9 great apps for volunteering and social good

If you're reading this article it means you must be interested in volunteering. Congratulations, you've made a great decision to do something amazing! But where to go from here?

If you are planning on joining a volunteering project, or volunteering abroad, you've come to the right website. Visioneers.io can help you realise your dream.

But if you feel like you want to get the ball rolling immediately and try out some other, smaller things by yourself first, or if you simply need more access to information about volunteering, then look no further than your phone. With the rise of mobile technology, millions of apps have been developed for many different purposes, and luckily many of them are in the area of volunteering and social good. They all have slightly different purposes and mechanics, so we've created a list of our favourites for you to browse through below.

1.- Be My Eyes app

Be My Eyes is a non-profit, remote sighted helper app. It pairs up visually impaired people with sighted people who can help them with everyday tasks that may be difficult for them. Through the use of video calls, the sighted person helps the person with impaired vision by being their eyes. They might need help reading the label on a milk carton to see if it's out of date, or other tasks that don't require a huge amount of effort to do, but are really valuable and time saving for the visually impaired. This is a great opportunity to make a big difference to someone's life, with minimal amount of effort and time. You simply download the app, sign in, and you're ready to go.

2.- Good Sam app

If you are a paramedic or a doctor, you might be interested in joining the GoodSAM app as a volunteer. The app is used during emergencies, to contact an off-duty paramedic who has signed up to the app, who may be able to come to the aid of the person in trouble faster than an ambulance, and treat the patient until the ambulance arrives. Even a few minutes can be a matter of life and death, so this app has the potential to really save lives.

3.- Ripill app

Ripil is a kindness app with the ethos of karma or paying it forward. It allows you to track all the different good deeds you do during the day and encourages you to keep going. You can create your own deeds, or use suggestions from the app. It allows you to have compassion challenges with others and allows you to compare your compassion levels with others on the compassion leaderboard.

4.- Give Gab

GiveGab is a social network for volunteering. It works like Linkedin, with volunteers and non-profits building profiles. Then either party can reach out to each other if their interests and skills match the requirements of the volunteering opportunity. You can also see which non-profits your friends are involved with, you'll see lists of upcoming events and it also have a feature where you can win virtual trophies for various tasks or skills completed.

5.- Donate a photo

Donate a Photo allows you to make money for charity by sharing your photos through the app. All you have to do it use the app to share your pictures on social media. Then Donate a Photo will give one dollar to your cause of choice. And by sharing you also raise awareness of the cause. Everyone's a winner.

6.- Food Runners app

Although Food Runners is based only in San Francisco at the moment, we felt it was such an awesome idea that we should mention it here. Hopefully one day it will expand into Europe. The idea behind Food Runners app is that business such as restaurants, bakeries, hospitals, hotels etc. often have lots of leftover food that just goes to waste. Through this app, they can let volunteers know when there is food leftover, and these volunteers can then collect the food and deliver it neighbourhood programmes that feed the hungry in the city.

7.- Budge app

Budge is a quirky app, which encourages people to donate money to. It's a social app, where you challenge your friends to anything - like a pizza eating contest, a game of scrabble...anything. If you lose, you have to donate money to charity. Simple and effective!

8.- Charity Miles app

Charity Miles is an app which enables you to raise money for charity by walking, running or biking. You simply log into the app before you exercise, choose your charity and then get going. The app tracks your distance and you earn a certain amount for your charity per kilometre completed. Once you finish, all you have to do it share your achievement on social media, and your sponsor will send the money to the charity of your choice.

9.- Instead app

Instead is a great app. It encourages you to tweak your lifestyle to make it more efficient. And then you can donate the savings you made to charity. All you have to do is sign up to the app, choose the tweaks and the amount you're going to donate and then make sure you enforce the tweaks. The tweaks could be anything like deciding to make your own food at home instead of eating out, or brew your own coffee at the office instead of buying it from the cafe next door. it's a great app that allows you not only to donate to charity without incurring extra costs, but it also helps you to make more conscious choices in life.

These are just a select few of our favourites, but hopefully you can find something which appeals to you, so you can start giving right away!