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. Find out how to reset your 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” which will allow you to choose if you'd like to download a zip file with folders for each individual candidate's application documents or an applicant summary CSV spreadsheet of all the applicants.

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.

Contacts can be assigned to a volunteer opportunity. Only those contacts receive instant email notifications when a volunteer expresses interest. Organization administrators are contacts by default, but contacts don’t need to be administrators.

Adding Administrators

To add 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.

Adding a Contact

To add a new contact to your organization account, navigate to your organization’s Dashboard by clicking your name at the top right corner and selecting your organization from the dropdown menu. Click "Manage Contacts" from the menu on the left and add your colleague's email address as a new contact if they aren't already listed. They'll be sent an automated email to verify. 

Assigning the Contact to a Listing

To assign the contact on a published listing, head to your Manage Listings section then click "Edit" next to the listing you'd like to assign them to. Scroll to the bottom of the How to Apply section and you'll see the option to "Send Notifications to a Contact." Click "Select" and a list of available contacts will populate. Select their name to assign them, then click Save—you'll be all set! You can also assign contacts in this same way during the posting process.

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 submit their interest 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.