A New Chapter

New Shoots Of Progress For Volunteer Impact

We’re so thankful for the support and interest in Volunteer Impact over the last months and years. Whether it’s the people who are still finding us and signing up, contacting us through the website, or the people who’ve shown us they believe in us enough to make micro-grants.

It’s been a frustrating ride for us with what’s felt like several seeds of beginnings which haven’t fully sprouted into our full vision for Volunteer Impact. That’s the challenge of nurturing the seed of an idea, into a sapling of a product, and onwards into a tree which spreads it’s branches into the canopy.

Finding Space

Honestly, it’s been because we haven’t been able to dedicate the time and resources to do this properly. We didn’t want to do this project half-heartedly, so we’ve been searching for a pathway through the forest to a clearing which would provide the time and space to realise the potential to make a significant change for the environmental conservation & restoration sector — nothing else would do.

Finally, we’ve found that clearing we’ve been searching for.

The Medium-Term Future of Volunteer Impact

We’ve decided to tie the future of Volunteer Impact into a Masters of Design, which will be undertaken by myself (Sam Rye).

This is a future for Volunteer Impact which ensures we can explore how to best create feedback loops for Volunteers and Environmental Conservation projects, to improve their environmental and social outcomes.

We’re excited to have the structure and support around us of some excellent advisors from Massey University’s College of Creative Arts.

What This Means

It means that Volunteer Impact isn’t going away. It means that we’ll likely be in touch in the coming months (sign up here if you’re not on the mailing list and would like to be). It means that the chance of building something special for the environmental sector is a reality.

Want to help?

If you’re interested in us getting in touch to help shape our next phase of research and prototyping, we’d love your support. We’re looking for a number of people who regularly volunteer with environmental conservation projects, and a number of people who lead or co-ordinate these projects.

We’re hoping to give you some of the latest digital tools to help record your experiences, and feed them into the design of our next prototype which should be coming around the first month or so of 2017.

Want in?

Email: drop me a line here

Twitter: @volunteer_app

Live Chat: hit the button on the bottom right of our website

Thanks for your patience and belief that we can create something awesome for the conservation sector — it keeps us going!