The number of people interested in taking part in volunteering activities in Romania is continually growing and at the same time there is a clear upwards trend in the number of projects undertaken by non-governmental organisations. This meant that there were sufficient grounds for launching a wide platform that would match supply and demand for volunteers. However, the success of this kind of initiative would depend largely on the trust placed by NGOs and volunteers in a nascent entity carrying out in this task. 

In the local NGO environment, the VOLUM Federation is a voice that makes itself heard whenever a subject related to volunteers appears on the public agenda. Perhaps the issue that has received the most media attention in relation to this is the new law regarding volunteering work, of which the biggest supporter is Anca Năstase, the executive director of the organisation. The reputation and goodwill that the federation enjoys makes it the most worthy to be at the origin of such an important project.

Being aware of all the drawbacks of this field, our client knew what the real needs of the community were. Therefore, the new platform would have to very quickly gain the attention of those involved in the volunteering universe thanks to two main functions: namely the matching algorithm between vounteers and existing projects, and the system of creating and awarding volunteering certificates.

There are two kinds of users of the portal: volunteers and organisations. On reaching the first page of the site, the user (or potential user) has to make a choice. In order to go further, the users must position themselves by indicating which of the two categories they belong to.

The matching algorithm gathers information from the profiles of the volunteers, their expectations and the characteristics of available projects. The platform suggests which projects volunteers would be best suited to and delivers a list of the most suitable volunteers for each project to the organisations. The greatest benefit of this mechanism is the time it saves users due to the speed of its searches.

The interactions between users take place through messages and notifications. The volunteers receive notifications from the organisations that they are following – whenever there are developments regarding projects they are interested in – and organisations can communicate with each other through messaging. Volunteers and organisations can also communicate with each other through messaging.

The profiles used on the platform operate in a similar way to those on social networking sites. Volunteers may choose to make some information on their profile public, or they may decide to make it accessible only to those registered on the portal. Additionally, volunteers can adjust their privacy settings, allowing their personal information to be accessed only by organisations that have shortlisted them for a project.

For the typeface, both of the online platform and for the visual identity of this brand, we chose Roboto Slab.

There are four reasons why we opted for Roboto Slab. The wide serifs make it appealing in large dimensions, it has an anatomy that makes it legible when used in small dimensions, it is one of the best-crafted typefaces in the Google Fonts pack and last but not least, it's free.