Volunteering New Zealand

‍Making volunteering easier to understand online‍

Redeveloping the Volunteering New Zealand website

‍The project:

Volunteering New Zealand (VNZ) is the national body that champions, supports, and advocates for volunteering across Aotearoa.

Social Good worked with Volunteering New Zealand to redevelop the organisation’s website, improving clarity, usability, and accessibility so that visitors could easily find the information and resources they needed.

The project focused on simplifying the site’s content, improving navigation, and making the purpose of the organisation clearer to the many different audiences who visit the website.

Following the redevelopment, the new website was nominated as a finalist in the 2025 Plain Language Awards for Best Plain Language Website.

‍The challenge:

Volunteering New Zealand supports volunteer-involving organisations across the country, provides resources and research, and advocates for the volunteering sector.

However, many visitors arriving on the website were looking for volunteering opportunities rather than information about the organisation itself.

This created confusion and made it harder for users to find what they needed.

The project needed to:

• Clarify what Volunteering New Zealand does as an organisation
• Improve navigation for different audiences
• Simplify language and remove jargon across the site
• Create clearer pathways for volunteers, organisations, and sector leaders
• Ensure the website is accessible and easy to understand
  

A full review and rewrite of the site’s content was required to ensure information could be found quickly and understood easily.

‍Our role:

Social Good supported Volunteering New Zealand through a full content review and rewrite as part of the website redevelopment.

Our work focused on improving clarity, structure, and user journeys across the site.

This included:

• Rewriting much of the website content using plain language principles
• Simplifying headlines and removing jargon
• Improving navigation and page structure
• Creating clearer calls-to-action and pathways for users
• Supporting user testing to ensure the content was easy to find and understand
  

The goal was to ensure visitors could quickly identify what Volunteering New Zealand does and easily navigate to the information or resources they needed.

The results:

The redesigned website created a clearer and more accessible experience for users.

Key outcomes included:

• 57% increase in website visits in May–June 2025 compared with the same period in 2024
• Improved navigation and clearer user journeys
• Fewer mistaken membership sign-ups, with users instead subscribing to the newsletter when appropriate
• A more streamlined process for organisations engaging with Volunteering New Zealand
  
  

User testing also showed that visitors were able to find content more easily and that the language used across the site was clear and easy to understand.

‍What worked well:

Plain language content
Simplifying the language across the website helped ensure information was accessible to a wide range of audiences, including volunteers, organisations, and policymakers.

Clearer user pathways
The new site structure makes it easier for visitors to quickly identify whether they are looking for volunteering opportunities, organisational resources, or sector advocacy.

Improved navigation and structure
Headlines, page layouts, and calls-to-action were redesigned to guide users through the website more clearly.

‍The impact

The new Volunteering New Zealand website provides a clearer, more accessible experience that reflects the organisation’s role as the national voice of volunteering.

By simplifying the language and improving user journeys, the site now helps volunteers, organisations, and sector leaders quickly find the information they need.

The work was recognised nationally when the website was selected as a finalist in the 2025 Plain Language Awards for Best Plain Language Website, celebrating organisations that communicate clearly and effectively with the public.