Finding local volunteer events “near me” to choose from is surprisingly difficult when you use a search engine. However, one useful place to look for local volunteer events is Facebook, but you have to know how to search Facebook to find volunteer opportunities in your area.
Start with the main Facebook search field and search for “volunteer.”
You might think that would be enough to yield useful results, but chances are the suggestions won’t be very useful. However, this will let you get at the advanced search options for events, groups, and pages. Starting with events, narrow down your results by choosing a location and a date range.
In this example, I chose my city and the time frame “next week.” I found two similar volunteer events happening near me.
You can use the same strategy in Groups and Pages to find more leads, but your results will frequently be less concrete than actual events you can sign up for. If you’re lucky, someone in your area has created a group just for sharing volunteering opportunities. You may even find a mutual aid group, in which individuals share specific needs they have (such a ride to the hospital or clothes for a new baby) with group members to respond to if they can.
One advantage of searching for volunteer opportunities on Facebook is that you can see if you have any friends already involved. This builds trust in the opportunity.
According to Google’s Keyword Planner, roughly 100,000 to a million people search for “volunteer events near me” each month. Searches for this phrase has gone up dramatically over the years, according to Google Trends. This indicates that volunteers are having a hard time identifying volunteer opportunities that speak to them and that are local.
Helpspring is building a system to help volunteers find meaningful volunteer opportunities “near me.” If you’d like to learn more and stay informed as the tool is developed, join our mailing list.