Expensive, confusing and unnecessary. These are all words that can come to mind when thinking about volunteer management software. However, what people don’t think about is the benefits that volunteer management software can bring them. Here are 3 reasons as to why these systems will actually improve your work as opposed to hinder it.
1. It makes opportunities viral
By purchasing volunteer management software it enables you to make your opportunities viral for your volunteers. The reason this is so important is that your opportunities will get far more traffic the more people you share it with. By sharing it with multiple groups of people you are also able to give yourself a wider scope of volunteers. This is one of the major benefits to volunteer management software. The more people you can get to on your opportunities, the better reputation you will have as a provider.
2. Your time will become more productive
If you are using volunteer management software within your job of managing people you will not have to worry about anyone because of the software. This will now give you more time to think about and do the other jobs that are associated with your occupation rather than worrying about what people are where and if they’re doing the correct thing. Good volunteer management software will allow you to see what everyone has done and how long they have done it for, it will also allow both volunteers and providers to leave reviews on opportunities. This will help ensure that you do not send good volunteers to bad places but also that you don’t send bad volunteers to good places as they will no longer want volunteers from you.
3. Build relationships
By using volunteer management software you could essentially turn it into or even replace a CRM system. If you are able to keep track of what opportunities people are interested in then you will be able who is best suited to what opportunities, by doing this you’ll get more enthusiastic employees because they will be passionate about what they’re doing meaning they are more likely to put in maximum effort into the opportunity. This will give you as a volunteer manager/organisation a good reputation as your volunteers will become more desirable than others.
Overall volunteer management software will make your job more efficient and manageable as well as allowing you to gain a good reputation within the industry.
If you are looking to get volunteer management software then look no further than TeamKinetic. We offer volunteer management software that works. Give us a call on 0161 914 5757, or drop us an email at info@teamkinetic.co.uk.
One of the hardest things many people encounter when running events of a large scale is volunteer management. How many people do you need? What time will they have to be there? What will they all be doing? These are all questions that will stress the mind of both event organisers and volunteer managers. By having efficient volunteer management this can mean that other jobs that are involved in everyday work can be focused on rather than worrying about what people will be doing on the day. Whether you’re a volunteer manager, event organiser or even a volunteer there is most certainly something in this blog that could be of interest to you.
BE IMFORMATIVE
It is vitally important that as a volunteer manager you make it your utmost priority to ensure that all volunteers are fully aware of what they are doing and when they have to be doing it. This will minimize the number of times you’re asked questions such as the ones seen above, it will also mean that the volunteers will be more knowledgeable about what they’re doing meaning they will be more likely to do a better job which in turn will make your event better! From a personal perspective of the volunteer managers, they will now be able to focus on other key aspects of their jobs because they will have less to worry about, meaning less stress! Which, of course, is an aim of any job.
MOTIVATE THEM
In most cases, the volunteers are the first thing that people will see. If these people are smiling and happy this will give out positive energy across the day and will lead to those vital positive reviews that will make future events more successful which overall is what you want from in the volunteer management industry. In reference to volunteer motivation, there is a host of ways that this can be achieved, for example, although many volunteers are happy to give up their time for nothing a way to even further motivate them would be to offer some form of incentive e.g: free lunch. Furthermore, in the lead up to an event you could maybe send them messages like “can’t wait to see you” or “hope you’re looking forward to it”.
MAKE THEM FEEL IMPORTANT
Again, from a reputation standpoint, volunteers are the people that can massively help with word of mouth marketing (which is very cost effective because it’s totally free!) The way to make them feel important will heavily vary depending on what type of event you’re running, the amount of volunteers you have and also demographics of the volunteers. The reason for this being is that different people are interested in different things and respond to being spoken to in different ways. For example, if a team of volunteers were to be older people (50+) they are way more likely to feel important about having their name mentioned in a speech rather than a LinkedIn endorsement which would be more appealing to younger adults.
VOLUNTEER MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
In today’s world, almost everything can be made more simple with the help of technology. Volunteer management is no exception. A volunteer management system can help you work out who is volunteering for you as well as what they did at what time and how long for. By using volunteer management systems you will be better equipt to work out who you can match to particular opportunities with the use of the database as by using this you will be able to see what certain volunteers enjoy. By using volunteer management software this should alleviate stress for you as a volunteer manager because of how much more efficient it will make your work. In relation to where to get a volunteer management system look no further than TeamKinetic who provide a software that WORKS.
MASTER THE ART OF RECRUITMENT
There is one thing that is a simply must have for volunteer managers and this is volunteers! Often what volunteer managers have trouble with is how to get these volunteers to sign up for opportunities, however, this issue is not the volunteer’s willingness to participate but it is reaching out to volunteers and recruiting new ones. The potential way around this is possibly to look for volunteers in areas that the opportunity is centred around. For example, if an event is associated with a charity then you are most likely to find quality volunteers in places such as hospices as they will already have some sort of emotional attachment to the cause.
From this article, we hope that you have been informed about volunteer management and how to be successful in doing so. If you do wish to find an easier way of managing your volunteers by using software, please visit https://teamkinetic.co.uk/
Over the years there has been a host of the world’s greatest sporting events that have only been made possible by the volunteers who give up their time to make the events what they are. Volunteering at sports events is extra special because, more often than not, events that require volunteers are of a mass scale, this adds atmosphere to the whole volunteering experience.
The first event this blog will go into is the London 2012 Olympics which involved a massive cohort of events which in total required 70,000 volunteers. There was no shortage of thanks from the stars of the games for the volunteers that helped organise the events and you could tell that they were genuinely appreciative of them and the efforts they put in. Not only the Olympians but others also were massive fans of the way the nation had volunteered. For example, the Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron stated: “To see tens of thousands of people giving up their time to support London 2012 has been truly inspiring.” Others such as Tom Daley and Sir Chris Hoy have said the sheer number of people that came to the event made it what it was.
Furthermore, the 2018 World Cup in Russia was also heavily successful not only because of the stars of the show but the number of people who were willing to give up their time to make sure the tournament ran smoothly. There were an estimated 17,000 volunteers at the tournament with roles such as car park marshall and media assistant. “The volunteers’ faces are the first thing the fans see when they arrive,” said FIFA President Gianni Infantino, hailing the significance of the Volunteer Programme. “Their smiles are what visitors pick up on”. Statements like this from such powerful people really give significance to volunteering and makes everyone aware of just how important they are.
A further event that was made successful by the volunteers of the sport was the 2015 Rugby World Cup. The tournament had a total of around 6,000 volunteers with roles that varied from meeting and greeting to transport. The Rugby World Cup staff members collectively called their volunteers ‘The Pack’ this was presumably to make them feel as though they were more a part of the games and also important.
As shown by the prestigiousness of the events above volunteers and volunteering are both vital parts of what makes these occasions successful and enjoyable to watch. This is recognised by many which include the stars of the sports to the business minded individuals who run the events.
With the 2019 Rugby world cup fast approaching they’re looking for volunteers to help make that event great once again! If you’re interested please click the link below:
I thought it was time to codify our release protocol, it has changed a bit over the years but is now pretty consistent so I thought I would share it.
We have a target of two major releases a year and two more interim releases between those. We aim to have a major release point in Q1 and then a further major release point in Q3 with an interim release point in Q2 and Q4.
Interim Releases
Interim releases usually consist of non-urgent bug fixes, small interface upgrades and corrections and not new functionality. Major release points will potentially have new functionality and new UI/UX layouts, and perhaps entirely new sections and methodology.
Interim releases will have a cut-off date for new tasks approximately 4 weeks before release date. This gives us four weeks to complete all the outstanding tasks then enter the testing phase and the subsequent iterations. A week before release we will produce some communications if we think there are changes that will impact our users or alter their workflows. We will offer all our users a chance to try out the release via our beta application. We will attempt to incorporate any minor feedback before the release date, or push back the release date by a maximum of 14 days in order to address the feedback correctly. If any major issues or feedback is received we may decide to draw back from the release, work on the new changes and rollup the interim release into the next major release.
Interim Release Schedule
Weeks 0-8
During this period we will collect and collate all bug reports and new feature requests and decide which are to be included in the interim release.
Work will begin immediately on making the required changes and updates to the beta version.
Week 8
No more new bug fixes or changes are accepted for this release (emergency bugs are handled differently and fall outside the scope of planned upgrades).
Weeks 8-10
Work continues on completing tasks and testing
Week 10
Comms are sent and customers are invited to use the beta site and feedback with their experience and questions.
Week 11
Any feedback is incorporated and tested it possible
Week 12
Any tasks that have not been possible to complete are moved to the next release
Final comms are produced if necessary and the release is scheduled for the end of the 12th week.
Major Releases
Major releases are similar but the cut off date for new functionality is quicker as it will take longer to design, build and test fully. The cut off date is increased from 4 weeks before release to 8 weeks before release. This to allow for a longer period of testing by ourselves and the customers in order to enable us to capture and act on more feedback on potentially large changes.
Major Release Schedule
Weeks 0-8
During this period we will collect and collate all bug reports and new feature requests and decide which are to be included in this release. This will usually entail at least one major change.
Week 8
No more new bug fixes or changes are accepted for this release (emergency bugs are handled differently and fall outside the scope of planned upgrades).
Weeks 8-16
Work continues on completing tasks and testing
Week 16
Comms are sent and customers are invited to use the beta site and feedback with their experience and questions.
Weeks 16-20
Any feedback is incorporated and tested it possible
Weeks 20-24
Any tasks that have not been possible to complete are moved to the next release
Final comms and support material is completed and distributed and the release is scheduled for the end of the 24th week.
Normally we would expect to add a higher volume of small changes to the interim releases and less, but more impactful changes to the major release.
This schedule can not always be followed and it may be necessary to only have one major release in a year and on occassion there are only interim releases as no major new functionality has been added.
Releases are numbered using the regular convention;
1.2.3
^ ^ ^
| | |————— Minor revisions, spelling corrections etc
| |—————– Minor function changes or additions etc
|——————- Major function changes, UX/UI changes etc
An interim release would increment the last or second digit, a major release would increment the second or first digit. At the time of writing we were on TK v1.0.1 (after a major change from our old releases it was decided to reset the version numbers to 1.0.0). Our next release is scheduled for August and will be v1.1.0.
Admins can now register volunteers directly from their admin menu by going to VOLUNTEER MANAGEMENT > CREATE VOLUNTEER.
Create a volunteer without an email address
The admins ‘Create Volunteer’ registration page differs from the standard registration page as it allows you to create a volunteer without an email address or password. The volunteer cannot log in, so the administrator would be responsible for joining and logging hours for the volunteers account, but this negates the need to make up dummy email addresses and passwords.
If a volunteer does not have an email address, then this is shown on all pages where you can send an email to the volunteer, so you know which volunteers you will need to telephone, rather than email.
Special Requirements Status
Admins and providers can now see very easily if a volunteer requires additional support on an opportunity by the new Special Requirements icons. This helps notify the provider that they need to look at the volunteer’s details and make sure they can accommodate their individual needs.
Custom Volunteer Profile Fields
Are you fed up of using the admin notes section to record information on volunteers? Well, admins can now add custom fields to volunteers that DO NOT appear in the registration page.
This means that you can capture any information on a volunteer including:
If they have attended an internal course
Any additional information you capture during an induction
If they have completed a particular process
If they have attended an induction meeting
These custom fields are displayed in the volunteer’s profile, and you can stipulate who can see the information (volunteer, provider or just administrators)
Volunteer photos on Find Volunteers page
You can now see the volunteers photo next to their names by going to VOLUNTEER MANAGEMENT > FIND VOLUNTEERS and clicking the SEARCH button.
TeamLeaders
There is often a trusty volunteer who is on the ground and is in a much better position than the provider to help volunteers and to know which volunteers have turned up. These users can now be marked as “TeamLeaders” giving them the ability to mark whether other volunteers have attended the opportunity, which also logs the provider hours on the opportunity. You can specify the number of TeamLeaders you want per session which is independent of the number you set for volunteers.
TeamLeaders have no effect on Flexible opportunities as the checking in process is not relevant.
TeamLeaders are not currently supported on the iOS and Android apps, if you have TeamLeaders enabled users will not be prompted to try the app till TeamLeaeder functionality is included.
Following and Favourites
We have added the ability for volunteers to follow providers and opportunity categories that they like or are particularly interested in.
Once followed, whenever a new opportunity is added by their favourite providers or in their favourite categories they will receive an email with the details so they can jump in quick.
Weekly Email
The weekly email volunteers receive that summarises what’s going on in the following week has been radically overhauled. It is now far nicer to look at and includes details of any events that are going on that week, any new opportunities that have been added since the last email, and any opportunities that have sessions in the coming week. Additionally, any sessions the volunteer has joined for the upcoming week are listed.
This email goes out every Friday evening at 6:30 pm(GMT) to all those volunteers that have opted in to receiving emails and also to all those volunteers that have sessions in the coming week.
Below is an example from Queen Elizabeth Park, each email will carry the colours and branding of your site and contain your most relevant content.
You can switch the weekly email off from your super admin settings page at SETTINGS > APPLICATION OPTIONS > EVERYTHING ELSE
As always we love your feedback on these types of changes, so let us know what you think by emailing us here
Session Calendar
The session calendar now excludes sessions where the maximum number of volunteers has already been reached. In addition, any sessions in the past, that have not already been joined, do not have an active link.
This gives us a faster calendar and we prioritise sessions that are still available to join leading to a less frustrating experience for the user.
Volunteer Session Display
We’ve added a handy session view to the volunteer details page. Previously you could see the opportunities a volunteer was on and then drill down to the sessions, which was fine for most of our users.
Some users are however much more focused on sessions rather than opportunities and it was a drag having to find the opp and then the sessions. This new view available from the sessions tab on the volunteer info page lists all sessions from 6 months ago (we will be adding new searching and filtering in future releases). Any that are in the past can be quickly checked in and the hours logged. Its a great way to spot sessions where the provider has yet to log the volunteers hours.
Mobile App Prompt
We will now be giving users the chance to download our mobile companion apps from the login screen. If a volunteer accesses the login screen using an iOS or Android device they will be prompted to open the app store and download the app.
Please note that TeamLeaders are not yet supported in the mobile app.
Custom Provider Profile Questions
As for volunteers, you can now also add your own custom questions to a provider profile to store specific information you might require against each provider.
You can add these from the same place as registration custom questions in SETTINGS > CUSTOM QUESTIONS from the super admin menu.
These questions are private and not viewable or editable by the providers.
Email History
Providers can now view their email history from ACCOUNT DETAILS > EMAIL LOG. This includes emails they have sent and those they have received from the system, like opportunity joining notifications.
Admins can also see any providers email log via the providers profile page. The volunteer email log has been available since the last update.
Opportunities
More Opportunity Location Types
When creating opportunities you can now specify if the opportunity ‘covers an area’ (e.g. posting leaflets or visiting the elderly). This shows as a large circle on the map and also allows you to describe the area (e.g. North San Francisco)
You can also mark an opportunity location as ‘volunteer from home’.
Both types of new opportunity locations are available as filters, which brings us to…
New Search Filter
Volunteers can instantly filter their search results in a more user-friendly way with the addition of filters along the left side of the search results. Here you can limit the search to a particular category, opportunity type or tag etc.
Better Search Matching
We have included the ability to search for names and words with apostrophes that will match whether the apostrophe is there or not, so St David’s will match St David’s and St Davids.
Conflict Checking
Volunteers will no longer be able to join sessions that overlap in time. If they try, they will receive an alert letting them know they can’t join the session because it conflicts with an existing one.
Route Calculation
Volunteers can now calculate a route from their home location to the opportunity by car, public transport or cycle. This is accessible from the opportunity details page before they join an opportunity and from the opportunity management page location tab, if they have already joined.
Session Confirmation
Previously we only sent the session confirmation email, which consists of a summary of the sessions joined for the opportunity, the first time a user joins an opportunity per user session. This method was used to reduce the number of emails a volunteer receives immediately after joining multiple sessions. This however proved to confuse the users who were suspicious of what the screen was showing them if they did not receive a confirmation email.
The confirmation email is now sent every time they join a session regardless. We would be interested to hear your thoughts on how you think this may impact the volunteer and if you have any feedback we would love to hear it.
Reports
Day Schedule report
Have you ever come in on a Monday morning and wondered what volunteering activity is happening that week. The latest update includes a report which shows you exactly what opportunity sessions are happening that day, week, or on an opportunity or event.
The new ‘Day Schedule’report allows you to view a list of all sessions that are taking place on a particular day (or range of days) by going to REPORTING > REPORTS & ANALYSIS then click on the OPPORTUNITIES tab and scroll to the bottom of the page.
These also contain the list of TeamLeaders currently on the session and it also allows you to flip a volunteer from a regular to TeamLeader roles.
Opportunity Tags report
You can now see how many opportunities are tagged with a specific word, and how many hours have been logged against it. To access this report go to: Reporting > Reports & Analysis > Opportunities from side menu then scroll down the page.
Orbit Summary Reports
For those of you in an Orbit network, you can now search across the entire Orbit for volunteers, providers and opportunities. You can quickly find out what Orbit member a resource belongs to, and some useful information about each resource.
This is available from its own menu entry ORBIT SUMMARY. This will only be visible for administrators of Orbit systems.
References
Complete references yourself
If you like all your volunteers to have a reference before they join any opportunities, then this update will certainly be of interest.
Admins can now complete references themselves, or they can manually send a reference form to a referee. This allows you to hold references against volunteers before they have even joined an opportunity.
We have also added the ability to re-submit a reference to the original referee.
We welcome your thoughts and your feedback on these changes if you wish to share them with us just drop me a quick email.
We would love to see you all at our conference this year, where we can talk about the future developments in TeamKinetic in much greater detail. If you have not claimed your free ticket yet, then head to your application or call us in the office on 0161 914 5757 and we will get you booked on.
Over the past few years, I have found myself volunteering for a number of things for lots of different reasons. Whether it be for my own professional development in my future career, for my passions outside of my academic life or even just for a new challenge I am always prepared to embark on new experiences.
The first time I volunteered was in 2013 for my local golf club as a youth golf coach. With golf being my main passion and playing to county level myself I always felt that I would never have got to the standard I did without my own youth golf coach. Over the years I saw youth participation in golf go downhill with only a fraction of juniors wanting to play due to the game being ‘boring’. From this, I decided to more than just coach the game but also give talks and tours around my local golf club to people of all ages in order show them that there’s much more to golf than just the sport itself.
Two years later I took on another voluntary role, becoming junior captain of South beds golf club. In this role, I regularly took part in committee meetings where discussions took place as to how it was best to create awareness for the club. I came up with a host of ideas such as; presenting at assembly’s, regular deals for new members and traditional word of mouth marketing.
Moreover, in 2015, I joined the organisation original volunteers. From this I went out to Morocco to help underprivileged children in orphanages across the capital or Marrakech, this was a very fulfilling experience that I would recommend to anyone who is looking to do something good for the world in a less conventional way.
In relation to my professional career over the last two years have consisted of two main voluntary projects/jobs that I have been working on. For instance, in the summer of 2017, I took on an unpaid role in a television production company where I was a TV researcher. I worked alongside the paid TV researchers and operations manager to help find new leads for the business which would have the aim of making them into a profit after successful meetings. I came along way personally from this experience as I was able to develop my telephone skills as well as my e-mail literacy which I view to be vital for a role in marketing and in many other professions.
Lastly, I realised very quickly from learning on my degree that marketing never stands still and trends are always changing. One form of marketing that I saw to be growing rapidly was that of social media. Therefore, I decided to set up my own Instagram page (@witb_golf) which is now closing in on 1,000 followers. I was able to learn about the tools of Instagram and what is vital in order to attract engagement.
In order to take my professional skills to the next level I decided to undertake a work placement in my penultimate year of university to enhance my employability. The opportunity arose to join TeamKinetic after a successful interview with Chris, Steve and James. I believe that from joining TeamKinetic my skills can only be enhanced as I strive to do the best possible job I can for the business which will, in turn, allow them to continue in growth. I am very eagar and excited to get started as a member of TeamKinetic as I work with their large catalogue of clients to provide them with a service that will benefit myself as much as them.
For those managing volunteers, community engagement or sports development, there was good news to be found this week. A £7 million fund to support building more integrated communities was announced by the Secretary of State for Communities Rt Hon James Brokenshire MP. TeamKinetic has identified a shared interest between the sectors we serve, ICIF’s purpose, and the potential role of our volunteer management software could have.
What is the ICIF?
The Integrated Communities Strategy Fund (ICIF) green paper, was launched in early 2018 and invited views on the government’s vision for building strong integrated communities. The new fund was announced on the 9th July, and aims to stimulate new thinking, build new partnerships and test innovative approaches to bringing integrating communities. A press release, available on Gov.uk, summarises the ICIF:
“We are inviting applications to support approaches which help build integrated communities. This includes projects that use sport and physical activity to encourage integration. The government will be working in partnership with Sport England, which is contributing to the new Integrated Communities Innovation Fund, to support projects of this type.”
The fund aims to support projects which meet the following criteria:
Offer sound reasoning as to why they will be likely to achieve positive integration outcomes and, where available, have a clear evidence base to support this.
Have a clear understanding of how outcomes will be measured and how the success of the project can be evaluated.
Demonstrate how they have, or will secure, buy-in to the proposal from delivery partners and from the local communities in which they will be tested.
Show potential for growth, both in terms of the number of people reached and effectiveness in different local contexts.
Demonstrate clear deliverability, good value for money and are financially sustainable
Are led by organisations that are willing to share their experiences and learning, both honestly and widely.
How could this funding be used to support your voluntary organisation?
From our research, we believe voluntary organisations could successfully apply to the fund to support the costs of a volunteer management system. TeamKinetic believes our experience and market-leading volunteer management software would help to position the application with the support, integration and potential to scale, desired by ICIF.
r volunteer management software could be a perfect fit for such funding.
With ten years of experience supporting the development of volunteer programmes, TeamKinetic’s software is designed specifically to encourage frequent and meaningful interactions resulting in volunteering
Working alongside hundreds of organisations in the UK and around the world we can provide evidence for the positive impact our software has had on communities
Our software enables organisations or project leaders to track and measure the impact of their work. The reporting features capture the level of engagement, which can be analysed based upon ethnicity, age, sexes, location, socioeconomics, and more.
As a delivery partner to the project, we can offer our full support and experience through our advice and suggestions to help you to use the funding in an efficient way
We can also use our extensive network to introduce new delivery partners who can support your cause
We have an extensive portfolio of clients who have seen an incremental change to the size and scalability of their operations due to our software
We already work in partnership with a selection of sector groups, including the Join-in Consortium and the Sport Volunteer Research Network
Each year we invite hundreds of organisation to join us at our annual volunteering conference, held in Manchester, to discuss the latest trends and topics of volunteer and community development
If you would like to read a case study on how TeamKinetic has helped to build a community for Seashell Trust please take a moment to read this:
TeamKinetic are proud to announce we are now mobile! With the release of an iOS and Android App, volunteering has never been more accessible and easier.
Following our last annual volunteering conference, the demand to create a mobile app for volunteers has been high and at the forefront of our road map for development. Following some careful consideration TeamKinetic have developed the App and we are pleased to announce it is now available in the iTunes Store and Google Play.
To use the app, volunteers need to have previously registered online with an organisation’s volunteer website portal before being able to sign on. Registered volunteers are then able to search for opportunities from all providers that advertise on or use a TeamKinetic System via the app.
In a simple four step process volunteers can search for opportunities, log hours, leave feedback and edit personal details and much more:
Register online via provider website (i.e MCRVIP)
Download TeamKinetic App
Sign In using login credentials
Search and join volunteer opportunities
For those of you interested, we continue to explain the process and factors considered for designing the app below.
Why is the app not specific to an organisation?
It is technically very difficult to brand an application. It is not possible for us to upload a variant of the native application for every organisation. We have settled for a system wide app that will include branding details of the volunteers home organisation once they have logged in.
What is the best feature/s on the app?
Both the Android and iOS apps contain super convenient notification systems that alert a volunteer to any upcoming sessions right in their phones notification panel. These work whether the device as internet connectivity or not.
Why do volunteers need to have previously registered online before using the system?
Our existing customers were nervous that users that find the app before registering with their local volunteering organisation would never realise the full potential of their local volunteer network, only being exposed to shared opportunities. For this reason, we decided that the application would be a companion app for existing users.
Any additional questions and answers you think may be relevant?
The app will be advertised to all users logging in through their home organisation when using a mobile device. In addition, we will be using regular notifications to let users know there is a mobile app available and adding a footnote to the weekly emails with download links.
We think that volunteers will find more opportunities and log more hours when they can search for opportunities whenever and wherever they are.
If you have any further questions or would like to find our more on TeamKinetic’s app or volunteer management software, please get in touch with one of our team.
You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:
This week TeamKinetic received a message recognising the effort of volunteers and staff at the Manchester Big Bike Ride. We wanted to share the message and it positive praise of Volunteers for their efforts:
“I was working at the Manchester Big Bike Ride today on a Bike Doctor stand and I witnessed the work of the British Cycling staff and the volunteers. I have to say that, without exception, they were enthusiastic, cheerful, helpful encouraging and friendly. I can’t praise them enough. I have a confession to make. I saw the (unnecessary, in the end) waterproof jackets being distributed to the volunteers when I first arrived on site and coveted one. At the end of the day I sweet talked one of the staff into giving me a spare. I did not get their name as I wouldn’t want to get anyone into trouble. I am very pleased with my new jacket and I intend to carry it on my upcoming 750 km ride along the Camino Frances in July. I hope I won’t need to wear it but, if I do, it will be with but, if I do I will feel privileged to publicise such an enjoyable and well-run event.”
If you have a story about volunteering, volunteer management or social action, and you would like us to share or if you’d like to learn more about TeamKinetic volunteer management software, please get in touch with one of our team:
In a digital age where it seems that everything relating to training, development and even networking can all be accessed online it can sometimes prove challenging to convince or justify time away from the office. We wanted to provide you with 6 reasons to get out of the office and hopefully, convince you to attend a volunteering conference in the future!
You owe it to your volunteers
Countless volunteers travel, give up their time and go out of their way for various volunteering roles. Whether it’s staying an extra couple of minutes to tidy up or responding to an urgent last-minute call to cover a shift, volunteers always have a knack for giving more than expected.
Yet, as volunteer managers, we sometimes forget to prioritise operational and strategic tasks which will provide a greater long-term benefit, becoming immersed by working in our volunteer programme instead of on it.
Sometimes we need to take a step away from our organisation’s day-to-day running to learn, exchange best practice and hard-learned lessons with your peers, or just simply reiterate the steps we need to ensure long-term value in our volunteering programmes. A focused conference can do just that.
If you stop learning, you stop growing (and so does your volunteer programme)
This nugget of wisdom often echoes through any informative or educational events marketing material. Yet, despite its excessive use, it remains true and is one of the most important factors for ensuring you prioritise your personal and professional development.
Without developing your skills and knowledge of the latest trends, technology and discoveries, you put yourself at a disadvantage. Ensuring that you spend sufficient time developing an awareness of new developments will ensure that you protect your volunteer programme and safeguard preparation for future changes.
Who said work should be boring ….have fun
We have all been guilty of slipping into a routine where we repeat activities daily, trying to reduce any distractions and focus on what matters. In doing so, we inadvertently remove the sources of entertainment, creativity and inspiration we previously amused ourselves with and used to fuel our work with the necessary passion it deserves.
Attending a conference provides an opportunity to find new inspirations in an environment that is fun, welcoming and different. Simply by removing ourselves from the confines of our office, we open our minds to new stimuli that can inspire a change in our approach. The opportunity to meet new people, learn new ways and experience new places, genuinely excites (most) of us.
Network, Network, Network
Meeting someone in person provides a real chance to connect. You notice their body language, facial response and their voice. Collectively these interactions have a much greater value which is longer lasting and valued.
The importance of building your network is beneficial to both yourself and your organisation. It could be as simple as identifying new suppliers or sharing approaches to a shared challenge. The value and potential of collaboration, open discussion and mutual interest make networking very worthwhile.
Industry Insight
The opportunity to listen to industry-leading figures can provide a chance to learn valuable information and insight that you may not have been aware of or had access to. As speakers want to be recognised for their experience and expertise they will supply their audience with an arsenal of practical and easy-to-implement takeaways; from bite-size easy wins to long-term strategic considerations.
Lunch, Lunch, Lunch
As every volunteer manager knows, it is important to keep your workforce focused and fed. So make sure you don’t miss out on the top lunch provided and enjoy a freshly prepared, wholesome and tasty lunch with refreshments.
So what are you waiting for, you owe it to your volunteers!
So there you go, 6 compelling reasons for you to give up your desk for one day, go on an adventure to discover, network and learn.
If you would like to find out more about TeamKinetic’s Annual Conference or Volunteer Management Software, please get in touch.
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There were an estimated 17,000 volunteers at the tournament with roles such as car park marshall and media assistant. “The volunteers’ faces are the first thing the fans see when they arrive,” said FIFA President Gianni Infantino, hailing the significance of the Volunteer Programme. “Their smiles are what visitors pick up on”. Statements like this from such powerful people really give significance to volunteering and makes everyone aware of just how important they are.
