You may be aware that the newest TeamKinetic update was due to go live at the beginning of the month. However, we ran into some issues and we have taken the difficult decision to delay the release until next Sunday (15th). We know this is a little bit disappointing but it was important to us that this new version met your high expectations and we were not confident we could achieve that this weekend.
Although our testing was complete and everything appeared to be in order, we discovered some instability in the changes we had made. Although infrequent, it could lead to issues with accounts being logged out and other frustrating random issues.
The team have been working non-stop on getting this update ready for launch and share your disappointment in it not being released, but we would much rather take longer to put out an update that is completely stable and satisfactory than rush one out that has issues and could cause our users any inconvenience.
We would like to thank everyone for their continued patience. We hope you love TeamKinetic version 2.0 once you get chance to use it. We’d love to hear your thoughts.
We also aim to have the new mobile app released around late September/October.
In the meantime, you can read about some of the key new features in the update here. We also held some masterclasses going through some key v2 features. You can watch all of those here.
Volunteering at its core is an entirely selfless activity completed by people with no expectation of acknowledgement. Despite this, we believe volunteers deserve to be rewarded for their hard work. But how do you do this without them logging hours?Â
Why is logging hours so important?
In short, data. This data is key to your organisation to:
Measure success. Logged hours can represent the amount of work your volunteers are doing for their community or particular cause.
Track your audience. Knowing which volunteers are continually volunteering and which ones aren’t could be incredibly insightful. Is there a particular demographic volunteering more than others? Is there a demographic that is hard to retain? This data could uncover aspects that need to change, leading onto our next point…
Make improvements. No volunteering programmes are perfect, but the best ones regularly review and make changes to improve. If there’s a particular demographic that isn’t returning, why?
So how do I persuade volunteers to log their hours?
Show them how easy it is. Showing volunteers how quickly they can log hours might help them
Incentivise! Offering rewards can be a great way to get volunteers logging their hours. However, the best way to do this is to offer low-value rewards as often as possible.Â
Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Imagine this: you offer one big prize (e.g. a hoodie), after a volunteer has logged 100 hours. They log hours as a way of reaching that prize, but once they reach those 100 hours they lose motivation to log future hours – or worse, return at all. (Extrinsic motivation) However, if you offer small rewards such as thank you messages they will be consistently motivated by the positive way the act makes them feel. (Intrinsic motivation)
Intrinsic motivation is all about making your volunteers continually feel good about the work they’re doing and the difference they’re making, rather than working towards one particular reward.
So how do you keep up this motivation? Giving them nice feedback is a great place to start! This will show how much you value them and will mean more to them than you may think.
Utilising TeamKinetic to Incentivise Volunteers
Leaving Feedback
TeamKinetic allows you to leave feedback when logging a volunteer’s hours. If you forget or don’t have time to personally thank your volunteer at the end of their session, this section gives you the chance to do so. It also lets the volunteer log their own hours and leave feedback about the opportunity they joined.
Ask anyone who has volunteered – receiving feedback is a great feeling and can push volunteers to return and continue volunteering for you.
Achievement Badges
This incentive is a great way to push your volunteers to log more hours. Once a volunteer logs their hours, they will add together to create their total volunteer hours. A small way to help increase volunteers’ hours is to have achievement badges when they reach certain hour milestones.
TeamKinetic has achievement badges automatically built into the system. The achievement badge pictures and names can be customised. These badges are a great way to incentivise volunteers and get them to keep on volunteering so they can reach the next milestone.
Custom Badges
Have you ever thought about starting a ‘volunteer of the month’ award? To give your volunteers an extra incentive to volunteer more or make them feel appreciated? Yes? Keep reading, you may like what you see…
TeamKinetic allows you to create custom award badges for your volunteers. These could be ‘volunteer of the month’ or ‘volunteer of the year’. They can be absolutely anything you want and look however you want, with the fully customisable option! Once you have assigned the award to a volunteer, they will receive an email with the award in it to congratulate them. Again, this recognises the efforts your volunteers put in, helping you to retain more volunteers and hopefully gain more.
Logging hours with TeamKinetic
Logging hours with TeamKinetic is easy – as it should be on any volunteer management system. See below for the full process laid out in less than 25 seconds!
Think it’s time to invest in volunteer management software?
You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website. This will let you check out all our features for 30 days. If you like what you see, contact us to book a demo and see how we can help your organisation manage your volunteers!
You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:
We’d like to thank everyone who joined the steering group session- it’s been really helpful to us to hear your comments and feedback on the areas we discussed.
The group was able to talk through the main areas of our system answering polls we’d set up to get a basic feel of how you, as users, felt using our system and its features. We also got to listen to any ideas you had, which we could explore deeper into for the future. This process has been really insightful for us, and something we aim to complete multiple times a year: we’re here to help, so any and all feedback is welcome.
Based on some of the feedback, we’re starting the process of creating helpful ‘how to’ videos/blog posts on our features and how you can use them effectively, so keep an eye out for those, coming soon!
We’ll be recapping the poll questions and the responses from the Steering Group held on 22/06/2021 below. If you find that you’d like to make any comments regarding changes or new features to add- feel free to open up a support ticket on the system.
To start the session off we delved into the system regarding ‘Setup.’ We wanted to know if our system suited your needs for configuration and whether the training provided was everything you needed to be!
Poll 1: How did you find configuring your system to suit your needs? We wanted to understand if there were any areas in particular that you struggled with, or that the settings were clear enough for you. During the session, we found that sometimes our system updates or some things change slightly and you aren’t aware. This is something we should be letting you all know about, no matter how small it might be. We’ll be making sure everyone receives updates so you never miss a change.
Poll 2: How did you find the training? The second question focused on the training we provide, and whether or not you felt that you could move forward using the system once training was completed. A number of those on the call gave feedback about having to give extra training themselves to their providers; we pride ourselves on giving you the best quality training, so incorporating more training aimed at providers is something we’ll be having discussions about.
After setup we looked at ‘General.’ This was about the general use of the system and the type of language we use there.
Poll 3: How did you find the user interface? This poll focused on the running of the system, do you find that everything is where you thought it should be? We received feedback that some found the process hard and would like some more guidance, we have videos that can help you out with our system on our YouTube channel which you can have a look at over here. We are in the early stages of getting more of these videos out to all to explain some of the features that you may not know about so watch this space!
Poll 4: Do you understand the language used on the system? Focusing on the way aspects of the system might be labelled, do you think that we’re being clear enough, or is there anything do you think we could change to be clearer? After discussions we found that the term ‘Flexible’ was confusing for some. We were given some suggestions such as ‘Long-Term’ or ‘On-going’ opportunities which we’ve taken onboard to talk about whether a change like this is needed.
Poll 5: How did you find setting up your onboarding process? This single poll regarded whether or not you were able to understand how to use the setup settings to replicate your requirements for your onboarding process for your volunteers. Some have expressed that they have had recruitment processes with providers outside of us here at Team Kinetic: this again may link to our training sessions we currently hold, and focusing in on a more clearer way to show what providers can do is something we’re now looking to include.
Next up we spoke about communications within the system.
Poll 6: How do you find communication with volunteers and providers? We wanted to grasp how you felt using the emailing system, and how easy and effectively you could email recipients. On the session, more customisation was an idea floated through- which makes sense, allowing you access to a wider range of fonts/colours/branding. It’s something that we’ll be looking into and seeing what the best routes are for getting these types of features into the system.
Poll 7: Do you use notifications? It is interesting for us to know whether you use the notifications and the news features. We have had talks about combining together news and notifications so this Steering Group was useful to know if that was something you might want. The terms news and notifications are similar but they do have differences, we found that some might not know these differences. In response, we’re getting a blog post written to show the differences and let you know how to use these features efficiently and effectively.
Polls 8 & 9 were on the subject of ‘Users.’ We wanted to know:
Poll 8: Should we allow admins to alter privilege of what a provider can do? This could mean that you can customise the elements that providers can and can’t do on the system. There was a suggestion of a possible phasing in of providers, so that they may be restricted at the beginning and grow into the system- this is something we’ll definitely explore in the future and other customisation options on privileging providers.
Poll 9: Should we differentiate internal and external providers? Internal providers are those who work for you, so we would be differentiating between providers that work for you and providers who have come from other organisations. While on the discussion of providers, there was a suggestion of letting providers know when their opportunities are about to end, so that they can promote them if there are still available spaces for volunteers. It will be something we’ll spend time looking into if there is an effective way to do this!
We followed this up with a question surrounding searching.
Poll 10: Is there any group of volunteers which you find it hard to identify? We wanted to understand whether or not our filters work, are they in the right place for you? and whether or not we were missing any filters that you feel are important. There were some mixed reactions to moving all of the filters into one list, with some in favour and others not. Despite the mix we will still have a look around, just to see if the system will be cleaner to navigate if filters are all on one list.
We then moved onto ‘Logging Hours and Feedback.’
Poll 11: How do you find logging hours and feedback? We found that clients were struggling at times to get volunteers to log their hours; we suggest giving them an incentive to get them logging hours, this could be through our achievement badges or adding your own customisable ones! We currently have a blog post being written that goes into more detail about how you can get your volunteers logging hours.
Poll 12: Should users be able to update or add new feedback on an opportunity? It was a nice discussion to have on whether this would be a beneficial feature, it’s something we have thought of before, so it was interesting to see how you would feel about it. We did get some suggestions for bulk feedback to become a feature. This sounds like something that would be beneficial to those who have a lot of volunteers that need hours and feedback logging, so we’ll have a talk with our developers to see if this is a feature we can add in future updates!
From logging hours to Criminal Record Checks (CRC), we wanted to gather some more feedback when it comes to our system and CRCs.
Poll 13: Would it be useful to allow admins to submit a DBS/PVG directly through the system? When we were discussing this on the group we concluded that this would be a way to save time and duplication for all parties, we’ll be looking more into this over the next few updates.
Poll 14: Should we allow providers to add criminal checks to volunteers? How would this work? For this poll we wanted to understand whether or not allowing providers to do this was a feature that was wanted and if we would have to look at implementing something in order for that to work smoothly. As you can see by the poll the answers were a little mixed! If this is something that you think might be beneficial- let us know.
Carrying on with features, Polls 15&16 spoke about Creating/Managing Opportunities.
Poll 15: How do you find creating opportunities? We want to make it as clear and simple as possible for you to create an opportunity for your volunteers, so this question was to see if there was anything we could possibly add to aid that experience. Again the concept of ‘Flexible’ opportunities came up. To make sure that everyone can understand flexible and session based opportunities, and the differences between them, we’ll write up a blog post or explain on one of our YouTube videos so you can better understand them.
Poll 16 broke this down a little further by asking: How do you find managing opportunities using the controls? From the polls you can see that those on the session found that managing opportunities easy. If you do find that there is anything that could be made clearer, then you can send us a support ticket on our system or get in touch through our email!
We also wanted some feedback on Events and setting those up.
Poll 17 asked: How do you find setting up an Event? We found that when we spoke in a little more detail, some of you needed reminding on exactly how to do this, in response, we’re currently in the process of setting up some videos and blog posts on how to use our features effectively.
Poll 18 & 19 focused on CSVs (Comma-Separated Values.)
Poll 18: Does the use of CSV confuse anyone? We found during the session some weren’t aware of what CSV is or stands for, simply, CSVs are where you can download a spreadsheet text file of information from our system.
Poll 19 simply asks: Is there anything which you can’t currently download which you would like to? If you believe there’s something, please raise it on a support ticket and we’ll get onto exploring that for you.
Poll 20 focused on our courses feature. Currently the course feature is just to promote any courses you may want to introduce your volunteers to.
Poll 20: How do you find promoting courses? In the session an idea was to allow them to book onto those courses through the system and whether this was possible: It’ll be something we’ll have a look into for future updates.
Poll 21 homed in on the help here at TeamKinetic and how do you find accessing help on TeamKinetic? If you ever find yourself stuck somewhere on our system there are a number of ways to get help, you can open up a support ticket, click the help option along the top in the right corner.
Our polls then moved onto the super admin settings.
Poll 22: Do you understand the wording used in the super admin settings? The group found that it does take some time to remember where everything is, and under what heading, but it does become routine once they’ve been using the system frequently. We are on hand to support you, so if you do find you need some helping finding out where certain features are, and how to use them, have a look on our YouTube and blog pages, we should have the answers over there.
Poll 23 expanded on this, asking: Do you find the way options are grouped together to be logical? This is essentially asking if you think everything is where it’s supposed to be. We found by the poll that most people thought our system was logical, which is good! We’d like to think everyone can move around the system easily and freely.
Our final 2 polls were questions on referencing and references.
Poll 24: How do you find adding referencing? With this poll, we did get some feedback expressing the need for a preview option. This is something we will be having a look at and exploring as an option for the system. This would mean you would be able to see the referencing form beforehand to check everything is how you want it.
The final poll of the session centred around providers setting up their own reference forms. Poll 25: Should providers be able to set up reference forms for themselves? Again this poll had a range of answers, so it may be something that we try and get some more wider opinions and information on before we take a look at getting this into the system.
The Steering Group has helped us understand more about how you use our system and where we can start to build a clearer path towards the future.Â
We once again want to thank everyone who attended and took part in the session. We’ve received some really good feedback and ideas about our system and its features which we can explore further.
If you read my goodbye blog last year, you’ll have to pretend you didn’t. I just can’t stay away!
I’m back again and excited to get (re)started – this time as TeamKinetic’s Marketing Manager. It’s a role that I’m excited to get stuck into and continue to grow in.
My Journey
Back in 2017 I started university with no idea where it would take me. My biggest concerns were making friends, exploring Manchester (aka finding the best cheapest pubs), playing football, and whether I’d enjoy my course or not.
In my second year it was time to start looking for a work placement – as someone who lacked confidence, this was a daunting task! One day the Social Media and Marketing intern role at TeamKinetic popped up and the rest is history.
My placement year was full of personal and professional development. It gave me good quality real-world experience of marketing and helped me build confidence amongst other important life skills.
I went into my final year of university ready to finish those assignments and get back into the world of work. What I didn’t expect was to be offered a full-time position at TeamKinetic. But what I was certain of was that I had to grab the opportunity with both hands.
From passing my responsibilities over to Sammy and Chloe in 2020 to taking over from them in 2021 – the circle of Marketing!
So who am I?
In short:
Hi, I’m Alex, I’m 22 and I’m from Sheffield!
But if you want something deeper I could tell you that Taylor Swift has been my Spotify top artist for three years in a row. Or that I’ve been a Sheffield United season ticket holder for as long as I can remember. But if that isn’t enough, you can read my original introductory blog here.
All you really need to know is that I’m incredibly happy to work for TeamKinetic, a team full of good people doing great work. It’s time to put all the things I learned at university into practice and help this company grow!
New Faces and Farewells
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Chloe and Sammy for all their hard work over the past year. They’ve done some great stuff and have been a real asset to the team.
However, now it’s time to welcome the newest member of the TeamKinetic family – Katie. She’ll be completing her placement year with us and I hope she gets as much out of it as I did. You join us in welcoming her by reading her introductory blog here.
You Can Join The Family Too
If your organisation is in need of a quick, easy, and reliable way to manage your volunteers look no further! No matter how big or small, we can help you. We’ll work around your budget to get you building better volunteer communities with our volunteer management software.Â
Best of all, you can go to our website to set up your very own demo site free of cost to see how our system can work for you!
My marketing journey started in a life-sized cardboard smart car. 11 year old me presented a hover board advert at school, and between the transport creations and the chariots of fire theme tune, I think I sold the hoverboard 6000 rather well. I fell in love with marketing before I even knew what it was.Â
Fast forward 6 years and I’m completing a creative media degree at my local college when the history of adverts is assigned to me. A 12,000 word document later, I decided that my passion lay in some form of marketing – photography and film now were hobbies. As a pledged university student studying Public Relations and Marketing, I’ve never felt more determined to set myself going on a career path, and succeed.Â
A Helping Hand:
When I think back to when I was younger, I realise just how much volunteering my family took part in. During school summer fairs, my mum manned the sweets stall and my dad fired up the BBQ, all because they wanted to help. It’s members of my family who taught me the importance of volunteering and started me on my journey.Â
For the past couple of years I have been part of ‘Save The Streets’, a university charity focused on helping end homelessness in Manchester. Through volunteering, fundraising and spreading awareness we try and do our bit where we can: last Christmas we raised £1,235 for A Bed Every Night. I’m honoured to have been their Social Media Secretary over the past 12 months and I’m looking forward to working with them closely in the future.Â
In The Mean Time:Â
As mentioned above, what I studied in college, I now like to do in my free time. I’m passionate in capturing moments from angles others might not see – from holidays to birthdays I’ve taken over the mantle as resident cameraman from my Grandad. When I’m not capturing my Nan’s famous birthday cakes, I am an avid true crime fan – having watched nearly every documentary and docuseries on Netflix. I’m not quite sure what intrigues me about it, but somehow every time a new one pops onto the platform I’m ready and waiting to click play.Â
One Final Note:Â
Looking at the next 12 months, I’m excited to put what theory I’ve learnt over the past 2 years into practice and see how my skills develop. My Dad always told me that if you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. I try to live by my Dad’s nuggets of wisdom, so I’m grateful that TeamKinetic have given me a chance to put my knowledge and skills together in a motivated, practical environment for the next year.Â
Katie BrindleÂ
katie@teamkinetic.co.uk
For more information on volunteer management software visit our website or call 01619145747
Urgh spam. No, not the canned meat. The inconvenient annoyance that seems to find its way to my email every day! It’s a human thing to receive spam/junk but why do we get it and how can we spot spam? These are the questions that come to mind when I’m staring at an email asking me to click a link to pay for something I swear I never bought! Well, here at TeamKinetic we are going to explain how we protect you against spam, why we get spam and how to spot it…
Protecting against spam
At TeamKinetic, we don’t want our customers being bombarded with spam emails. So, to help with this we first used Google Captcha, a method which tries to distinguish between robots and humans. But, the robots got smarter! There were signs that the system was getting easily defeated by the bots… Don’t worry it isn’t an i, Robot situation!
Now, we have found a better way to detect and remove as much spam as possible, we use a multifaceted approach which includes:
A non human visible honeypot which forms elements that bots love to fill in.
Testing to see if JavaScript had been run.
Timing how long it takes to complete and submit a form (robots are much faster than humans)!
Why do we get spam?
Its practically impossible to stop all spam. If you are too strict you lose valid emails but if you are not strict enough, too much spam will get through the cracks. It is difficult to find the perfect balance but we feel we have have hit the nail on the head. I can tell you that we get 98% less spam using the combination methods above than when the contact us form is left without protections. Sounds great, but what about that 2% that gets through, how can you spot those types of emails? Keep reading to find out…
How to spot spam emails
Most of the phishing and spam messages we get contain dire messages about your domain name and or the search engine optimisation (SEO) for your website. Your domain, if its is managed by us, is automatically renewed, there is no danger of it being de-registered and neither do you need to pay to keep it registered. The same goes for SSL certificates. Others talk about errors on the website and offer to fix them if you download a program; DONT! As a general rule don’t follow any links in any unsolicited email or message. There are some useful tips for how to spot phishing messages on the IT governance website.
What we advise…
If you get any emails which seem suspicious or you seem to be receiving many at once, never click on a link or send personal information. Open a support ticket or head to our website to start a live chat and we will gladly look into this for you.Â
March 23rd 2020, Boris Johnson addressed the nation to declare the first Lockdown in the UK. At this moment many people, myself included, believed this lockdown would only last a few weeks and we would be back to normal before we know it. Little did we know, 10 months later we would be 3 weeks into our 3rd Lockdown.
The Evolution of Lockdowns
Let’s start from the beginning. Lockdown 1 begins on the 23rd March. People are told not to go to work and others are told to start shielding. Here begins the volunteering boom! The vulnerable are having to shield to protect themselves from the virus but are unable to go shopping, collect prescriptions or get any other essentials. This is where the efforts of locals began to show, people took charge creating mutual aid groups to protect and help the shielding. Irene Cree from Glasgow Life agreed that ”Mutual aid groups reacted really quickly, in many respects much quicker than the public sector did.” They reacted so quick in fact that according to the report Communities Vs Coronavirus: The Rise of Mutual Aid, in July it was recorded 4,000 of these groups were formed since the beginning of the pandemic, with as many as three million participants.
The solidarity of our country showed the support we had for one another, but when another lockdown hit us in the midst of winter, there were the initial signs of burnout to be seen!
Lockdown 2 was hard, a month of rain and cold in the lead up to the busiest time of the year. This lockdown I know for myself was a struggle and like many, the urge to volunteer was decreasing. Mutual aid groups were still doing their thing, but with limited support from stake holders like local authorities, their efforts were struggling. It cetrianly felt harder to protect those they had up to this point.
Technology has played a signifcant role and for some mutual said groups has been a main ingredient to their success in the pandemic, however many mutual aid groups were trapped in a non-digital hell hole trying to manage all of their volunteers and tasks from spreadsheets and whats app.
Fast forward to today and we are 3 weeks into lockdown 3. Fatigue is very real and obvious and we can only image how hard it must be for mutual aid groups this time round.
Technology still offers real opportunity for many mutual aid groups. Many have survived through the strength of will and chacter of their main participants but to keep on going they will need to use technology to ensure the organisational resliance and data security are in place to enable them to carry on. They also need lots of support from their local stakeholders in health, local government and the community if they are to keep this community solidarity going.
Can you Help Mutual Aid Groups?
So, how can you help? Back in August 2020 we spoke with Nivvi Morales, a member of COVID-19 Kenilworth Support, about their time using TeamKinetic to manage their volunteers. Their need for “a volunteer management system where we could communicate efficiently, assign tasks, track tasks, and keep our data safe.” was met, as we were able to provide the support and security they required.
“Mutual aid groups are based on volunteers acting on their own free will. Local authorities must encourage and promote mutual aid groups for what they are – the social capital of a neighbourhood. A strategy that promotes mutual aid should be light touch, work with existing community partners, and focus on facilitating rather than directing activity. Mutual aid groups should always retain the ability to decide what they do and how they work.”
Being able to support these groups is crucial and a way to do this is through technical guidance. Helping them find a secure and manageable system will keep them in control of their volunteers and opportunityies and tasks whilst ensuring individuals feel safe, valued and enaged.
TeamKinetic
Improves communication, creates easy reports automatically, keeps sensitive data secure, options for DBS checks and provides more opportunities to recognise volunteers’ efforts. Sound like the ideal features these groups need? Well, we have you covered. TeamKinetic allows for all of these and can provide impeccable support as seen with COVID-19 Kenilworth support “the ability to raise a ticket if they had an issue with the system, which would then be supported straight away.”
Our community task function was specifically designed with mutual aid groups in mind. These allow for volunteers to pick up tasks such as, picking up shopping, collecting prescriptions and delivering these to the shielding person. Claire Redford-Kerr from St Helens and Halton VCA has spoke about how they have used the the community tasks dashboard and how “our volunteers [can] very quickly pick up tasks on there [and] they can chat to one another on there. So being able to text them or email them as a group or a specific cohort of volunteers, it’s really important for us and helps us to manage the way, when and who gets involved.”
If you would like more information about our system please visit our website or call on 0161 914 5757. You can also set up a 30 day free trial to test out all of our features!
Lockdown 3.0 is here in the UK and we are bringing to you the guidelines given by each government in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on how to volunteer safely. Below are each government and links to guidance on how to volunteer during this lockdown… Keep reading and stay safe!
England
A ‘reasonable excuse’ for leaving your home includes volunteering – you can also leave home to provide voluntary or charitable services, where it cannot be done from home. For further guidance, see below:
Examples of reasonable excuses to go out include to provide voluntary or charitable services, but only where that cannot be done from your home. For further guidance, see below:
The new rules allow volunteers to go out to provide care or help to a vulnerable person, including emergency help. This includes getting food and medicines for them. For further guidance, see below:
Where possible, you should volunteer from home. If you cannot do so, you can volunteer outside your home, if you are able to meet the regulations and guidelines applicable at that time. For further guidance, see below:Â
Another day, another lockdown. Lockdown 3.0 is upon us and we know the volunteering world are just waiting to read about the new guidelines from the government. We have found some useful information in regards to volunteering during this lockdown. Each is relevant per country…
As this is a fast changing situation, please make sure you are checking for latest guidance from your national government and/ or infrastructure body.
England
A ‘reasonable excuse’ for leaving your home includes volunteering – you can also leave home to provide voluntary or charitable services, where it cannot be done from home. For further guidance, see below:
Examples of reasonable excuses to go out include to provide voluntary or charitable services, but only where that cannot be done from your home. For further guidance, see below:
Tthe new rules allow volunteers to go out to provide care or help to a vulnerable person, including emergency help. This includes getting food and medicines for them. For further guidance, see below:
Where possible, you should volunteer from home. If you cannot do so, you can volunteer outside your home, if you are able to meet the regulations and guidelines applicable at that time. For further guidance, see below:
Retaining and recruiting volunteers can be a difficult task. With volunteering in high demand incentivising your volunteers may be the way forward to ensure retainment. Now, you may ask… “Incentivising volunteers! How can I do that?” Keep reading, TeamKinetic may just have the answer you are looking for…
1. Logging Hours/Leaving Feedback
Your volunteers give up their own time to help your organisation. So giving them some feedback even after they have volunteered will show how much you value them and will mean more to them than you may think!
TeamKinetic allows you to leave feedback when logging a volunteer’s hours. If you forget or don’t have time to personally thank your volunteer at the end of their session, this section gives you the chance to do so. It also let’s the volunteer log their own hours and leave feedback about the opportunity they joined. As someone who has volunteered in the past, receiving feedback from anyone at the organisation is such a great feeling and has pushed me to come and volunteer again. This could be your volunteers.
2. Achievement Badges
This incentive is a great way to push your volunteers to log more hours. Once a volunteer logs their hours, they will add together to create their total volunteer hours. A small way to help increase volunteer hours is to have achievement badges when they reach certain hour milestones.
TeamKinetic has achievement badges automatically on their system. So, for example, if volunteers were to reach 10 hours combined they would get the badge ‘Super Member’, at 50 hours they could get the badge ‘Dedicated’ and so on.
The achievement badge’s pictures and names can be customised by yourself. These badges are a great way to incentivise volunteers and get them to keep on volunteering so they can reach the next milestone.
3. Hour Trades
Wouldn’t it be great for volunteers to trade all of their logged hours for real life items!
Well, TeamKinetic has just the thing. Hour Trades. Your volunteers can use their logged hours to trade them in for things such as vouchers, T-shirts, hats, entry to museum/art galleries, sporting activities… Whatever items you feel fit. This type of reward recognises a volunteers contributions and can push them to want to volunteer more.
4. Custom Award Badges
Have you ever thought about starting a ‘volunteer of the month’ award? To give your volunteers an extra incentive to volunteer more or make them feel appreciated? Yes? Keep reading, you may like what you see…
TeamKinetic allows you to create custom award badges for your volunteers. These could be ‘volunteer of the month’ or ‘volunteer of the year’. They can be absolutely anything you want and look however you want, with the fully customisable option! Once you have assigned the award to a volunteer, they will receive an email with the award in it to congratulate them. Again, this recognises the efforts your volunteers put in, helping you to retain more volunteers and hopefully gain more.
Start Incentivising Today
If these incentives have drawn you in and you want to find out more, you can watch the video below where we go through the system to show you each incentive.
Even more intrigued, head over to our website and start your FREE 30 day trial today to explore the whole of TeamKinetic! Be sure to also visit our social media pages to find out more information about TeamKinetic Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and YouTube.Â
You can also give us a call on 0161 9145757 and we would be happy to talk with you about our system.Â
As mentioned above, what I studied in college, I now like to do in my free time. I’m passionate in capturing moments from angles others might not see – from holidays to birthdays I’ve taken over the mantle as resident cameraman from my Grandad. When I’m not capturing my Nan’s famous birthday cakes, I am an avid true crime fan – having watched nearly every documentary and docuseries on Netflix. I’m not quite sure what intrigues me about it, but somehow every time a new one pops onto the platform I’m ready and waiting to click play. 
