Our Founding Story
The idea of Collaborate was brought to life by a group of four young women, who came together through our shared vision of making it easier to make change.
Everybody has a skill to make a difference however finding when and where you can make the biggest impact can be difficult. We have all volunteered for community organisations that have struggled to get great projects off the ground. They are big on ideas for our environment, our communities, things that would make a real difference to the lives of New Zealanders, but short on capacity; they need more people with skills and time to make them happen.
We have also experienced how hard it is to find opportunities that work around our busy lives and where our personal skills can really add value.
The problem is not a lack of human resources, ideas, or opportunities, but a lack of connection.
Our Vision
We want to make volunteering easy. We want volunteering to be effortless so that more people can easily get involved in their communities. We want anyone with a free Sunday afternoon or an evening after work to be able to easily put that time to good use.
Think how much easier Uber made getting a taxi, Airbnb made finding accommodation, and Tinder made finding a date. We want it to be just as easy to give back to your community.
All New Zealanders benefit from the work of community organisations, through their efforts to tackle issues that affect us all; things like poverty, climate change, and disaster relief. So, the more capacity they have to do this great work, the better for us all.
Volunteering itself is also incredibly rewarding – it allows you to work with a diverse group of people that you wouldn’t necessarily come across otherwise. It also gives you a greater understanding of what is going on around you and empowers and develops your skills to do something about it.
“We wanted to do more with our time and skills to make the world a better place and we are determined to make easy for others to do the same.”
Our Journey
Since 2015, hundreds of people from community organisations, volunteers and changemakers have shaped the Collaborate app.
Through brainstorms, hackathons, design sprints, surveys, in-depth user testing and hundreds of coffees their ideas and inspiration have created a movement.
A movement of people passionate about connection, and an app that brings them together.
A testament to the power of skilled volunteering, even the app itself has been built by volunteers, thanks to the talented and passionate team from the award winning Digital Agency Springload.
The team
Keeping the app and collaboration humming is a volunteer powered team based all over New Zealand.