Volunteering
What is volunteering? How do you become a volunteer?
Volunteering is when a person freely gives their time, knowledge and skills for the benefit of society, a community or nature, without expecting payment. Helping at an association's event, doing an online translation or supporting a disaster area are all volunteering.
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Types of volunteering
- On-site volunteering: events, trainings, distributions, environmental clean-ups and other in-person tasks.
- Online (remote) volunteering: translation, design, software, social media, research and other tasks done from a computer.
- Micro-volunteering: surveys, forms or short research tasks that take a few minutes.
- Skills-based volunteering: offering professional knowledge such as law, accounting or communication to an NGO.
- Corporate volunteering: company employees contributing to a social cause together with their employer.
- Emergency and disaster volunteering: coordinated support during earthquakes, floods or fires.
Why volunteering matters
Volunteers are the most valuable resource of civil society organisations: the number of people an association can reach often grows with its volunteers. Volunteers in turn gain new skills, meet different people, build experience that is valued at work and, above all, feel part of a change.
Since 1985 the United Nations has marked 5 December every year as International Volunteer Day.
How to become a volunteer: 4 steps
- Decide on your interests and the time you can give: a few hours a week, weekends only, or online?
- Choose a trustworthy organisation: check that it is a registered association or foundation and shares its work openly.
- Read the opportunity carefully and apply: learn the duration, location and what is expected of you.
- Keep a record of your volunteering: completed tasks, certificates and references help your CV later.
Volunteering with hangel
hangel Volunteering brings together open opportunities from NGOs, student clubs and institutions in one place. You can filter them by city, online or on-site, skills and dates, and apply in a few taps. Few-minute micro-volunteering tasks and urgent calls are here too.
Completed volunteering builds up on your profile; you can view your volunteering transcript and request a reference letter. At certified events your attendance is verified by QR code.
Frequently asked questions
Where can I find volunteering opportunities in Turkiye?
hangel Volunteering (hangel.org/volunteer) lists open opportunities from NGOs, student clubs and institutions across Turkiye in one place, filterable by city, online or on-site, skills and dates.
How does online volunteering work?
You apply for an online opportunity and do tasks such as translation, design, social media or research from your computer. On hangel, opportunities are marked online, on-site or hybrid, and there are few-minute micro-volunteering tasks too.
Do volunteers get a certificate?
Many organisations give their volunteers a certificate. On hangel, completed volunteering builds up on your profile; you can view a volunteering transcript, request a reference letter, and attendance at certified events is verified by QR.
Does volunteering help my career?
Yes. Volunteering builds skills such as teamwork, communication and project management and counts as experience on your CV, so keep a record of completed tasks, certificates and references.
When is International Volunteer Day?
Every year on 5 December. The United Nations declared it in 1985.
About hangel
hangel is a transparent social impact platform that makes doing good part of everyday life. It brings NGOs, volunteers, student clubs and brands together: volunteering opportunities, events, open grant and funding calls, a civil-society library and hangel Market, where a share of your purchase becomes a donation to the NGO you choose, all in one place. Management panels are free for NGOs and clubs; every NGO profile shows a transparency score and every product shows its donation rate. There's no such thing as struggling alone.
Social Business Global
Social Business Global is a civil society organisation founded in Istanbul in 2020 that carries social entrepreneurship and social innovation from Turkiye to the world (officially Uluslararası Sosyal Fayda Derneği), and it works together with hangel. In 2020-2025 it reached 15,621 people at 126 events and reviewed 632 social enterprises from 54 countries.
Social Business Global website