Idealist is known by many as the ultimate career site for the non-profit and social good sectors. Founded in 1995, Idealist.org is a non-profit organization created to help address one basic problem: that too many good ideas for making the world a better place go unheard or unrealized. The website connects people with opportunities for work, action, and collaboration. With over 120,000 organizations and 1.4 million monthly visitors, Idealist is at the nexus of the non-profit sector, helping to bridge the gap between intention and action by helping more people do good in the world. If that isn’t impressive enough, they do this all with a team of just 30 people.

Search is the core function of Idealist.org: users come to the site to seek and find opportunities which they will ultimately apply for. The organization’s topline metric is user conversions, which they define as users clicking into or taking action within a specific listing, and search is a direct driver of this.

Prior to Algolia, Idealist.org’s search function was built upon SQL queries from their database, and in 2017 they decided to make the move over to a full service search provider. Associate Director of Product, Patrick Metzger, is concerned with optimizing digital experiences for Idealist, and when it comes to the search experience, his top priorities are speed and relevance. With Algolia, Patrick is able to tweak relevance on a regular basis, and uses signals from click analytics and searched terms to inform the strategy. “If pages are loading quickly, and people are getting relevant results, then they are more likely to click on a listing and convert”, says Metzger.

A lot of ideas to make the world a better place end up falling through the cracks, without the proper people and action plans to make them a reality. Idealist exists to help build a world where all people can lead free and dignified lives by making sure that no opportunity for action or collaboration is missed or wasted. Algolia helps the organization achieve this by enabling a fast and relevant content discovery experience for all users, ensuring they find and ultimately engage with opportunities for action.

“Algolia search speeds are incredibly fast and the results are highly relevant to our users, two elements that have really made the difference for us at Idealist.org.” Patrick Metzger, Associate Director of Product, Idealist