Why I Built a Volunteering App for Young People

Ninety-four percent of young people say they want to volunteer. Only eleven percent actually do.

I have read that stat several times now and it still stops me. That is not a small gap. That is a chasm. And it is not explained by apathy, or laziness, or a generation that does not care. Something is going profoundly wrong between the intention and the action.

I spent months reading the research before I wrote a single line of code. What I found changed how I think about volunteering, about technology, and about what my responsibility is as someone who builds software.

The Barriers Are Real

The numbers are stark. Formal volunteering among under-30s dropped 14% between 2019 and 2022. In 2024, only 17% of young people had volunteered through education, down from 24% the year before. Willingness to even consider volunteering fell to 34%. That is fifteen points lower than 2023 alone.

The reasons are not mysterious. The cost of living crisis has squeezed young people to the point where unpaid time feels like a luxury. Over 20% of UK households now have around sixty pounds of disposable income left each month after bills. When you are choosing between a bus fare to a volunteer centre and eating properly, the choice is already made.

Then there are the structural barriers. Volunteering has always had a class problem. Research shows that programmes designed for young people unintentionally cater to middle-class youth. Working-class young people are underrepresented, not because they care less, but because nobody built a path that works for them. The formats are wrong. Weekly commitments, fixed schedules, roles that assume you have time, transport and spare money. That is not how most young people live.

And then there is the pandemic. COVID shut down the pipelines that fed young people into volunteering. School programmes paused. University societies stopped meeting. NCS gatherings were cancelled. Some of those pipelines never restarted. A whole cohort missed the window where volunteering normally begins.

The Technology Problem

All of these barriers are well documented. But the thing that hit me hardest, coming from thirty years in software, was the technology.

I have built products for enterprise clients, for startups, for community organisations. I know what good technology looks like. And when I looked at the platforms young people are expected to use to find volunteering opportunities, I was genuinely taken aback.

We are competing for young people's attention against TikTok, Instagram and gaming. And we are handing them a search form from 2012.

The volunteering sector's technology is years behind the private sector. Clunky sign-up flows. PDF-heavy processes. No personalisation. No engagement. Interfaces that feel like they were designed for administrators, not for the eighteen-year-old we are trying to reach.

This matters more than people realise. Young people are not going to fight through a bad user experience to find an opportunity. They will just leave. The same generation that can set up a Depop store in ten minutes or navigate a complex game interface without reading a manual is being asked to fill in a three-page form and wait for an email. The sector's own tools have become a barrier to the people it desperately needs.

Why I Built Impactful

This is why I built it.

Not because the charity sector needs another app. It does not need another piece of technology that sits on top of broken processes. It needs something that starts from the young person's perspective and works outward.

Impactful exists because 94% of young people want to help and the infrastructure makes it nearly impossible for most of them to start. The research confirmed what I already suspected: the intent is there. The technology is not.

I wanted to build something that meets young people where they actually are. Something that connects them to opportunities based on who they are, what they care about, and what fits their life. Not a directory. Not a noticeboard. Something that understands that if you lose someone at the first screen, you have lost them for good.

The voluntary sector does extraordinary work. The people in it are some of the most dedicated I have ever met. But good intentions do not fix a technology gap. And the gap between how charities communicate with young people and how young people actually engage with the world has become too wide to ignore.

A Generation That Was Never Given a Way In

The 83 percentage points between wanting to volunteer and actually doing it is not a youth problem. It is an infrastructure problem. And infrastructure is something we know how to fix.

We do not have a generation that does not care. Every piece of research I have read says the opposite. We have a generation that was never given a decent way in. The door was always there. It was just designed for someone else.

That is what I am trying to change.

Visit https://www.Impactfulhub.com to learn more