Charities in the UK will be able to advertise volunteer opportunities to 250,000 LinkedIn members who have declared an interest in volunteering or trusteeship, using a service launched today by the business network.

The LinkedIn Volunteer Marketplace will allow charities to post skilled volunteering and trustee roles on LinkedIn. LinkedIn users will receive emails advertising those volunteer opportunities and will also be able to search a database of volunteering opportunities. Charities themselves will be able to search users interested in volunteering and contact them to ask them to become involved.

All charities will be able to post roles to LinkedIn. Roles can be posted either directly for a small fee, typically £10 to £20, or can be posted for free through volunteering websites Do-it and Reach, which are partnering with LinkedIn to provide volunteer roles.

The service has been running for a year in the US, and typically around 30,000 volunteering opportunities are listed at any one time.

“The volunteer experience and causes field has become very popular in LinkedIn profiles,” said Alison Dorsey social impact manager at LinkedIn. “A lot of members have indicated that they want to volunteer in the future.

“It’s very difficult to gather data on how many people we’ve connected, but we hear fantastic stories about its success.”

She said the site offered a powerful tool because it allowed charities not just to post information and wait, but to actively search a database of interested individuals and contact them.

“We have a powerful algorithm designed expressly to direct people towards the right opportunities for them,” she said. “We want charities to make use of that.

“We also want charities to get in contact. A lot of people feel it’s a bit forward to contact someone out of the blue and ask them to volunteer. But actually a lot of people feel flattered.”

She said LinkedIn had started out working with Governors for Schools to recruit people to school boards, and expected sign-up from other volunteer networks.

Jamie Ward-Smith, chief executive of Do-it, said LinkedIn was offering “an amazing opportunity” to improve charities’ abilities to link up with volunteers.

“People who use our service are largely small community groups,” he said. “This will connect them with thousands of people.”