VolunteerMatch by RADCAT

With RADCAT we built a volunteer search widget for AmeriCorps on VolunteerMatch data, then handed it over with docs for how it works, its filters and its code.

Client

RADCAT Design

Industry

Nonprofit · National Service · Volunteering

Services

Custom Widget Development, API Integration, Search and Filters, Technical Documentation

View Live Site

The AmeriCorps Find a volunteer opportunity page, with the Serve With Us search and its zip code field beside a photo of an AmeriCorps member holding a basket of vegetables.

handoff documents: how it works, the filters and the code

Fri3nds project record (handoff notes, Nov 2023) and Healthline Webflow project copy (2021)

volunteer searches on VolunteerMatch data worked on with RADCAT

Who VolunteerMatch is and how this project reached us

VolunteerMatch spent years connecting people who want to help with the organizations that need them, and today it is part of Idealist. AmeriCorps, the US federal agency for national service, runs a volunteer search on its own site, powered by VolunteerMatch. Our part came through RADCAT Design, the studio we have built with since 2021. RADCAT ran the project with us in a shared channel in its own workspace, with Annah Patterson coordinating on RADCAT's side, and asked us to build the piece in the middle: a volunteer search widget for AmeriCorps that reads VolunteerMatch's opportunities.

The challenge: one search box, many ways to help

Volunteer opportunities come from many organizations, and the person searching has a few simple questions: what is near me, when, and what can I do. A search like that lives or dies on its filters and on how fast it answers. We had worked on something close to it with RADCAT before. In 2021, Healthline's TRANSFORM: Health Equity hub asked its readers to volunteer in their community, with a zip code search powered by VolunteerMatch, and the Webflow build we worked in kept volunteer opportunities, skills and cause areas as their own collections. This time the search had to stand on its own, as a widget, for a national audience.

The Healthline TRANSFORM volunteer page from 2021: Join us today, a zip code search field, and the note Powered by VolunteerMatch.org.

How we built the volunteer search widget

We built it as a widget connected to VolunteerMatch's data, so the opportunities stay current at the source and the page only has to ask the right question. The work ran in RADCAT's channel and RADCAT's review loop, the same way our other RADCAT projects run. When the widget was ready for review, we recorded a video walkthrough of it for the team, so reviewers could see how it searched and filtered without booking a call.

How we handed it over

At the end, the job was to make the widget easy for someone else to own. We met as a team, Marcelo, Esteban, Terry and Camila, and set the handoff for the following week and a half. We wrote three pieces of documentation: how the project works end to end, how the filters work, and how the code is put together. That way RADCAT and its client could keep the widget running and change it without needing us in the room.

3 handoff documents: how it works, the filters and the code

What happened after

AmeriCorps points people who want to serve to its volunteer search, powered by VolunteerMatch, and VolunteerMatch now lives on as part of Idealist. For us, this was the second volunteer search on VolunteerMatch data we worked on with RADCAT, after Healthline's TRANSFORM hub, and one more project in a partnership that started in 2021.