Company: onHand
Website: https://www.beonhand.co.uk/
CEO: Sanjay Lobo
About onHand
onHand is the world’s first on-demand volunteering app, making employee volunteering as easy as ordering a takeaway.
Set up in collaboration with 6 of the UK’s largest charities, the award-winning app looks to combat some of society’s biggest challenges by matching employees with activities such as befriending phone calls to tackle loneliness, simple tasks such as shopping or gardening to support the ageing care gap, youth mentoring in BAME communities, eco-clean ups that can involve the whole team and food waste missions to homeless shelters.
Named ‘Uber for Volunteering’ by IBM Watson, onHand makes it simple for businesses to engage employees by offering on-demand, bite-size volunteering that fits into any schedule. The app has captured the huge rise in social good to come out of the Covid pandemic and is harnessing that good for all our futures, across the UK. With close to 20,000 downloads within 2 years, onHand is rapidly becoming one of the largest volunteering organisations in the UK.
Opportunities to help are matched by employees location or can be completed remotely. The app helps keep employees physically active and doing good, which in turn helps develop a sense of purpose and boost wellbeing.
As a result, onHand has witnessed a massive client growth of 240% in 2021. Since 2020 nearly 100,000 meals have been delivered to those shielding or isolating from Covid-19 and employee volunteers have spent a total of half a year on the phone completing befriending phone calls. Businesses using onHand to increase their social impact include GoCardless, Trainline, Naked Wines, Softcat plc, Elvie, Newcastle Building Society, along with many more.
In 2021, onHand completed a £1m funding round, backed by UK Research & Innovation, Northstar Ventures and angels including the co-founder of Shazam and board members from B:Corp UK and The Impact Investing Institute. Funds will be used to scale the business across the UK, launch into international markets and create global impact. In July 2021, the onHand forest was launched, giving partners the opportunity to address climate change by planting trees for every employee and growing in number with the amount of missions they complete.
onHand CEO, Sanjay Lobo commented:
“According to Deloitte, 77% of employees say volunteering is “essential” to employee wellbeing. The problem is only 38% agree their employer supports their volunteering needs with engaging solutions. In the last year, Deloitte also found an “unprecedented” rise in employee loyalty for organisations that meet their employees’ need for purpose. That’s a trend that will only increase: the companies that will win in the future are those focused on responsible business and the shift to profit with purpose. We’re making that transition simple for all forward-thinking businesses, fulfilling multiple employee wellbeing needs at the same time”.
