For nearly two decades now, I have worked hand in hand with corporate philanthropy teams, right around the time when CSR began to take centre stage in business strategies. Throughout my career, I have had the chance to collaborate with all sorts of organisations, guiding them as they strengthened their CSR programmes with a particular focus on getting employees more involved in volunteering opportunities.
Anyone leading CSR or managing philanthropy teams knows just how central employee volunteering is to an organisation’s wider social impact efforts. The challenges are all too familiar: employees struggling to find the time, activities failing to spark real interest, identifying suitable charities, or programmes confined to just a handful of annual volunteer days. What starts as a simple goal can quickly become a drawn-out, frustrating task that drains time and energy.
If I could pass on one piece of advice to fellow CSR professionals facing these issues, it would be to put your money into a solid volunteering platform that takes the strain off your shoulders. These tools make a real difference by streamlining everything from opportunity matching to tracking participation.
This article lays out my hands-on thoughts on three of the strongest UK corporate volunteering platforms I have used over the years.
KindLink
Platform Overview
KindLink earns the number one spot on my list, and for good reason. It’s a digital platform designed by experts who understand CSR, with a mission to make tools accessible to charities and businesses and help them become more transparent and efficient. It also delivers an integrated digital CRM solution for charities through The KindLink Foundation.
Pros
- Its user-friendly interface makes it easy for teams to manage and track volunteering activities without much fuss. This is one of the key reasons why KindLink ranks at #1. This is a big plus if ease of use and adoption are high on your list of priorities.
- It makes employee participation so much smoother and easier. The platform’s Marketplace with Opportunities to Help enabled employees to browse verified volunteering roles, connect directly with charities, and sign up in a matter of minutes, without needing endless emails or phone calls.
- It doesn’t focus on corporate volunteering alone but offers a complete CSR platform for organisations. With all key CSR features rolled into one, it saved a sizable chunk of our corporate budget by reducing the need to invest in multiple software and tools.
- KindLink helps your employees record volunteering hours, add events to calendars, post completed activities on our corporate KindLink profile, and share experiences on social media.
- Using KindLink’s user-friendly tools, employees could schedule, set up, and request approval for campaigns. This encouraged employees to take charge and take a more hands-on approach to volunteering.
- KindLink makes it simpler to manage volunteers and oversee their contributions. The platform also supports conducting surveys and organising/recording event documents.
- The free tier alone can support up to 50 users and allow you to connect with up to 3 charities.
Cons
- Although a user-friendly platform, KindLink doesn’t offer round-the-clock support just yet. However, from my experience, they were prompt in replying to our email queries.
Pricing
KindLink stands out as one of the few CSR platforms offering a genuine free tier to get started. When our needs grew and we upgraded to enterprise-level plans, the pricing remained clear, reasonable, and exactly as promised at the outset.
Rating & Verdict: 4.5/5
KindLink’s tools have significantly helped us overcome a few participation hurdles and take our volunteering efforts to the next level, instead of limiting them to one-off volunteering days.
2. Chezuba
Platform Overview
Chezuba provides an online platform centred on corporate volunteering, with a particular emphasis on skill-based and virtual opportunities. I turned to it during my time at a startup, when our focus was squarely on finding a tool dedicated purely to volunteering without extra bells and whistles.
Pros
- Chezuba is a strong tool for employees to find skill-based and virtual volunteering opportunities. Its platform connects globally to NGOs across many countries worldwide.
- Its core USP is its gamified features, including leaderboards, micro-actions, and a volunteering hour tracker, that offer an engaging atmosphere.
- Chezuba also offers live dashboards, analytics, and reporting features to help HR and CSR teams report on employee volunteering participation.
Cons
Chezuba shines brightest when volunteering is your sole focus, but it falls short as a broader CSR solution compared to more comprehensive platforms. Native integrations with other systems also felt more limited than on some competitors.
Rating & Verdict: 4 / 5
Going by my personal experience, Chezuba is a good choice for remote teams and companies looking to gamify volunteering and improve engagement.
3. Deed
Platform Overview
Deed markets itself as a comprehensive workplace volunteering and giving platform, with a wide array of features for organisations of different sizes. Our team quickly warmed to how it opened doors to volunteering opportunities through Deed’s extensive global network of non-profits.
Pros
- Deed’s key highlight is its interface, offering a smooth user experience for both employees and admins. A big plus if you’re looking to improve user adoption.
- It emphasises integrations with corporate communication channels like Slack and Teams, along with automated reminders, campaigns and reporting features.
- Like KindLink, Deed’s volunteering module helped teams launch, manage and scale volunteering initiatives, with easy dashboards, reporting, and controls.
Cons
It handled mid-sized organisations smoothly but felt a bit heavy for the startup environment I operated in. Besides this, for smaller teams with tighter budgets, the overall investment can add up quickly.
Rating & Verdict: 3.8/5
Deed works particularly well when user experience and smooth integrations matter most, making it a solid pick for mid-sized and larger teams.
Summing Up
After years spent shaping corporate CSR programmes and testing a range of volunteering tools, these three platforms rise above the rest in my book. KindLink takes the top spot for its versatility and overall performance, but your best fit will hinge on your team’s size, priorities, and how volunteering slots into your bigger CSR picture. My goal with this review is to help you skip the trial-and-error phase and zero in on what might work best for your organisation. However, it’s always smarter to do your due diligence. Dig into demos, compare features against your needs, and chat with current users before making your choice.