple of times now, once for my previous business, which was before the AI tool was introduced. But now, the new model with the AI-powered tool makes it much easier to break down what you’re thinking and put it into a grant application.
“It’s like a mini dissertation, and sometimes it can be hard to get your thoughts out or even get started. The Grantify platform breaks it down into more manageable prompts and helps you to extract the real value and what you’re trying to do. This made the process a lot more seamless.
“But then you also have the human overlay, a grant advisor that then reviews and provides feedback, which is really helpful as they have added context. Overall, the application is so much quicker and higher quality.”
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