Advertising a vacancy: choosing and using hiring channels
Advertising a vacancy: choosing and using hiring channels
How to get an open role in front of the right people, in what order, and what to spend. Advertising a nonprofit vacancy usually costs between €0 and €200 if you sequence it right.
The context
You have an open role, a small budget, and dozens of potential channels to promote it. Paid boards run from €100 to €700 per post. Your own site, sector newsletters, social media and practitioner communities cost nothing. The default move (buy the biggest job board you can afford!) wastes money on the step with the worst result, so here's the alternative.
The pattern
Work in this order. The first three steps are free and carry most of the result.
1. Publish on your own website first
A vacancy page on your own website is what everything else points at:
Some boards list for free only if the ad already exists on your site, and charge to build the page for you.
Aggregators sync roles from the careers pages of organizations they have vetted.
Every paid placement needs a destination. If that destination is just a shared (Google) document, you bought reach and dropped it.
Add UTM parameters to the link you give each channel, so applicants arrive tagged with where they came from: https://example.org/vacancies/operations-lead?utm_source=impact-job-board&utm_medium=job-board.
Keep utm_source the channel's name and utm_medium one of a short fixed set (job-board, newsletter, social, community), and after one hire you can see which channels produced applicants instead of guessing at renewal time.
2. Write the vacancy text
Coded wording narrows your applicant pool before any channel decision matters. In Dutch, masculine-coded phrasing such as "resultaatgericht" or "gedreven netwerker" measurably reduces who applies. An hour rewriting the text does more for reach than any paid diversity board.
Publish a salary range. Some boards require one, and it is the clearest signal of whether an organization practices what it says.
Give applications a structured destination (i.e. an online form), not a shared inbox for a "motivation letter and resume".
3. Write the organization profile as marketing copy
Larger boards create a permanent, indexed organization page when you post. It stays up after the role closes and is browsable without a live vacancy. Most organizations paste in a mission statement.
Write it for a peer at another organization, because that is who lands there: what you do, who you already work with, what you are hiring for. Reuse the same text on every channel.
4. Classify channels before researching them
Sort each candidate channel into one of four buckets before reading anything in detail:
Free, submit a form
Free, needs an organization account
Paid
Not postable
The last bucket is usually about half of any shared list of "job boards":
Candidate directories — you request access, then search and contact people yourself. See step 7.
Closed network boards — limited to a fund's portfolio or an association's members.
Aggregators — they crawl careers pages, so the lever is step 1.
Newsletters — one editor decides. Email them.
Knowledge networks — they run programmes and publish research.
5. Check memberships and discounts before paying
Sector association membership (such as Goede Doelen Nederland) often includes free posting where non-members pay around €100 for a job posting. Find out which you are before budgeting.
6. Match the audience, not the board's size
Three things decide whether a channel works for a specific role:
Geography. An audience concentrated in another continent is close to worthless for a Dutch role, at any price. This is where nonprofit recruitment budgets usually leak.
Seniority. Boards publish audience statistics. Check them against the role you are filling.
Language. An English-language role and a Dutch-language one belong on different channels.
Curated boards review submissions against their own criteria and publish a fraction of what they receive. They also underrepresent organizations they have not heard of and roles outside the US and UK. Submit anyway when it is free, and plan as though it will not land.
7. For senior roles, source rather than advertise
Above a certain seniority the people you want are not reading job boards. Two routes:
Candidate directories. Curated talent pools where organizations request access through a short form, then search and approach people directly. Often free, and stronger than any posting for director-level roles.
A recruiter , when you need someone actively working the market. See the Recruiter role for who we work with.
The channels, for a Dutch nonprofit
Step 4 done for you, for the market we work in. Filter on Use: start with everything marked Start here, then add the If it fits rows that match the role. Not a board rows have been checked already, so nobody researches them twice. Prices and routes change, so re-check on the channel's own site before you budget. Checked September 2026.
: a short form, no account needed. Curated, so they publish a fraction and under-represent organizations they have not heard of. If listed, you keep an organization page.
Free for a non-US organization posting a non-US role; a US role is paid, from around $105 for nonprofits (current rates). Needs an organization account, listings run 30 days, and the profile stays up between vacancies.
Community and job board for bicultural and African-diaspora professionals, Europe-wide. Mail jobs@myomek.com with title, location, salary and job description. A partnership we have good experience with, ask us for an introduction.
Register, then post. Tokens run €330 excl. BTW for 30 days, €390 with the vacancy newsletter (20,000 readers) and €500 with socials as well. Board reach around 165,000. OneWorld partners post free.
A basic listing is free for degree-level EU affairs roles that already sit on your own careers page. They always charge for admin, IT, accounting and agency postings. Around 80,000 monthly users and a 95,000-subscriber newsletter; paid formats buy front-page and newsletter placement.
through their form. Categories for policy and advocacy, programmes and events, finance and administration. Price not confirmed, so check before committing. Mind the domain: jobsin.brussels, not jobsinbrussels.com.
Superlobby
If it fits
EU affairs
EU
Paid
Brussels policy newsletter, skewing junior and internships. No form, contact the owners directly.
ImpactSource
If it fits
Impact & EA
Global
Paid
Social impact, climate, philanthropy and global health, on impactsource.ai. Post a job for $195. A featured upgrade adds top-of-board placement, their curated LinkedIn list and the NickatNoon newsletter. Free listings only happen where they sync your careers page themselves.
EA operations community
If it fits
Operations
Global
Free
A closed peer community for operations, finance and HR people at impact organizations, on personal membership. Not a jobseeker audience. Ask us to share it.
£250 + VAT for 30 days, no free tier, cheaper in bundles. UK audience, so UK-based or global-remote roles only. Registered charities, CICs and B-Corps get 20% off; ask hello@diversifying.io before paying list price.
UK roles only, from £250 + VAT, priced by organization size, with 20% off for nonprofits, startups and B-Corps. You must meet two of their criteria, such as under 50 staff, outside London or remote.
. Featured buys 30 days at the top plus two newsletters to 40,000+ readers. The audience is overwhelmingly US, so most of the value leaks for a European role.
Freelancing for Good
If it fits
Impact & EA
Global
Free
A job board plus a 400-member Slack community and a vetted freelancer directory. Suits contract work rather than staff roles. Free and reviewed in 1 to 2 days.
Refugee Talent Hub
If it fits
Diversity
NL
Paid
A paid employer partnership plus a separate platform, RefugeeWork, rather than a single posting. Candidate fit skews entry and mid-level.
LinkedIn, paid job post
If it fits
General
Global
Paid
Last resort, roughly a week after the free channels. One free active job at a time with reach that throttles after a few days, then billing per application. Only for hard-to-fill or niche profiles.
The SER Charter Diversiteit network, signed by 500+ employers. A commitment you sign, not a place to post. Their Divers werven en selecteren guide is useful while drafting.
WOMEN Inc
Not a board
Diversity
NL
Nothing to post
An advocacy organization. Use their guidance on inclusive vacancy wording while you draft the text.
Unverified. The site blocks inspection and does not surface in search, so open it manually before judging it.
Norrsken
Not a board
General
EU
Nothing to post
Closed board, limited to their own portfolio network. No public route in.
ClimateTechList
Not a board
General
Global
Nothing to post
An aggregator that scrapes careers pages. Nothing to submit, so step 1 is the lever.
UN Jobs, J-PAL, High Impact Medicine
Not a board
General
Global
Nothing to post
Aggregators or single-organization career pages. There is nothing to post to.
Altruisme Efficace France
Not a board
Impact & EA
EU
Nothing to post
A French-language community with no public submission route.
Tech Jobs for Good
Not a board
General
US
Nothing to post
US only, tech roles only.
Outside the Netherlands the free and global rows still hold, the Dutch ones do not: every country needs its own sector association and national board. Ask us and we will research the ones you need.
What to buy
Realistic bands for a senior role at a Dutch nonprofit, checked August 2026:
Sector association board — €0 as a member, around €100 otherwise
National English-language board — from around €100 , more for newsletter placement
Regional and specialist paid boards — €250 to €700 per post
Running the full sequence normally lands at €0 to €200. Spending above that should follow from a named audience you want to reach, not from a default.
Use an applicant tracking system once you hire more than a few times a year, or handle more than roughly 20 applicants per role. Applications are personal data: you need a defined retention period, a way to delete on request, and a record of who saw what. A shared inbox gives you none of that, and CVs end up copied into personal mailboxes. It also gives applicants what a mailbox cannot — a confirmation, a visible status, and a reply — which is most of what people remember about a rejection. See the Recruitment / Applicant Tracking role and: Hiring tools: which ATS fits a small nonprofit? .
What is mandatory regardless
Applicant data falls under the GDPR. Set a retention period, state it in the vacancy, and delete on schedule. Four weeks after the process closes is the common Dutch default; up to a year requires the applicant's consent.
Name a lawful basis and a controller for the applicant data before you collect any, including for CVs that arrive by email.
Publish a closing date and reply to everyone who applied.
Your variation
Record for your own organization:
The channels you post to by default, and the UTM naming convention you use for them
Whether your sector association membership covers free posting
Your applicant tracking system, or the point at which you will adopt one
Your applicant data retention period and who deletes on schedule