Welcome to Idealist! VolunteerMatch FAQs

VolunteerMatch’s own Jennifer Bennett, CVA will be hosting a two-part series to welcome you to the site. Visit our Volunteer Engagement Resource Hub for more information.

If you’re logging in to your migrated VolunteerMatch account for the first time, and can’t get past the email verification step, try setting a new password. More information: How do I reset my password?

To see if you have access to your organization’s account, log in to Idealist and click your name in the upper right corner of the page. If you have access, you’ll see the name of your organization at the top of the dropdown menu under “Manage.” If you don’t have access, find out how to become an administrator.

To access your listings, log in to Idealist and click your name in the upper right corner of the page. Click the name of your organization from the dropdown menu. Your listings will be visible here in the Manage Listings section of your organization’s Dashboard. 

To view previous connections for your migrated listings, click the name of the specific listing in the Manage Listings section of your organizations Dashboard. This is also how you’ll view applicants for any listings you’ve posted with our Applicant Tracker enabled.  

From here, you can select “Export All Applicants” to download all applications at once. This will download a zip file with folders for each individual candidate's application documents as well as an applicant summary CSV spreadsheet.

To view or download a specific applicant’s information, simply click on their name to see their details. See our Help Desk article for more information on viewing applicants.

To add colleagues (aka “administrators”) to your account, log in to Idealist and head to your organization’s Dashboard, then click “Manage Administrators” from the menu on the left. Add the email addresses of anyone that needs administrator access. Find out how to manage administrators.

Please note that all administrators have full access to post listings and view applicants. We don’t currently have the ability to assign a contact to a specific listing.

You may find that some of the terminology is different than what you’re used to (we’re working on that!). The “Repost” feature on Idealist is used to create a new copy of your listing, which is perfect for expired listings. If you’d like to expand the visibility of one of your listings, consider using our “Promote” feature instead. Promoted Volunteer Listings are similar to the Multi-Zip option you might already be familiar with. If you have a promoted listing, there’s no need to repost unless it has expired. 

If you’ve entered an end date for your opportunity, your listing will expire one day after that date. If you’ve entered a start date but no end date, the listing will automatically expire 14 days after the start date. If you don’t include a start date or an end date, your volunteer listing will expire automatically 6 months after the date of posting.

Visit our other article for more information on how to post a new volunteer listing on Idealist.

The way volunteers can express interest in your opportunity depends on how the listing is created. If you’ve used our Applicant Tracker, potential volunteers will be asked to “Apply” directly through Idealist. Find more information about our Applicant Tracker and viewing applicants. 

If you don’t use our Applicant Tracker, you can direct candidates to your website or email to express their interest to you directly.

If you used our Applicant Tracker, you can choose to be notified by email when someone submits an application. To adjust your notification settings, log in to Idealist and click your name in the upper right corner. Select “Notification Preferences” from the drop down menu, then click into “Your organizations” to expand your options. Choose your preferred notification frequency: Instant, Daily, Weekly, or not at all.

Adjustments here will change your notification preferences, but won't affect the notifications of any other administrators.

If you think something on the site isn’t functioning correctly, let us know! Find more information about troubleshooting and reporting an issue.