TeamKinetic is proud to announce that we are working together with CIMSPA- the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity.
Like many working sectors across the UK, the sports and physical activity sector has also been hugely affected by COVID-19. With all gyms, sports and leisure centres being closed due to the pandemic. This has created many uphill challenges for the 500,000 workers in the sports and physical activity sector.
The Challenge
The task of keeping the UK physically active and healthy has never been more crucial. Although we are faced with self-isolating, social distancing and many other sanctions in our daily lives, doesn’t mean we can’t all stay healthy.
We share the same ambition as CIMSPA of being versatile in these difficult times to aid the sector to keep the UK active. Therefore we have offered CIMSPA our support in the form of our Advanced volunteer management software – built for COVID-19. We hope by becoming a CIMSPA supporter we will be able to help some of the 500,000 workers affected by this pandemic and help those stay active and healthy along the way.
Read more below on what CIMSPA is doing as part of their Stronger Together campaign
TechForce19 was developed as a call to action for all innovators who have the technological ability to be able to supply the elderly, vulnerable and those self-isolating during COVID-19.
The competition saw over 1600 entries who felt their technology could help to combat this pandemic challenge. We are very proud to announce that TeamKinetic has been shortlisted as one of the 20 companies who will receive the £25,000 to test their technology to help with the response to COVID-19.
TeamKinetic aim to use their volunteer management software and their new COVID-19 related volunteer management features to optimise staffing in care and volunteer sectors. This will be achieved by deploying TeamKinetic with 3 of our new customers, The Royal Brough of Greenwich, Halton & St Helens VCA and Groundwork working in partnership with Barnet Council. The application will be used in the recruitment and training of volunteers into non-clinical roles at a local level and providing essential services that people in isolation need.
TeamKinetic is already used across the UK with over 145,000 volunteers using the system and is used to power the national system Volunteering-wales.net on behalf of Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA). So this award feels like a nice acknowledgement of the hard work that has gone into developing TeamKinetic into the simple to use platform it is today, over the last 10 years.
In preparation for taking on the TechForce19 challenge, TeamKinetic has been working with their existing partners to look at the specific requirements that have been created due to the pandemic. Partners like Manchester City Council and Glasgow Life have all played a key role in helping TeamKinetic respond to the crisis and to push our engineering teams to do some amazing work in response.
Read all about TeamKinetic and the other winners here
TechForce19 is an initiative being run on behalf of:
NHSX is one of the largest health and social care transformation programmes in the world, created to deliver technology that staff and people need. With the aim to utilise technology in the most efficient way possible in order to reduce stress on our NHS workforce.
AHSN connects the NHS and academic organisations, local authorities, the third sector and industry. They focus on improving outcomes for patients through innovation and technology.
PUBLIC is an organisation which aims to breach the gap that smaller start-up technological companies struggle to overcome themselves. Many small start-up organisations have made progressive headway in innovative technologies which have the potential of helping many people. However, they struggle with the initial start-up when connecting to the right people, like the governments and local authorities.
For more information on how TeamKinetic can help your orgainsation.
Hundreds of festivals across the UK cancel due to the current pandemic. But how can festival suppliers utilise their resources to benefit the many organisations battling against COVID-19?
Festival season is over
Festival season this year is more than likely to be completely off, with few festivals still scheduled for late August and September. However, the likelihood of these events going ahead still remains slim. Festivals such as Glastonbury, Parklife, Radio 1’s Big Weekend and many more have been faced cancellation.
These events as you can imagine take months of planning and preparation, with venues, equipment and people to be organised. However, all that seems to have gone to waste, or has it?
Resources are not to be wasted
There is more to a festival than stage lighting and huge stands, but what equipment can actually be utilised from festival suppliers to help charities and local authorities during these unprecedented times? I’m not quite sure we can fight off COVID-19 with strobe lighting alone – although it would be quite a sight.
So what equipment can the NHS and charities make good use of?
You will be pleasantly surprised to hear that there is quite an extensive list: generators, furniture, comms equipment, tents and marquees, outdoor and indoor audio equipment, vehicles, medical equipment, heating equipment and the list goes on. Many festival suppliers even have access to services including security, medical services, traffic management, project management and much more.
What’s happening now?
Organisations which supply such equipment are now re-focusing their efforts. Their efforts are now refocussed on providing available equipment to local councils, charities and helping government initiatives. This supply of equipment to these organisations is desperately required and any organisation that can help should. Not to profit from, which many organisations have fell victim into doing, but to be forthcoming in their ability to help and improve the UK’s current situation.
How TeamKinetic can help
Joining the many organisations aiming to provide a service in which that supports charities, councils and the goverment battling COVID-19. We have further developed our services, incorporating new features purposley build for COVID-19.
Introducing TeamKinetic Advanced – built for COVID-19 designed for you, all freeof charge for three months.
New Community Task Dashboard
Our new fast implementing Community Task Dashboard, allows users to create COVID-19 related tasks quicker and easier.
It couldn’t get any more simple.
CREATE: COVID-19 related tasks
ASSIGN: Volunteers to your created tasks or wait for your volunteers to assign themselves
APPROVE: Volunteer need approval before they have access to tasks details COMPLETE: Wait for the completion of the task
All New COVID-19 Volunteer Application
Volunteers simply sign in to your site on either desktop or smartphone, open the application and apply to the most recent COVID-19 related tasks. With lots of the same safety and safeguarding features that TeamKinetic has always had.
Volunteers can then keep track of their applied tasks in the ‘Tabs’ in the application.
NEW: These are new tasks available for volunteers to help with
APPLIED: Volunteer can see their applied tasks waiting for approval from Admin/Provider
ASSIGNED: Volunteer has been approved, the volunteer can now see more details on the COVID-19 related task. Such as more sensitive information i.e. exact address.
COMPLETED: Once completed tasks appear here for the volunteer’s personal record
Volunteers are cementing their value in society. After the call for NHS volunteer responders was made by the government, five people per second enlisted to volunteer.
Volunteers from across local councils and community groups have not been shying away from COVID-19. In fact, they have more than risen to the occasion, by offering their support to those most vulnerable and keyworkers – despite the increased risk of being exposed to COVID-19 themselves.
The community at the heart
Communities and councils have been working together throughout COVID-19 in order to provide help to those most at risk. Since the start of the virus 2,700 grassroots groups have formed with a total of 2.5 million group members – these figures are increasing daily. Volunteers in the community have signed up to these groups to help deliver food and amenities. Figures like this really show the power of human resilience and determination to make the world a better place even in the darkest of times, which we find ourselves in now.
Find volunteering groups near you
For prospective volunteers who are seeking roles in their local community, it would be well worth your while looking at Covid-19 Mutual Aid UK. This organisation has been responsible for coordinating the many volunteering groups which have risen all across the UK. Their website displays a map which contains various known local volunteering groups. The site also allows you to add your own volunteering group by connecting your own group’s social media channels and website.
Clap for our NHS workers
#ClapForOurCarers was a brilliant community effort from all across the UK. With people showing they’re appreciation for those working non-stop during this pandemic, with masses of applause from balconies, gardens, front doors and windows.
Common uncertainties facing communities
Despite many communities having many enthusiastic volunteers, some uncertainties still lie when volunteering during this pandemic.
Firstly, you can leave your house to volunteer to provide help to those vulnerable, providing volunteering can not be done from home. But if you fall into the high-risk category, being over 70 or having health conditions please try to find volunteering opportunities from home via the computer or telephone.
You haven’t got to be a superhero to help out so don’t be afraid of not knowing what to do at first. But at the same time don’t feel pressured to volunteer, it is optional and you should only volunteer if you want to.
You don’t even have to sign up to anything to be a good person, you could easily keep an eye out in your neighbourhood. Perhaps you know of an elderly person who lives around the corner, it wouldn’t hurt for you to check if they’re ok. Or maybe an NHS worker lives nearby and doesn’t have time to get food in for themselves after work, perhaps you could grab something for them while your shopping yourself? These little things may not seem like traditional volunteering but you are making a difference and having a positive impact on someone else’s life with nothing in return, so maybe you can volunteer without even knowing.
Stay safe, stay positive we can overcome this together
TeamKinetic have added an entirely new set of roles and functions we call COMMUNITY TASKS to help our customers get volunteers to those people that need it most in the community. There is also an associated app for mobile!
Communities across the country are already starting to rally in support of each other during this pandemic.
We’ve put together a video and step-by-step instructions below showing how to promote your COVID-19 related opportunities.
1 – Add tags and descriptions to your COVID-19 related opportunities.
In order for volunteers to find COVID-19 related opportunities you will need to have a way of identifying those opportunities in the system. You can do this by either making sure the opportunity title includes a key words like; covid, virus, corona, or pandemic, or add the words as TAGS to the opportunity.
Either of these solutions will allow the system and volunteers to be able to search and find the related opportunities via the normal search bar.
When you login you’ll find your custom search link in the COVID-19 notification bar. You can distribute this link via email and on your social media posts and when clicked will go straight to the COVID-19 search results.
2 – Add An Event Called COVID-19
An event is just a group of opportunities which have something in common. By adding a specific event name, that event will show at the top of the volunteers search results.
To use this method you will need to create an event called ‘COVID-19’ and EDIT your opportunities and mark them as PART OF A LARGER EVENT
3 – Email all volunteers about COVID-19 related opportunities
We have added a button at the top the dashboard when you login as admin:
This button will automatically email your volunteers a list of all virus related opportunities (email shown below).
If you would like to only email specific volunteers then you can email the special link shown when you login as administrator.
When clicked this link will go to the COVID-19 search results.
Further help
If you have trouble setting any of this up, please open a support ticket and we’ll try to help.
Even if you haven’t seen the lastest news or attempted to buy hand sanitiser recently, you may have noticed a decline in volunteer participation, and that pasta and toilet roll are now worth more than GOLD!
Keeping your volunteers volunteering and coming to sessions can often be challenging. During a virus pandemic, it’s sure to make that job even harder. In this blog Teaminetic aims to give some practical advice to keep your volunteers volunteering.
Reassure
Reassurance will be key. The message to volunteers should be to not panic, that volunteering should be proceeded as normal unless specific advice is received. During this time you may need a higher level of communication between yourself and your volunteers. Clear communication will help to remove the anxiety that volunteers may be feeling, and help you restore confidence through reassurance that you are doing everything possible to reduce risk.
Prepare
Preparation is key, and following a few simple rules will help.
Assuring hand sanitizing stations are filled and available
Surfaces that are regularly used have been cleaned, countertops, doorknobs etc.
Asking politely that anyone who isn’t feeling well to not attend sessions.
Provide disposable wipes so that commonly used surfaces like keyboards, remote controls, desks etc can be wiped down by volunteers before each use.
Enable micro-volunteering or volunteering from home.
Notifications
Keep volunteers up to date with the latest news from your organisation, via newsletters, emails, texts and social media channels. A lot can happen in 24 hours as we’ve previously seen. The fluid situation could mean that sessions or events might need to be cancelled at short notice, so try to keep your volunteers informed.
Volunteering from home
There is a high probability that people could be asked to work from home. If, or when, the government issues these measures, perhaps your organisation could adopt virtual or micro-volunteering in order to maintain volunteer involvement.
Micro volunteering involves low commitment action towards a cause. Micro-volunteers can choose how and when they volunteer, providing they have access to the internet via a laptop, tablet smartphone etc.
Micro-volunteering opportunities could involve.
Signing online petitions
Writing blogs
Re-tweeting and posting relevant content on Facebook and Twitter.
Providing feedback on marketing materials.
Creating Facebook Live meetings or Google Hangouts meetings.
Getting creative by generating material for upcoming events.
Micro-volunteering and virtual volunteering will not replace traditional volunteering. However, during COVID-19 it maybe your best option in order to maintain engagement and stay tuned with your volunteers.
In the meantime
What can we all do to help prevent the spread of COVID-19?
Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or your sleeve (not your hands) when you cough or sneeze.
Put used tissues in the bin.
Wash your hands with soap and water often – use hand sanitiser gel if soap and water are not available. Remember to wash your hands for 20 seconds, whilst singing God save the Queen (Other songs are available).
Try to avoid close contact with people who are unwell.
Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces.
Refrain from touching your eyes, nose or mouth if your hands are not clean.
Stay positive, remain calm and don’t worry, there’s enough toilet roll for everyone…
What positive changes should volunteer managers be anticipating throughout the upcoming year? TeamKinetic aims to explore the changing avenues in which you may find yourself turning down at any given point.
Embracing Technology
This year alone there are predicted to be 51 million smartphone users, who will have access to various apps on their phones. For the volunteer manager, this is brilliant as many volunteer management systems – including our own can operate through an app. Creating more ways in which you can manage and communicate with your volunteers. Which will help your volunteer management run a lot smoother, not just for you but your volunteers as well.
Training
Phone calls and face to face meeting could be starting to become a thing of the past. Many organisations including ourselves are now adopting the use of ‘virtual help’. This being online support which is readily available for all volunteers. Virtual help makes good use of platforms like YouTube, instant messaging and help forms. Which in short saves the volunteer manager time.
Ageing Population
People are living longer and healthier lives, which isn’t a surprise. People are starting to take a lot better care of themselves by feeling more inclined than ever to live healthier active lifestyles.
Therefore volunteer managers should expect a rise in the number of older volunteers with time and energy to volunteer. Perhaps its time volunteer managers shifted perceptions of the ‘old’ volunteer, and started removing aged based limits on volunteering opportunities. Although people aged 65 and over are 45% more likely to volunteer than any other age group, only 6% of those over 65 actually feel old. Meaning older volunteers are more than happy to take part in more physical volunteering opportunities – if given the opportunities to do so.
A common theme that our customer relations team has found here at TeamKinetic is that. The wording of opportunities can often make volunteers not want to join an opportunity. Volunteer managers should try to be mindful when writing volunteering opportunities, as certain words can make opportunities sound more physically tiring, boring or even more complex than they actually are.
Younger Volunteers
There are small indications that the younger generations are starting to volunteer a lot more than they used to. 70% of 18 – 24-year-olds have reported having volunteered at some point in the last year. Recent interviews held by TeamKinetic and student volunteers help support this statistic, as many students did volunteer in some shape or form. Either to improve their academic profile or just because they wanted to give back to their community and have fun. This increase in younger people volunteering only gives volunteer managers more options and opportunities to attract younger volunteers, who are enthusiastic to help and be apart of a volunteering programme.
Volunteer Led Opportunities
Volunteer-led opportunities involve listening and understanding what your volunteers want to do. It’s a growing trend that organisations are listening more to their staff and their customers. It would only be right to suggest that volunteer managers could do the same. A volunteers feedback could pose to be very useful as they are the ones taking part in the opportunities on a regular basis (on the front line as you may say). Suggesting it might be worth allowing volunteers to take lead on some opportunities, as this could be more impactful or at the very least, given the time to suggest new ideas.
A Question of Flexibility
How much flexibility volunteers have is always going to be a changing factor. Pictured above are some of the many reasons why the average person is soo busy. Considering these in modern volunteer management could mean thinking about running more “one-off opportunities”. which are opportunities that don’t happen on a regular basis (perhaps monthly), allowing time for volunteers to adjust their schedules, making it so they don’t have to commit to a specific time frame every week.
For more information on TeamKinetic volunteer management, visit our website or call us on 0161 914 5757.
Happy World Book Day, not just to the children but to all the volunteers across the UK helping to support our Libraries.
Across the last decade, over 500 libraries have been handed to volunteers. More and more libraries are still becoming staffed only by volunteers, instead of paid staff, provided by the council. This is due to the council making budget cuts. However, this is still better than the alternative of closing down local libraries, inhibiting children of what still is an exciting adventure out the house to somewhere new where their imagination can run wild!
Libraries create opportunities for children to:
Learn
Develop and grow
Interact with other children
Get help with homework
Give mum and dad a break
And generally, have fun through the power of imagination!
Libraries are being revived
Despite some towns being deprived of their local library services. Many libraries still continue to run each day through the commitment of local community volunteer groups. Where members of the groups will rotate working shifts allowing the library duties to be split equally amongst the volunteers. Many community-run libraries have been revived by volunteers. This is because the previously paid staff before weren’t local, therefore naturally they didn’t have the incentive to be as engaged with the community as current local volunteers are now.
Volunteers helping communities
Community volunteers are performing amazing tasks in order to keep libraries fresh and welcoming to all local communities. Our current client MCRVIP in Manchester have been advertising volunteering opportunities for libraries across the whole of Manchester, opportunities at Manchester libraries can include:
Lego Club volunteers
Once a month Film and craft volunteers
General Community library volunteers
IT volunteers
Homework club volunteers
Saturday club volunteers
More roles than you would have realised, it shows that it’s not all stacking and scanning books, but actually helping the community and interacting with the children and adults that go.
So thank you to all the volunteers for helping our community libraries.
TeamKinetic and The Student Room work to make student life better
TeamKinetic becomes the new supplier to The Student Room
The Student Room (TSR) is the UK’s largest online student community. It exists to provide every student from GCSE to the world of work with peer-led online support. The Student Room community allows students to support each other, as they fully believe that the people best placed to offer support are those who are going through or have recently come out the other side of the student experience.
Mhairi Underwood, Head of Community at The Student Room, has been working with TeamKinetic over the last year. Testing the TeamKinetic volunteer management application, to see if a digital platform would improve the support of volunteers in the organisation, and improve workflows for staff.
Since February 2019, TeamKinetic has been supplying its volunteer management application to TSR as part of a pilot, to explore how a digital volunteer management application might provide added value to TSR’s volunteers and staff. TSR has a dedicated team of volunteers across the UK and around the world, providing peer-based support via its online forums. We are proud to announce that based on the success of this pilot project, TeamKinetic will be continuing to work with TSR, developing their volunteer workforce and supporting their development as a student-first organisation.
Mhairi said “We’ve found that by adopting TeamKinetic as our in-house volunteer management platform, we’re able to completely streamline our volunteer administration in a way that provides both us and the volunteers with control and trust. Once it was embedded, we were able to focus much more fully on the things that really made a difference for our volunteers and our community, knowing the administration was taken care of.”
Chris Martin, Director of TeamKinetic, said “The Student Room is a unique organisation, which provides a wealth of services to young people, they know their audience and the importance of digital in engaging that audience and we love that! Working with them during the initial pilot stage to enhance their volunteer program and support the amazing work they do has been a real pleasure. I look forward to seeing how the offer develops over the next 12 months.”
TeamKinetic hopes to continue to build better volunteering communities throughout many different organisations, no matter how big or small.
Ends
Contact details:
For more information, please contact TeamKinetic on 0161 914 5757. Or email chris@teamkinetic.co.uk
Phil and his co-workers wanted to manage their volunteers, however, things took a turn for the worst & now Phil and his co-workers are here…
Probably the most annoying platform to manage anything – never mind volunteers. My deepest sympathies are with those who have fallen down the bottomless rabbit hole of endless Excel Spreadsheets, which are over-occupied with volunteers.
Does anyone truly understand Excel?
Few people truly understand all the functionalities of spreadsheets – because there are way too many! Therefore the job is left to one person, who quickly becomes very demotivated and almost consumed by the spreadsheet itself.
Just keep scrolling…
Scroll, after scroll. This is often associated with your current method of managing your volunteers. Finding the volunteer Jack Jones who wants to volunteer at the annual 10K run, couldn’t get any more complicated. However, by having a volunteer management system in place, your job could be a lot easier. Volunteer profiles can be easily searched for across the whole system.
Worry less
When it comes to your volunteers there are a few things that they are guaranteed to ask. Where, when and what. Volunteer management systems worry about all this for you, by giving your volunteers their own profile and portal where they can access all this information and even more.
The nightmare of event planning
You may have noticed Excel isn’t exactly the best for building your events, making the process highly laborious. No template on Excel can simplify all of that! But it doesn’t have to be this way. Volunteer management systems provide a simplified solution to what once seemed a strenuous task. Save your own time and leave your explicit language along with Excel.
Manage volunteers with more confidence
You may be able to encrypt and password-protect the data stored on your Excel Spreadsheets. However, what happens when someone cracks your spreadsheet’s ‘safe password’? Every piece of data is then stolen, this won’t be just your budgets and accounts, this will be the personal data of your volunteers. But you don’t need to take this kind of risk with your volunteer’s data. Volunteer management systems are fully protected and encrypted with the most up-to-date security encryptions and they follow all new GDPR data regulations.
An open-ended platform for everyone to access easily.
Consider the simple life and save on the sheets, one personalised and customisable system is all you need. Consider TeamKinetic, we might just be able to help.
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