A project to build an open data infrastructure for volunteering in the UK has reached a significant milestone today, with the Open Data Institute (ODI), Do IT, and Team Kinetic publishing the outcomes from six months of work funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
Volunteering opportunity data across the UK has historically been scattered across dozens of separate platforms, each using its own approach to storing and sharing information. More than 24 million adults volunteer in some way each year, contributing an estimated £24.69 billion in economic value, yet the systems through which opportunities are published and found have not kept pace with how people search for information in everyday life. For volunteers, this means navigating multiple websites. For organisations, it means entering the same information repeatedly across disconnected systems, with little ability to measure what is working.
The ODI-led work has produced a shared, open standard for describing volunteering opportunities, covering what they involve, where they are, who they suit, and how to apply, so that data can be published once and used across many platforms and services. The standard is available, alongside full developer documentation, at standard.volunteeringdata.io.
Volunteering changes lives, both for the people who give their time and for the communities that depend on them. This project has built the foundations to make it easier for people across the UK to find ways to help, and for the organisations that need them to be found.
Civil Society Minister
Volunteering is one of the most powerful expressions of community we have, but the data infrastructure that supports it has lagged far behind. This project has shown that a shared, open approach to volunteering data is not only technically achievable but genuinely wanted by the sector. The data standard we have developed, and the tools it enables, demonstrate what can be built when organisations work together on common foundations. The ODI is committed to stewarding this work, and we look forward to seeing it taken up across the sector.
Chief Executive of the Open Data Institute
Three pilots
Three pilot projects ran alongside the development of the standard, each testing a different dimension of its application.
- Pilot 1 - implementation at scale. The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) has confirmed that its Milo platform is implementing the standard. Milo is used by Third Sector Interfaces across Scotland to manage and promote local volunteering opportunities, and feeds into services including Volunteer Scotland and the Saltire Awards for young people. Its adoption provides an early, concrete demonstration that the standard can work within a live national volunteering infrastructure. The ODI project also worked with the Royal Voluntary Service, developing the standard to be implemented on their platform GoVo, recently announced as the volunteer opportunity finder platform for the Big Help Out campaign. The Royal Voluntary Service has agreed to use the data standard to publish data about volunteering opportunities from GoVo as part of an early adopter group.
- Pilot 2 - small and grassroots organisations. This pilot used a series of research interviews with organisations with different focuses to understand the challenges and enablers of implementing the standard across smaller organisations. The research confirmed the scale of the data entry burden facing smaller groups, identified platform gatekeeping as a barrier for newer organisations, and found that measuring the impact of volunteering activity is so difficult that many organisations have largely stopped trying. These findings will inform the guidance and support developed as the standard is adopted more widely.
- Pilot 3 - AI-powered opportunity discovery. Do IT’s technical team built a ChatGPT application that allows people to find volunteering opportunities and refine their search via natural-language conversation, using standardised opportunity data to deliver results. Rather than navigating search filters on an unfamiliar platform, people can describe what they are looking for and discuss the results. A guided demonstration of the application is available on the ODI website from today (Thursday 26 March). Because the technology used is replicable, the same foundation could, in principle, power similar tools across other AI platforms.
Built in the open, with the sector
Throughout the project, a Standards Working Group drew in contributors from across the sector to shape and test the standard as it was developed, including platform providers, infrastructure bodies, community organisations and technical specialists. A Steering Group, chaired by DCMS guided the project.
In December 2025, a two-day hackathon in London brought together 25 participants to build prototype tools using the draft standard. Four teams produced working models covering:
- accessible opportunity discovery
- conversational volunteer matching
- crisis response volunteering
- AI-powered search
The winning team donated their £500 prize to St John’s Waterloo charity.
Research, including in-depth interviews with sector stakeholders and a broader survey, was conducted throughout the project to assess the case for further development of the work. The findings point to strong support across the sector for a shared approach to volunteering data, and for the ODI to continue stewarding the standard. 68% of the contributing organisations agreed or strongly agreed that a shared open data standard for volunteering would benefit the sector as a whole.
The standard, the API and the supporting documentation are publicly available, and the Standards Working Group remains open to new contributors.
If you would like to stay up to date with the project and learn how to get involved, please email [email protected].
