Why I Built Volunteeria

I spent most of my career as an academic working in public health, with a particular focus on mental health, psychological wellbeing and stigma. My connection with the charity sector became much more personal after my eldest son was diagnosed as autistic.

At the time, I wanted to connect with other parents, especially other dads, who were going through similar experiences. I could find large national organisations and a few smaller pockets of support, but I could not find the kind of regional community I was looking for in London. So, in 2014, I created the London Autism Group on Facebook.

The group grew quickly. Within a few months, more and more people were joining, making connections and finding support from others who understood their experiences. As the group became larger, I realised that an online community was valuable, but a charity could potentially do much more. In 2017, I founded the London Autism Group Charity, building on the community that had already formed online.

For many years, I developed the charity as a volunteer while serving as Chair of Trustees. As the charity grew, the need for more structured day-to-day leadership became clear, and eventually I became its CEO.

One of the biggest lessons I learned through that journey was how central volunteers are to the life of a charity. Reliable, kind and committed volunteers are not an optional extra. They are often what makes the work possible.

As London Autism Group Charity grew, so did the complexity of managing volunteers properly. We had more people offering their time, more skills to understand, more tasks to coordinate, more onboarding to track, and more opportunities to match the right person with the right activity.

I started to feel that I could not always keep everything in my head. I could not always remember where people were based, what they could offer, what they wanted to do, or how best to involve them.

That was frustrating, not just administratively, but personally. I worried that some volunteers might feel underused or undervalued simply because we did not have the right system for understanding and involving them properly.

At first, I thought about using spreadsheets, but spreadsheets felt too static. Volunteers' circumstances change. Their availability changes. Their interests change. Their confidence grows. What we needed was not just a list, but a clearer, more active way to understand and coordinate our volunteer community.

It was not one single dramatic moment. It was more a growing feeling that we had good people around us, but we were not always able to understand, involve or support them as well as we should.

One example stayed with me. A volunteer once explained that she had particular experience and confidence in supporting autistic university students. She understood the challenges of adapting to university life, navigating reasonable adjustments, building confidence and getting the right support in place. I had spoken with her before, but I had not fully understood that this was one of her strengths.

That conversation ended up helping us develop a whole new area of support around autistic university students. But it also made me think:

There were other examples too. A volunteer supporting one part of London later told me she had seen online that we were developing something in another area much closer to where she lived. I had not realised, or had not retained clearly enough, where she was based. Again, it made me think that if we had a clearer system for understanding volunteers' locations, interests and availability, we could make better decisions and involve people in ways that made more sense for them.

I also became increasingly aware that volunteer management is not just about finding people to do tasks. It is also about looking after people. Some volunteers may feel underused, while others may quietly become overloaded. If an organisation has no clear way of noticing those patterns, it can miss opportunities to support people before problems grow.

Those experiences shaped Volunteeria. I wanted a system that helped organisations see their volunteers more clearly: not just as names on a spreadsheet, but as people with skills, locations, interests, capacity, changing circumstances and potential.

When I started looking for volunteer management software, I found it surprisingly difficult to find something that felt right for a small or medium-sized charity.

Some systems felt dated and difficult to use. Others seemed powerful, but also overly complicated. I did not want to move from one problem, struggling to coordinate volunteers properly, into another problem, spending huge amounts of time trying to understand an overwhelming system.

What I wanted was the middle ground: something capable enough to manage volunteers properly, but still calm, clear and accessible. Not so basic that it becomes useless, but not so complex that charity staff need to become software specialists just to use it.

Pricing was another frustration. I have never liked the culture of unclear tiers, hidden limits and "pay more to unlock the thing you actually need". For charities, that can be especially difficult. Smaller organisations are often already under-resourced. They should not be further disadvantaged by software pricing that makes useful tools accessible only to larger or wealthier organisations.

That thinking shaped Volunteeria's approach. I wanted it to be practical, modern and affordable, with simple pricing and no unnecessary complexity. The aim was to create a system that gives charities and community organisations proper volunteer management tools without making them feel priced out, confused or overwhelmed.

I wanted Volunteeria to sit in the right middle ground: powerful enough to be genuinely useful, but not so complicated that people feel overwhelmed.

That was very important to me. Charity staff and volunteers are often already busy, stretched and dealing with enough complexity. Software should make things clearer, not add another layer of stress. I wanted people to feel that they could open Volunteeria, understand what they were looking at, and start using it without needing to become software experts.

At the same time, I did not want simplicity to mean weakness. Volunteeria still needed to do the things organisations actually need: manage volunteer profiles, onboarding, tasks, skills, locations, availability, communication and insights. The aim was not to create something basic. It was to create something clear.

I also wanted the platform to feel calm and human rather than flashy for the sake of it. Modern software does not need to be loud or cluttered. For me, good design means people can find what they need, understand what to do next, and feel supported while using it.

That is also why I wanted help and guidance built into the experience, and why users have a route to suggest features or report issues from inside the platform. I do not want Volunteeria to feel like a closed, distant system. I want customers to feel that there is a real person and team behind it, listening and improving the platform over time.

I also cared about the volunteer experience. Volunteers are not just records in a database. They are people with preferences, boundaries, skills, identities, access needs, interests and changing circumstances. I wanted Volunteeria to help organisations understand their volunteers more fully and involve them more thoughtfully.

Volunteeria is for organisations that rely on volunteers and want to involve them more clearly, respectfully and effectively. That includes charities, community groups, faith groups, CICs, social enterprises, local support groups and other organisations where volunteers play an important role.

I did not build it for one narrow type of organisation. The details may differ, but many volunteer-involving organisations face similar problems: information scattered across spreadsheets, WhatsApp messages, emails and memory; difficulty knowing who is available; uncertainty about who has which skills; and too much manual coordination.

That is why Volunteeria is designed to bring volunteer information, tasks, onboarding, communication, availability and insights into one clearer system. Instead of juggling disconnected tools and trying to remember everything manually, organisations can manage their volunteer community in a more coordinated and reliable way.

I also wanted Volunteeria to reduce risk. When important volunteer information is spread across personal inboxes, messages, spreadsheets and informal notes, things can be missed. A clearer central system helps organisations stay more organised, more consistent and better able to support both staff and volunteers.

More than anything, I want organisations to feel that Volunteeria is genuinely worth the money because it helps them create more impact.

For me, the main measure of success is not just whether an organisation has tidier records or fewer spreadsheets, although those things matter. The bigger question is whether the platform helps organisations involve volunteers more effectively, support them better, and achieve more for the communities and people they serve.

If Volunteeria helps an organisation spot an underused skill, involve a volunteer in a more meaningful role, reduce admin chaos, improve communication, or keep good volunteers engaged for longer, then that can have a real effect. It means more capacity, more creativity, better morale and better outcomes.

There are practical benefits too. I hope Volunteeria helps organisations save time, reduce duplication, improve volunteer records, strengthen onboarding, support safer administration, and feel more coordinated and professional. For smaller organisations especially, having a clearer system can make a big difference to confidence and capacity.

I also care about the volunteer experience itself. Volunteers give their time and energy, and many are also building skills, confidence, relationships and future career opportunities. A good volunteer management system should not only help organisations get more from volunteers. It should also help volunteers feel more valued, more visible and more able to grow.

Ultimately, I hope Volunteeria helps organisations spend less time chasing information and more time doing the work that matters.