Terms of Service

Last Updated: 21/09/2026

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using VolunteerNearMe ("the Service"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"), our Privacy Policy, and our Community Guidelines. If you create or administer a Group or Channel, you also agree to our Organisation Terms. If you do not agree to these Terms, please do not use the Service.

2. About Us

VolunteerNearMe is a privately owned, non-commercial project.

  • Website: volunteernearme.co.uk

  • Email: lead@volunteernearme.co.uk

VolunteerNearMe is also available as a native mobile application on iOS via the Apple App Store and on Android via Google Play.

3. Description of Service

VolunteerNearMe connects volunteers with Groups and volunteering opportunities across the United Kingdom. The Service includes:

  • Opportunity discovery: Browse opportunities on a map, filter them, and save them for later.

  • Bookings: Book onto event sessions directly from the map or an opportunity page.

  • Groups: Discover, join, and follow Groups. Every account has a personal group used to publish opportunities as an individual.

  • Channels: Team spaces for an opportunity, with announcements, discussion, schedules, shift sign-ups, shift swaps, tasks, documents, availability, and emergency contact details.

  • Check-in and hours: Check in to sessions, have hours logged automatically for completed sessions, log other volunteering yourself, and have hours endorsed by Groups.

  • Activity recording: Time a volunteering session in the mobile app as you do it, optionally recording the route you travel.

  • Community features: Post updates, react and comment, add friends, and earn badges.

  • Calendar: View your bookings and shifts, and sync them to your device calendar.

  • Mobile applications: Native iOS and Android apps with push notifications.

4. User Accounts and Registration

4.1 Eligibility and Account Creation

  • You must be at least 16 years old to create an account

  • If you are 16 or 17, a parent or guardian must confirm your account before you can book, join Channels, or post. Additional protections apply to your account, as described in our Privacy Policy.

  • You must provide accurate, current, and complete information, including your date of birth

  • You must keep your login details confidential

4.2 Account Security

  • You are responsible for activity under your account

  • Tell us immediately about any unauthorised access or security breach

  • We may suspend or terminate accounts that break these Terms (see Section 12)

4.3 Groups and Personal Groups

Every account includes a personal group, which is used when you publish an opportunity as an individual. You can also create or be made an administrator of other Groups. Before you publish an opportunity, create a Channel, or become a Group administrator, you must accept our Organisation Terms, which set out your responsibilities for the volunteers and information you manage.

5. User Conduct and Content

5.1 Acceptable Use

You agree to use the Service only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these Terms. You must not:

  • Break any applicable law

  • Harass, abuse, threaten, or harm other users

  • Post false, misleading, or fraudulent content, including opportunities that are not genuine volunteering

  • Share discriminatory material or content that could breach the Equality Act 2010

  • Attempt to gain unauthorised access to our systems or other users' accounts

  • Use the Service for unauthorised commercial purposes

  • Create fake accounts, impersonate others, or give a false date of birth

  • Contact users under 18 for any purpose other than organising volunteering, or try to move contact with a user under 18 to a private channel outside the Service without a genuine volunteering reason

  • Record hours you did not volunteer, or check in to sessions you are not attending

  • Use information you access through a Channel, opportunity, or interest list for any purpose other than organising that volunteering

  • Submit false, frivolous, or malicious reports

  • Use the blocking feature to harass or coordinate against other users

5.2 Content Guidelines

  • Content must be respectful and appropriate for a community platform

  • Do not post content that is illegal, harmful, threatening, or that infringes the rights of others, including copyright and trademarks

  • Do not post hate speech

  • You are solely responsible for documents you upload to a Channel. You must have the right to share them, and they must not contain malicious code or other people's personal data without a lawful reason.

  • Think before posting a recorded route to the feed. A route shows where you went; do not post one that reveals a home address or another person's location.

  • We may remove content that breaks these rules

5.3 Volunteer Safety

  • Take care when meeting people or attending events arranged through the Service

  • Where relevant, check a Group's details independently, for example on the Charity Commission or Companies House registers

  • Report any suspicious or concerning behaviour

  • Meet in public places for initial interactions where possible

5.4 How We Protect Users From Illegal and Harmful Content

VolunteerNearMe is a user-to-user service under the Online Safety Act 2023. We protect users from illegal and harmful content by:

  • Providing reporting tools on posts, opportunities, and Group pages, and a safety email address

  • Reviewing reports within 24 to 48 hours and removing illegal content as soon as we become aware of it

  • Treating safeguarding reports, and reports that a user may be under 16, as urgent rather than placing them in the normal queue

  • Automatically filtering known offensive language from posts

  • Letting you block other users, and manage your blocked list in your profile settings

  • Applying stricter default settings to accounts belonging to 16 and 17 year olds

  • Restricting or removing accounts that break these Terms

Reports are anonymous: we never tell the person or Group you report who reported them. Blocking hides a user's content from you and notifies our moderation team, but is not in itself a formal report.

5.5 Complaints and Appeals

You can complain to us about content on the Service, about how we have handled a report, or about a moderation decision affecting you. If we remove your content or restrict, suspend, or terminate your account, we will tell you what we did and why, unless doing so would put someone at risk or compromise an investigation. You can appeal within 30 days. The full process is set out in our Community Guidelines.

5.6 Hours, Endorsements, and Attendance

Hours you log yourself are not checked by us. Hours logged automatically or endorsed by a Group reflect the Group's records, which we do not independently verify. Your hours record and badges are a personal record of your volunteering, not a reference or certificate from VolunteerNearMe. If you use them with an employer, education provider, or award scheme, that organisation may ask for its own evidence.

6. Privacy and Data Protection

We comply with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your personal information, including information in Channels, bookings, attendance records, recorded routes, and interest lists, and who can see it.

7. Intellectual Property

7.1 Our Rights

  • VolunteerNearMe and its content are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws

  • Our logo, branding, and platform design remain our property

7.2 Your Content

  • You keep ownership of content you create and post

  • By posting content, you give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, display, and adapt it (for example, by resizing images) for the purpose of operating the Service

  • This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies that other users have shared or that we must keep for legal reasons

  • You confirm you have the right to post everything you share

8. Organisation and Group Responsibilities

Groups and their administrators must follow our Organisation Terms. In summary, they must:

  • Provide accurate information about opportunities

  • Offer genuine volunteering, not unpaid work that should be paid under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998

  • Take appropriate steps for health and safety, insurance, and equality in their volunteering

  • Have safeguarding arrangements appropriate to their activities, particularly where volunteers under 18 take part

  • Use personal information collected through Channels and opportunities only to organise their volunteering, keep it secure, and comply with UK GDPR for that use

  • Record attendance and endorse hours accurately

9. Consumer Rights

The Service is free for individual users. We will still provide it with reasonable care and skill.

10. Disclaimers

10.1 Service Availability

  • We aim to keep the Service available but cannot guarantee uninterrupted access

  • We may suspend the Service for maintenance or updates

10.2 Opportunities and Bookings

  • Opportunities are published by Groups and individuals, not by us. We do not check every opportunity and cannot guarantee that information about them is accurate.

  • A booking does not guarantee that a session will go ahead. Groups may change or cancel sessions.

  • Volunteering activities are organised and supervised by the Group running them, not by VolunteerNearMe

10.3 Third-Party Content

The Service may link to third-party websites and services. We are not responsible for their content, policies, or practices.

11. Liability

11.1 What We Are Not Responsible For

Subject to Section 11.2, we are not liable for:

  • Losses that were not reasonably foreseeable

  • The conduct of Groups, opportunity creators, or other users

  • Injury, loss, or damage arising from volunteering activities organised by others

11.2 What We Do Not Limit

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be limited or excluded by law. Nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights.

11.3 Your Responsibility

If you break these Terms or the law when using the Service and this causes us loss, you may be responsible for that loss, to the extent permitted by law. Groups and their administrators have additional responsibilities under our Organisation Terms.

12. Termination

12.1 Ending Your Account

  • You can delete your account at any time from your account settings, in the app or on the web. Our Privacy Policy explains what happens to your data.

  • We may suspend or terminate accounts that break these Terms, with notice where possible

  • We may act immediately in serious cases, including where someone's safety is at risk

12.2 Effect of Termination

  • Your right to use the Service ends

  • Upcoming bookings and shift assignments are cancelled

  • We may keep some data where required by law, as described in our Privacy Policy

  • Sections 7, 11, and 14 continue to apply

13. Changes to the Service and Terms

  • We may change or discontinue features, and will give reasonable notice of significant changes where possible

  • We may update these Terms to reflect changes in the law or the Service. We will notify you of material changes by email or in the app before they take effect.

  • If you continue using the Service after changes take effect, the updated Terms apply. If you do not agree, you can delete your account.

14. Dispute Resolution

14.1 Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in your local courts and rely on your local law.

14.2 Resolving Disputes

  • Contact us first: Most issues can be resolved by contacting us directly.

  • Alternative dispute resolution: Where appropriate, we may suggest a UK alternative dispute resolution service.

  • Courts: Legal proceedings must be brought in the appropriate UK court.

15. App Stores

If you use our iOS or Android app, these Terms are between you and VolunteerNearMe, not Apple or Google. Apple and Google are not responsible for the app, its content, or support, and have no obligation to provide maintenance or support for it. Your use of the app must also comply with the terms of the store you downloaded it from.

16. Accessibility

We aim to make the Service accessible to disabled users, in line with the Equality Act 2010, and to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. If you have difficulty using any part of the Service, please contact us.

17. Compliance With UK Law

We aim to comply with relevant UK legislation, including:

  • UK General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018

  • Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003

  • Online Safety Act 2023

  • The Age Appropriate Design Code

  • Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002

  • Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008

  • Equality Act 2010

  • Computer Misuse Act 1990

  • Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

18. Safeguarding

We take safeguarding seriously. We:

  • Apply additional protections to accounts belonging to users aged 16 and 17

  • Show Group administrators when a member is under 18, so they can apply their safeguarding arrangements

  • Require Groups whose volunteering involves people under 18 or adults at risk to have appropriate safeguarding arrangements

  • Act promptly on safeguarding concerns reported to safety@volunteernearme.co.uk, and refer concerns to the police or local authority safeguarding teams where appropriate

If someone is in immediate danger, call 999.

19. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.

20. Contact Information

VolunteerNearMe

  • General enquiries: lead@volunteernearme.co.uk

  • Safety and safeguarding: safety@volunteernearme.co.uk

21. Acknowledgement

By creating an account or using the Service, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to these Terms of Service.