Goodsted: Share your skills for social purpose

Zoltán Kozma

Verified writer

PUBLISHED ON December 27, 2023

It's been a while since we've posted about the exciting transformations happening here at Goodsted. As 2023 draws to a close, we think it is a great opportunity to reflect and share what we've been working on lately.

We’re also happy to announce that we’re relaunching our product update articles! We've got some great improvements and brand-new features this year, so here are some highlights ⬇️

Launching “offers” to enable custom offers of support to be shared with our community 🤝

Let’s start with a quick recap.

When we first launched our platform, only nonprofits and impact startups could publish volunteering opportunities by ”requesting” support from volunteers and asking for what they need, and those who wanted to support could take part in these volunteer “requests” that fit their skills and interests.

However, we discovered that businesses and individuals often have specific ideas on what they would like to offer to create a specific opportunity to share their time and expertise, that directly fits their skills, availability and interests.

Although ‘requests’ are still important to identify the need, it’s also important to provide a space for these custom offers to be put forward to make it easy for volunteers to support in the way that fits them. Also this way, those who’re looking for support could also browse offers, apply to those that they can benefit from, and if they can’t find what they’re looking for, they can post their custom request to ask for help.

In a nutshell:

Requests

Organisations or projects working for a social and environmental purpose can ask for volunteer support.

They can spell out what they need and how volunteers can help.

It's a direct call to action for volunteers to jump in and make a real difference.

Offers

Individuals or organisations can create specific offers fit to their skills, interests, and availability

They can say what they’re good at and how they could help.

Nonprofits, impact startups or individuals can apply to take the offer

In the past months, these 2 types were distinguished with tags under the “Opportunities” area, but we realised it wasn’t easy to differentiate offers from requests. You can now find these as separate sections and directories on the home page:

Browse nonprofits, impact startups & other organisations by location, using our interactive map 🗺️

With our new map feature, you can discover nonprofits, impact startups and other organisations nearby, as well as explore communities in other countries.

This feature was built in partnership with Fast Forward 2030 network as they were looking for a way to make the organisations affiliated with their members easily browsable by location.

Being able to navigate on an interactive map to easily see which organisations progress which SDGs and which causes, makes it easy to identify collaboration opportunities between members of the network.

Now any network registering a “collective” on Goodsted can benefit from this feature. Contact us to get your unique link to provide access to your network map on your website.

In case you don’t find any organisations in your area, why not become our ambassador to build the Goodsted community?

To do this you can easily share the ‘register organisation’ form with your network to encourage organisations to sign up to take their place on our map. Get in touch with us if you’re interested in becoming an ambassador and we can provide specific resources for you to be able to share about Goodsted to your community.

How can you use it?

Simply head over to the home page, and click the 'Show on map' button at the bottom. Then you should see this:

We're not stopping here. In the upcoming updates, we plan to also put up requests and offers on the map. It will be like a treasure map for changemakers.

Share resources to increase awareness for different causes and learn from others 📚

How can we create an easy way for members to access resources based on causes or SDGs they want to learn about?

Each organisation and network have access to their own knowledge hubs and resources they gather from different sources, and perhaps those which they produce their own. We wanted to create an easy way for these resources to be shared with their members as well as, in the next version, with the rest of the community on the platform.

For example currently, Fast Forward 2030 is sharing resources with their network of social entrepreneurs. In the next version, we’ll improve this feature further by giving the opportunity to share assets across different networks.

Private ecosystem improvements 🚀

If you’ve been only using Goodsted’s free-to-access open community platform, then you might be not familiar with the ‘private ecosystems’ that we’re offering to our paying customers.

What is a private ecosystem?

Private ecosystems are like your own little universe within the Goodsted platform. They're tailor-made for companies looking to supercharge their positive impact, meet their CSR and ESG goals, and create a space that's uniquely theirs and their stakeholders.

They are all about giving you the power to engage multiple stakeholders around your sustainability objectives and save time tracking all the engagement in your programme. You get to design the experience based on the causes and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that align with your strategy and define the specific member types you want to engage. They also come with the option to brand them with your company's identity. Your logo, your colours – it's all about making it feel like home.

Picture it as your company's impact hub. It's accessible only to your chosen stakeholders. That might include your employees, your valued customers, trusted suppliers, and your nonprofit partners. It's an exclusive space where your stakeholders work together to make the world a better place.

Key highlights:

Ability to easily onboard different stakeholders through their unique onboarding flows. Whether you’re a housing association engaging your employees, customers, nonprofit partners, or a nonprofit engaging your corporate partners and beneficiaries.

Private ecosystems can be highly customised based on your unique needs. You are not just able to have your brand logos and colours, but you can also amend the number of causes you want to display and the design of those pages (e.g. Animal Welfare) to fit your guidelines and goals.

Ability to report on the engagement of different stakeholders such as your employees, customers, nonprofit partners and more. You get full control over the admin panel of your ecosystem, allowing you to review, approve or remove Opportunities, Members and Organisations.

Easily sign-up to the Goodsted community for free today! Join our growing community and find collaborations and opportunities fit for you.

For any questions, comments or feedback, don’t hesitate to get in touch at hello@goodsted.com or through the chat support button on the right-hand side.