LinkedIn has launched a new "Volunteer Marketplace" to help nonprofit organizations find professionals who are interested in donating their skills to a good cause.
"There are hundreds of thousands of 'nonprofit needs' in the world, and even more professionals who want to donate their skills to help meet these needs," the LinkedIn blog states. "The challenge is that nonprofits and professionals don't know how to easily find each other. LinkedIn Volunteer Marketplace aims to solve that problem."
According to the professional-based social network, the new Volunteer Marketplace will connect talent with opportunity "at massive scale." To ensure that the volunteer opportunities available in the Marketplace are high quality, LinkedIn has partnered with some big-name organizations at launch, including Catchafire, Taproot Foundation, BoardSource and VolunteerMatch.
LinkedIn's blog announcement goes on to note that volunteering isn't only beneficial for nonprofits, but also for professional careers. In fact, a recent survey from the social network found that 42 percent of hiring managers consider volunteer work equivalent to full-time work experience, and 20 percent claim that they would hire someone because of volunteer experience.