This past year has been one of tremendous upheaval for the social-impact sector. In the United States, many nonprofits, government agencies, universities, and even corporations lost funding or experienced budget cuts, forcing them to reevaluate programs, reduce staff, or even stop providing critical services to their communities. The social-impact professionals and volunteers who help our sector operate faced incredible instability, and a greater need of support to find nonprofit jobs or lend a hand to meaningful initiatives.

Idealist has been there throughout it all, connecting individuals with organizations in need through positive opportunities for action.

Today, the Idealist community is 2.4 million users strong. We are organizers, critical staff members, CSR professionals, hiring managers, leaders of volunteers, and volunteers ourselves. With each of these audiences in mind, our team has dedicated ourselves to developing impactful tools, resources, and initiatives to scale our combined impact and help build a better world.

Before we turn a page on this notable year and work toward what’s next, let’s take a look at everything we accomplished together in 2025.

The Idealist-VolunteerMatch Merger

For over thirty years, Idealist and VolunteerMatch operated alongside one another to connect individuals with social-impact opportunities. United by this shared mission of helping people and organizations take action, we merged our platforms and completed a full website migration in September 2025.

Organizations across our sector—nonprofits, community groups, corporations, and government agencies—can now go to a single platform to find the people they need to carry out their missions, whether they are looking for volunteers, paid staff, or interns.

Idealist also launched two software solutions designed to help even more people engage in volunteerism: Volunteer Match and Volunteer Search, powered by Idealist. These API and Widget products allow our database of 70,000+ volunteer opportunities to be integrated into a variety of employee engagement platforms, city websites, and apps, making it easier than ever to connect individuals with volunteer opportunities that align with their interests and schedule.

Uniting Social-Impact Professionals With Impactful Careers

Idealist came to life in the summer of 1995—on one old computer and with no full-time staff—to connect people around the world with opportunities for action. As we’ve evolved over the last 30 years, we gradually became known as the leading social-impact career site in the United States, with more than 1.2 million jobs and 200,000 internships posted to date.

Our work has expanded beyond social-impact jobs, but we’ll always be here for the professionals who want to build a career aligned with their values.

We’re not just focused on supporting professionals who currently work in social good—in fact, a core part of our programming is dedicated to encouraging more individuals to join the sector, whether they are current students or switching from private companies. Our Career Advice blog shares tips and resources developed by experienced contributors, while the Idealist Grad School Fair introduces prospective students to grad programs that prepare the next generation of social-impact leaders.

The 2025 Idealist Grad School Fair

Recruitment Support for Leaders of Volunteers and Hiring Professionals

Each year, we empower our growing community of organizations to find the people they need to fulfill their missions, whether they're seeking volunteers, paid staff, or interns. In addition to providing free tools for recruitment professionals to use on our platform, our team hosts a variety of professional development seminars and resources, as well as personalized support on how to get the most out of idealist.org.

We’re also proud to have launched the Idealist Annual Membership this year, offering organizations additional tools to better serve their recruitment needs. Together, these tools have made it easier than ever for organizations to post, track, and promote their social-impact opportunities.

Community Action Initiatives

We’ve always encouraged people to get involved in their local communities, but in 2025, we made community action an even bigger part of our mission.

Our team transformed the ongoing Idealist Days campaign into a global movement, hosting 22 live sessions to encourage local, positive actions on dates where the month and the day are the same number—1/1, 2/2, 3/3, etc..—in regions around the world. As a result, thousands of people shared their stories, videos, reflections, and photos to inspire others to take action in whatever way they can.

The Idealist Action Incubator celebrated four years of impact in 2025! More than 103 participants joined the virtual program in 2025 to access one-on-one support from volunteer coaches, funding resources, and a community of aspiring changemakers who want to move forward with plans to launch a local initiative or nonprofit organization.

This year, the Idealist Action Incubator joined fellow New York-based organization Communitas Ventures to hold its first in-person program with a select group of participants dedicated to addressing food insecurity in the NYC area. As a result of the program, three participants won $5,000 grants to take the next steps to turn their idea into action.

The Idealist Action Incubator's 2025 Food Justice Cohort

Looking Ahead

We took big steps to make the world a better place in 2025, one initiative, one program, and one action at a time. Thank you for being part of this journey with us.

What will we accomplish together in 2026?