Tammy Richards, CEO of the technology nonprofit VolunteerNow, has announced her retirement, according to a news release.
“We are grateful to Tammy for her eight years of outstanding service as CEO,” Bill Braxton, board chairman at VolunteerNow, said in the release. “She has led VolunteerNow’s transition from a traditional nonprofit and volunteer center focused on providing services to North Texas to a nonprofit thought leader that uses technology to create a global impact.”
In 2021, the Dallas Business Journal honored Richards with a Women in Technology Award.
The nonprofit has spent the last seven years developing its volunteer-matching SaaS software and leverages VOLY.org to connect volunteers with school districts, nonprofits and other organizations. VOLY.org was designed to be approachable by mimicking other websites people use in their daily life, she said.
“It reduces the friction, it reduces the barriers for someone raising their hand and saying that they want to help,” she said.
When they began their work on the software, they had 10,000 volunteers in their database. VolunteerNow has had to scale because they are now working with more than 310,000 volunteers and hope to reach a million over the next three to four years.
According to the release, after her retirement, Richards said she plans to continue serving on nonprofit boards, particularly in education and family services, and on corporate and advisory boards in the educational technology space.
VolunteerNow is launching a national search for the organization’s next CEO and has enlisted consultant FSP Leaders to help with the search.
“We are now looking for a leader that can build on the foundation that Tammy and the leaders at VolunteerNow have built that will take the organization to the next level,” Braxton said in the release.
