Category: News & Views Page 17 of 42

How Can Hospices Become More Sustainable… (Part Two)

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On 9th February 2022

In Hospice, Volunteer Management

Can hospices become sustainable? It’s time for part two. In last week’s post we delved into the first 5 principles, today is the final four! Hopefully this has helped you to start thinking about how your hospice can become more sustainable…

Become cost effective to be sustainable…

A threat of a severe recession and climbing competition for charitable giving could leave a lasting decrease in charitable revenue. Maintaining a grip on Hospice finances and implementing sustainable practices means there’s a chance to maximise cost effectiveness. However, it isn’t easy to develop cost effective routes. When handed a sustainable alternative, there is rarely any evidence that proves it true- but alternative practices have to start somewhere.

Stakeholders spoken to by Hospice UK want all Hospices to be aware of their own visibility. This way, they’re able to identify services which need to be redesigned for sustainability. Being more transparent about financial positions with commissioners has led to balanced financial risk in numerous areas.

Key benefits and outcomes of greater control of costs: 

  • “The operational model for each service delivers agreed outcomes and benefits.”
  • “Proactive and reactive: anticipate critical issues and plan for sustainability in advance.” 
  • “Quantify and help provide an evidence base to support decisions that require major trade-offs.” 
  • “Increased certainty in responding to current and future demand by taking a rigorous, outcome based approach.” 

Maximise your commercial revenue!

There has been a decrease in income for many Hospices, especially retail income over the past 2 years. It means that those Hospices reliant on a particular area of funding are susceptible to downturns and falling trends. So, Hospices are key in finding the effectiveness in their current revenue. The key is maximising commercial revenue.

Hospice UK has found recurring themes that Hospices could explore… Start re-thinking commercial spaces – are you getting the best out of the spaces you occupy? New revenue models, including collaborations, which has always been a strong starter that benefits multiple hospices at once. And teaming up with local third sector parties or partners.

Are you deploying the correct people around your patients?

Start reviewing the shape of your workforce. Deploy the correct people around your patients. Hospices need to start looking into how their workforce is going to look in the future due to the changes occurring across the end of life and palliative care sector. We suggest Workforce Shaping. 

Workforce Shaping can determine your team’s structure in the future and what will be required to introduce new ways of working. Hospices should be (re)considering:

  • “Consider new staffing models to better deliver care.”
  • “Embrace new roles and ways of working.” 

Shape careers of the future, sustainably…

To attract people towards a career in end of life and palliative care, a development needs to be made in order to make careers and jobs more competitive. While most stakeholders believe it wouldn’t be sustainable to match NHS pay, they do believe that improving career pathways is a clear step in the right direction. Why not start by finding out why people want to join, stay and perform for your Hospice. 

Understand and map out the journeys colleagues can take to move up within the Hospice, within their own career. Once you have this down, can you start to implement it? If you’re struggling on potential pathways, what about?

  • Managerial: Allow them to move up the ladder into managerial roles with more responsibility. 
  • Expert: Build and refine their roles based on their knowledge, skills and abilities while keeping them in the speciality they want. 
  • Mobility: For those who want to increase their knowledge, allow them to cross functions within Hospices or the NHS – they can increase their skills and abilities too!

Ways to make palliative care a place to grow a career:

  • Leadership and Culture: Culture is critical. The challenge for Hospice leaders is to connect the workforce to the ‘core purpose’- to help them see how their job everyday impacts the lives of everyone within their communities. 
  • Vision and Values: A key factor that attracts people to a career in palliative and end-of-life care is the vision and mission to provide high quality, person-centred care. 
  • Rotations and Preceptorships: There is a lot of interest across the sector for developing greater opportunities from clinical staff to undertake ‘rations’ across different providers and specialities. 
  • Devolved Decision Making: Stakeholders noted that covid-19 has helped to break down previous hierarchical structures and devolve decision making to team members closest to the patient. 
  • Diversity and Inclusion: Hospice leaders we spoke with talked about a desire to create a more inclusive culture where all employees thrive. Many noted that there was still more to be done in order to increase the representation of different diversity groups within the sector. 

And there you have it! 

And that’s that! Over the past 2 weeks, we hope we’ve been able to give insight into how Hospices can become more sustainable and rounded up The Discovery Phase of Future Vision Programme run by Hospice UK for you too.

If you’re looking for a volunteer management software that can help you: 

  • Recruit more volunteers than ever before. 
  • Fully customise your site and volunteer registration. 
  • Communicate with your volunteers easily, all in one place. 
  • Motivate and reward your volunteers with our achievement badges or create your own! 

Head over to our website and set yourself up a FREE trial!

How Can Hospices Become More Sustainable… (Part One)

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On 2nd February 2022

In Hospice, Volunteer Management

Demand for palliative and end of life care is increasing. As a result, Hospices are under greater pressure to find ways to do more with less. The Discovery Phase of the Future Vision Programme, by Hospice UK, starts a conversation around developing a more sustainable future. The charity has outlined nine principles of sustainability and today, we’ll be exploring the first 5! 

So, how can hospices become more sustainable?

Integrated Care Systems for sustainability

Integrated Care Systems may have a big role to play in the coming years. Helping to ensure the public and voluntary sector act together in the best interests of patients, service users and families. 

While many are in support of partnerships, there are also concerns for Hospice independence. It’s important for Hospices to develop greater integration, in addition to keeping a Hospice’s unique identity, values and high quality care. In Hospice UK’s survey, 99% of respondents thought there should be either full or partial integration with the wider Integrated Care System. 

If you’re looking for ways to explore integration, why not try…

  • Starting at the clinical service level. What services are you going to provide and by whom? Where are these services going to take place? 
  • Build relationships with other Hospices- it’s key to greater integration, while it takes time, you’ll reap the benefits. 
  • Start aligning your data and reports. In order to seamless integration (further down the line) one patient record shared between all providers of a system is critical.

Start collaborating…

Through integration, it also presents the opportunity to collaborate. Covid-19 has inevitably intensified the pressure on constrained resources, and yet despite this, there’s a drive for positive change present.

Why not look towards collaborating with neighbouring Hospices on service deliveries? Similarly, look towards exploring back office joint posts and funding? Each Hospice is different, so we know that not everything suggested will work best for you, but it’s best to explore your options.

Collaboration means you can reach out and work with a wider range of partners in the sector- you aren’t limited.

Time to get technological 

As a volunteer management system, we’re all for talking technology– and it’s crucial for you to define your digital strategy. With the increasing demand for care, the opportunities to look digitally as an enabler to change is exciting.

To succeed, as Hospice UK say, is to look from a patient-centric perspective- make sure that the leadership and governance of your digital systems is in place for fostering future innovation. 

Speaking to stakeholders Hospice UK picked on multiple themes that need to be addressed for greater digital enablement:

  • Improve patient experience and engagement. Allowing your patients to have more choice and control over their care, and how they’d like to receive it. 
  • Help provide integrated care- it will be easier to connect individuals to the right parts of the health system. You can strengthen the partnerships across sectors. 
  • Help decreasing the demand for palliative and end of life services driven by the UK’s aging population, a growing population, and an increasing prevalence of chronic conditions and diseases (just to name a few). 
  • Technology can also help with making systems more efficient- there’ll be less time looking for information or duplicating patients. 

Influencers for sustainability

Alongside rising demand, hospices may also be providing services to just a minority of people who need it. So, Hospices need to start reaching greater numbers of people with the limited resources they have. Stakeholders have expressed that the focus has to shift from efficient delivery of direct services to patients towards earlier system interventions and advanced care planning- to do this? Influence.

Hospices can use their own influence to bring additional resources in to meet the evolving demands:

  • Influencing the system through closer working relationships with other providers. 
  • There is a value in education, and adding family members/friends to support delivery of care can help avoid crises alongside meeting a patient’s needs. 
  • Covid-19 has sped up education through online learning and training. Hospices can use this to their advantage to promote awareness and help drive referrals to other sectors in the system. 
  • Hospices can use their unique data insight, this complemented with other systems intelligence, gives opportunity to enable a needs-based approach to the allocation of resources in future.

Is the current funding model sustainable?

The Hospice UK’s survey also highlighted that 83% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the current funding model is unsustainable in the long term. Most respondents went on to point towards a renegotiation of the funding offer with relevant commissioners as a high priority to ensure stable sustainability in the future.

An example of this would be End of Life Together in Nottinghamshire. The collaboration between a number of local Hospices’, Trusts and Primary care providers formed a partnership to secure funding and create an integrated care model. There key services included: 

  • One point of referral providing a triage, assessment and coordination of a person’s needs. 
  • ‘Hospice at Home’ services with community hospice beds. 
  • Access to bereavement and carer support services. 
  • And more!

To conclude…

After all that, we’re coming back with a part 2! This week we’ve looked at the first 5 principles for sustainability through the Discovery Phase of the Future Vision Programme. Hopefully, you’ll be gathering some ideas on how you can develop the sustainability of your Hospice, we’ll be back next week for the final 4 principles- we’ll see you there!

Above all, if you’re interested in developing your volunteer management processes, why not start a  trial? Head over to our site and sign up today!

Trial Photo for sustainability blog post

TeamTalk: the TeamKinetic podcast is finally here

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On 26th January 2022

In News & Views, TeamTalk Podcast

After years of Chris saying he wants to do a podcast, we’ve finally taken the plunge… Introducing our new podcast: TeamTalk with TeamKinetic.

TeamTalk is a podcast that takes a deeper dive into the world of volunteer management, hosted by Director of TeamKinetic, Chris Martin.

Join Chris as he speaks to people across the third sector to get their thoughts on all things volunteering and volunteer management!

Our first episode is live now! Chris chats to Nicola Ward and Ian Turnbull from Willowbrook Hospice. Chris, Ian, and Nicola talk all things Willowbrook, criminal checks, and how the TeamKinetic system has streamlined their work.

Willowbrook Hospice is a specialist palliative care unit based in Prescot providing quality care and support for our patients, their families and the community. They’ve been TeamKinetic users for a few years now and provide great insight into the current challenges hospices face.

Make sure to follow the podcast to make sure you don’t miss an episode!

You can find us on the following platforms:

If you can’t find us where you usually get your podcasts, let us know and we’ll get ourselves on there!

You can also keep up-to-date with all things TeamKinetic by visiting our website and following our social media:

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How Will Hospice Volunteers Look In The Future?

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On 20th January 2022

In Hospice, Volunteer Management

The pressure and demand on hospices is only increasing. With an aging population, it’s important to note, this demand will continue to increase in the next few years. So, how important will volunteers be in the future? We’re aware of the immense impact volunteers make today- they are the backbone for many hospice services.

In 10 years time, could the role of volunteers look?

Building on best practice…

Hospices will need to adapt to the growing demand for care so can we strengthen hospices best practices to help ease increasing pressures. In the context of volunteers, a large volunteer workforce could be needed. To do so, there should be plans to encourage growing recruitment.

It would be beneficial to have a volunteer management system in these times to help you recruit, retain and realise the potential of your volunteers (and yes, we mean us!) You can start a FREE trial with us, here at TeamKinetic, through our website – or book in a demo with us today! 

After all that plugging, why not work towards developing a package for volunteer training. The quality of training is key for volunteers to deliver the best care to patients and their families. While training costs money, it means volunteers become an integrated part of hospices and their team. These packages should be general and available to all, but they should also have the chance to be adopted and changed at a local level…

The perception of volunteers also looks to have improved. They are too essential to be left out of any hospice strategy for extending the impact a hospice can make to those who need its services. If you’re looking for new volunteer recruits, why not get your current volunteers to help? They may have reaches in the community that the hospice doesn’t. 

As volunteers become more significant in the supporting of hospices, we could also see: 

  • Clear boundaries for those volunteers working in patient-facing roles. 
  • Extend the supervision of volunteers in patient-facing working roles too. 
  • There should be common applications for approaches that sustain volunteer practice safely.

Promoting excellence in the future

There is a belief that investing volunteers and voluntary management can push more volunteers to contribute more, and we have to agree. We find volunteer management systems (whether it’s our own or others) helps build up communication, and a relationship between organisation and volunteer. In turn, this encourages the volunteer to volunteer more.

In the future, hospice models could look towards changing models and programmes that, while might be working now, could become unsustainable with increasing pressure. Therefore, more innovation is needed. Hospice UK believes this can start in three core areas…

  • Enabling volunteers to play a full role in the work of the clinical team- working in partnership with clinical colleagues. 
  • Having volunteers contribute to the services and strategy for hospices. They play an important role and should be recognised as the vital connection between hospice and community. 
  • Take new approaches to sustaining and nurturing volunteer contribution through volunteer stewardship…

Exploring new approaches for the future

It’s encouraged that hospices look to experiment with volunteer roles. Like a trial and error process, hospices can learn, evaluate and share their findings to pinpoint the useful roles volunteers can play. There are a number of new approaches which could be taken… 

  • Encouraging new organisation forms of hospice-owned but volunteer-led volunteer services at the end-of-life. Volunteers may be able to organise ways that support their contributions across end-of-life providers. They may be able to bring knowledge and continuity to systems of care. 
  • Volunteers can take on significant roles for helping people, and their carers and families. This can relieve pressure on other providers, who may have other responsibilities to attend to; you can’t have one person in two places at once. 
  • There is a call for extensive research in hospices, in particular hospice volunteering. It can build a base around the effectiveness and economic impact of volunteer-led, volunteer delivered and volunteer enable innovation. 

In conclusion…

It’s known to us now just how important volunteers are for Hospices. There is no doubt that this importance is only going to increase as pressure on hospices increases. Volunteers will continue to be the backbone of hospice services, and more should be done to support volunteering in these circumstances. 

If you’re looking for a volunteer management system, why not sign up for a FREE trial with us! Head over to our website, and set your site up now… 

 

How to support your local hospice…

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On 12th January 2022

In Hospice, Volunteer Management

Palliative care and hospice volunteers support those with life-limiting diseases and their families. Their purpose, to improve quality of life and build deeper relationships with patients, gives valuable insight to hospices and their overall care. 

Being able to understand the role that volunteers play within hospices helps improve their effectiveness and will better aid those who are thinking of volunteering. Recent evidence suggests that in order to make an impact on the development of volunteering, stronger resources and commitment from those in high positions is required.

More care and support is needed now more than ever – volunteering can play a key role in adapting to the changing needs.

Do Hospice Volunteers Need Training?

Before anyone becomes a hospice volunteer, it’s likely that training will need to be completed. Volunteer training helps prepare them for any services they may perform and understand how they will be assisting patients and their families.

It’s likely that a hospice training program will include: 

  • Understanding the hospice’s philosophy of care. 
  • Understanding the services delivered by the organisation. 
  • How to properly communicate with patients, caregivers and families. 
  • Understanding patient privacy regarding their health information. 

Through this training, hospices have recorded common traits that make effective volunteers: 

  • A sense of understanding and compassion towards those on their end-of-life journey. 
  • A respect for all customers’ cultures and religious views. 
  • The ability to listen when needed and be comfortable in silence. 
  • Awareness of personal limitations. 

 

The Types of Volunteering for Hospice Volunteers…

Hospice volunteers provide an immense amount of hours through two main categories: Direct and Indirect Care volunteering…

Direct Care Volunteering is defined by those volunteers who work directly with patients, caregivers and families. They provide comfort and support in a number of ways: 

  • Preparing meals for patients and their families. 
  • Giving transportation. 
  • Helping out with light household chores. 
  • Providing companionship and comforting patients. 
  • Help create a soothing and joyful atmosphere.

(via Crossroads Insights)

Indirect Care Volunteering, on the other hand, is for volunteers who would like to work behind the scenes. They help the hospice with any administrative tasks. For instance, preparing mailing and/or newsletters to the community. They’ll also be looking to input any general data and other clerical duties needed to be completed. Indirect Care involves making sure the hospice is known within the community and day-to-day tasks are completed for everything to run smoothly.

The Challenges for Hospices

There are concerns about the accessibility of those who can benefit from hospices services which have become a challenge. Volunteers have been a significant part of responding to this and, as a result, can be a significant advantage for hospices.

Volunteers extend the scale of availability to hospices in order to deliver a wide range of services. Importantly, they offer a prolonged connection of care to those with life-shortening illnesses in ways beyond clinical. Volunteers can help extend the reach a hospice can make in the community through stronger social activities. 

A diverse range of volunteers can broaden the range of skills and benefits available to you. Hospices can reach out to the same broad community mirrored within the hospice. It’s extremely important to acknowledge the work and benefits volunteers bring, while starting to think about how volunteers can work effectively to push back against rising challenges.

How Can We Help?

With a broad range of volunteers, you might be wondering how you’re going to connect and reward them for their work… Here’s where we come in. A volunteer management system, like TeamKinetic, can help you: 

  • Recruit more volunteers than ever before. 
  • Fully customise your site and volunteer registration. 
  • Communicate with your volunteers easily, all in one place. 
  • Motive and reward your volunteers with our achievement badges or create your own! 

Start a free trial with us at TeamKinetic here! 

Our Round Up Of The Year 2021

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On 22nd December 2021

In Christmas, Community, News & Views

With t-minus 3 days until Christmas Day, we wanted to look back at our 2021 with a round up! It’s been another tough year for everyone, but we’ve managed to find some light in moments this year. From award shows to blossoming partnerships, 2021 has been a year of developments for TeamKinetic.

Let’s have a look at our year in numbers.

January – March

The year started very much as this one is finishing, much to everyone’s frustration.

Volunteering was still very much on the agenda as we saw vaccination programs in full swing across the country. We were really proud to support a whole range of organisations mobilising an amazing army of volunteers.

People talk about the Anti-Vax brigade but we can tell you first-hand the Pro-Vax crowd are amazing and were out in force at the start of the year, and we take our hats off to each and every one of them!

March brought some wonderful news when we were honoured to be awarded ‘The Partner Excellence’ and the ‘COVID-19 Response Recognition’ awards for our work with Halton and St Helens Voluntary Community Action at the iNetwork awards. It was a huge achievement for TeamKinetic and our partners and a milestone we won’t be forgetting – especially for the recognition of our efforts throughout COVID.

March round up

The key achievements from our work with Halton and St Helens saw 1,744 volunteers registered and together they offered 8,688 volunteering hours. Our volunteer support economic value offered £80,796 during the first six months of the programme. For those feeling lonely or isolated, we were able to support 16,161 telephone calls to make those feel a little less lonely during repeated lockdowns and restrictions. Overall, we were able to support 32,993 in such a short amount of time and we can’t be more proud of the project.

We can’t thank Halton and St Helens VCA and St Helens Council enough; along with every single amazing volunteer for your commitment and drive, you make it all worthwhile. If you haven’t seen their short video on how important volunteers were during COVID, spend a couple of minutes and check it out.

May and June

Moving onto May, we held our first online conference, focusing on COVID-19, and what happens next. We’d like to say thank you to all our speakers and to those 140 people who attended. With talks from the likes of Gethyn Williams, Dr Jurgen Grotz, Kathryn Palmer-Skillings and our own Chris Martin, the conference was a success!

We do have a quick wrap-up video that you can check out here.

In June we said some hellos! We welcomed Alex back into the fold. Having already completed her placement year at TeamKinetic, we welcomed back a familiar face. You can read her (re)introduction to TeamKinetic life, here. 

Coming back to TeamKinetic has been great! I’m grateful to the team for offering me this position straight out of university and I’m looking forward to what we can achieve next.

Alex

We also welcomed a fresh face to the team: Katie. Along with Alex, Katie also wrote an introductory blog post which you can read here.

It’s been a whirlwind of a time since I joined in June and I can’t wait to see what comes next in the next six months.

Katie

With new welcomes, we said some goodbyes at the start of July. We said goodbye to Chloe and Sammy, who were our 2020/21 placement students. They took charge of the TeamKinetic conference and supplied you with dog pictures on our Twitter. Alex and Katie are more cat people, and so our pet content has changed significantly over the past couple of months (much to Chloe and Sammy’s dismay).

Both Chloe and Sammy are well underway with their final year at university. We’re wishing them the best of luck seeing out the rest of their degree.

July and August

Rolf, Steve and Chris on the Razzle

July saw us return to the office full-time as we thought the world was getting back to normal.  It also saw the return of the legendary TeamKinetic staff night out, I must apologise to Chloe, Sammy, Katie and Alex as the night was so messy this appears to be the only surviving picture of these 3 ugly mugs!

August saw the launch of TeamKinetic 2.0 the latest all-singing and dancing version of TeamKinetic. Unlike previous updates, this one was a monster with more new features and controls than anything we had done before. Not only that we had updated and replaced all the old legacy code with a new and improved code base.  Steve and Rolf worked day and night to get it ready and after it launched to find and fix those pesky bugs.

This new code base has set us up to be able to continue to improve the service quicker and hopefully will ensure you guys have the very best technology available for the next few years. 

September

In September, we were so proud to announce our partnership with the Association of Volunteer Managers. Founder, Chris Martin, detailed our hopes for the next 12 months, some of which we’ve started on already… 

Over the next 12 months, we will be working with the team at AVM to develop some accessible resources and materials that you might find useful if you are thinking about how you might use digital. We will be exploring what type of member offers and benefits you might like from us to make it easy and affordable for you to look at digital volunteer management and most importantly we hope to get to know you all a little bit better.

Chris

You can watch Chris and Ruth at AVM discuss the new partnership below. We’re excited to see what can become of this partnership with AVM heading into 2022.

We also worked with the guys in Scotland to help them launch their first ever cross-sector heritage volunteer campaign called Make your Mark. The ambition of the campaign was fantastic, how can they recruit a new generation of heritage volunteers and how can they broaden inclusion and accessibility to a whole group of new people. We were really happy to be part of the program and that TeamKinetic was to be used to drive the recruitment campaign. You can watch their launch video here, it’s pretty cool.

 October

October brought Halloween and our sponsorship of AVM’s annual conference. The two-day conference opened up insightful conversations with speakers that really got us thinking! It was our first time sponsoring the event and it was really nice to support something we have attended for so long.

It was also really lovely to catch up with people and see a number of faces we hadn’t seen in a while, even if it was just over Zoom, who knows what next year might look like but fingers crossed for catching up over the buffet or a glass of wine.

October also brought the first of our talks regarding digital volunteer management with the Charity Retail Association. We really wanted 2021 to be the year we looked at how we could better support the wider sector and working with both Charity Retail and AVM were key decisions that would enable us to share our knowledge and support the wider sector.

If you were there, I hope our 30/40 minute talk was insightful for those attending, and we hope we will be doing more of these in the new year.

November Talks:

November round up

We had a quick start to November with the Local Government Chronicle Awards. Once again, we were nominated in two categories, for our work over the past year with Halton and St Helens. The categories were Campaign of the Year and Technology. While we didn’t win, it was an honour to be nominated. We have to thank everyone at Halton and St Helens and the volunteers for creating such a successful project.
(Chris also enjoyed a night away in London maybe a little too much if his hangover was anything to go by!) 

We also were honoured to be asked to talk at COP26. The invitation came from the team running Make Your Mark in Scotland. We also heard from the likes of Chester Zoo, the National History Museum and Rob Jackson. It was another insightful day, which Katie personally enjoyed live tweeting her way through.

Volunteering, like every sphere of human life, needs to look at its role in climate change and it was really inspiring to hear what is happening and what you can do to make a change.

If you missed it why not check it out here:

The middle of November meant it was time to head down south for the day. Jumping on the train to London, we met up with the Charity Retail Association for their People Management Group – a successful hybrid event we spoke at. This was the first hybrid event we’ve attended, and we wanted to highlight the work put in by the team to make sure everything ran smoothly. While half of the attendees weren’t in the room, it never felt like they were anywhere else (apart from the leftover lunches!) We want to thank the CRA for including us in multiple of their events over 2021, and we hope to be continuing this into 2022.

Being back in person at an event was great and it felt like it was all going to be plain sailing moving into 2022, little did we know what was about to change everything!

December Celebrations:

In December, the Health Innovation Network (HIN) on behalf of NHSX released an evaluation into the value of micro-volunteering applications during the global pandemic. We were really excited to be a key contributor to the findings. The findings were also positive towards TeamKinetic and our approach to localised Micro-volunteering community response.

Through the use of these applications, over 100,000 individuals carried out 1.5 million tasks for the vulnerable during the global pandemic. Evidence suggests that micro-volunteering engages a willing volunteer force and addresses unmet community needs. It was also clear that the pandemic drove interest into the value of these platforms.

You can access the full evaluation summary report by clicking here.

We also managed to squeeze in our Christmas party and our annual Christmas jumper day which was fun.

December has not quite turned out as we would have liked. There are refreshed calls for Volunteers to support the booster campaign. It’s all starting to feel a little like Groundhog Day as we find ourselves back in a COVID-induced crisis.

It’s been an uncertain year at times. While we’re still waiting for the days we can ‘go back to normal’, we think we’ve managed to have another successful year and that we have helped to make volunteering that little bit easier and more accessible.

If we have learned anything from 2021, it’s that you can’t plan too far in advance. You should enjoy the simple things in life and take the small victories where you can find them. You just can’t be sure what’s around the corner.

All that’s left to say is Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to those that celebrate. And, finally, have a Happy New Year – we’ll see you in 2022! 

Christmas Volunteering

Christmas: Volunteering is needed now more than ever

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On 15th December 2021

In Charity, Christmas, Community, News & Views

“It’s Chrisstmaasss!” For many this festive time of year is to relax and enjoy time with friends and family; but, for many, Christmas is a time of sadness, loneliness and stress. 2021 has been another tough year for charities, and those that they help. At Christmas time, charities rely on volunteers, donations, or fundraisers to help them through this festive season. With at least 3.5 million people not looking forward to Christmas this year for a myriad of reasons, It’s time to unleash your inner elf, and start volunteering or fundraising in your local community.

Befriending Services 

According to Age UK, more than 2.5 million older people have no one to turn to for help and support. The charity’s network of local groups means there are a number of opportunities available for you to engage with- they aren’t limited to just Christmas, but maybe Christmas is the best time to start.

These opportunities also include their befriending scheme, both face-to-face and through telephone calls. Partnering with The Silver Line, Age UK offers free phone friendship services, meaning you’re able to comfort someone over the phone, from your own home. At many Age UK branches, you can become a befriender volunteer and visit an older person in their home or accompany them to doctor’s visits or the theatre. You can hear more about the befriending services through Rose and Sarah’s story here.

Age UK isn’t the only charity who offer these types of befriending services, Independent Age and Royal Voluntary Service offer similar services, open to volunteers just like you.

Befriending services are across the country this Christmas. No one should feel lonely.

Crisis at Christmas

Charity Crisis has been helping those take their first steps out of homelessness since 1967. Christmas donations of just £29.06 helps provide a place that’s safe to stay at, hot meals- including a Christmas Dinner, companionship and year-round support such as training and education to help someone end their homelessness for good.

Crisis this year has setups in London along with multiple other regions across the country, including our very own Manchester. In London, Crisis will be providing accommodation during the Christmas and New Year period to those who would alternatively be spending Christmas on the streets.

They’ll also be opening their day centres in the capital along with their other sites across Britain delivering hot meals and providing advice, health and wellbeing services. For those who may still be cautious to volunteer due to the pandemic, Crisis will be continuing to provide their volunteering opportunities in a socially distanced way. If you’d like to know more about Crisis, and the ways you can help this Christmas, have a look here.

Crisis at Christmas: Together we will end homelessness.

Local Community Based Organisations:

Local volunteering opportunities are just a few clicks away, and you’re likely to find an opportunity that fits you perfectly. If you’re struggling to find opportunities, head to our TryVolunteering site, or look for national schemes set up specifically for this time of year.

Why not look at opportunities that focus on helping young people within your local community. For those less fortunate, it can be a confusing and frustrating period. With around half a million people, including 200,000 children being pushed into poverty by the universal credit cut, volunteering, fundraising and donations may be needed more than ever.

Become a Secret Santa and raise money to help bring food, love and warmth to vulnerable children this Christmas. Last year, Santa’s across the UK reached 604,000 young people and their families. Supporting these children is now more important than ever- start your Santa journey today, here. 

What Are You Waiting For This Christmas? 

Volunteering this Christmas doesn’t just have to help those in need, there can be benefits for you too. Volunteering, fundraising and even making a small donation can make you feel good and  positively impact your mental health. You might even learn a new skill along the way! 

So, what are you waiting for? Start helping to make a difference to those in need, so everyone can enjoy Christmas this year. 

How to Effectively Reward Charity Retail Volunteers

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On 8th December 2021

In Charity, Volunteer Management

As an act that is entirely selfless, rewarding volunteers may seem like an impossible task – surely the work is rewarding enough? While, yes, the work is rewarding. It doesn’t keep a volunteer motivated to keep volunteering for you. So how do we reward charity retail volunteers?

In this blog we’ll go through a variety of ways, because not every volunteer will respond to the same methods.

First, why do they volunteer?

Understanding the reasoning behind your volunteer’s commitment can help you tailor recognition and rewards to them personally. Here are some common reasons:

  • Because they care about the cause/have been personally impacted by the organisation.
  • As a good way to fill their time.
  • To join friends and family who volunteer.
  • Because it’s a good networking opportunity.
  • Because it contributes to something wider – e.g. the Duke of Edinburgh award.

So how do we reward charity retail volunteers?

This is where it starts to feel complicated: formal vs informal, intrinsic vs extrinsic, physical v digital, etc. But don’t worry! We’ll lay it all out for you so you just have to worry about picking the right method for your volunteers.

Formal v Informal Rewards

Formal rewards are usually regarded as those you plan ahead of time. This could include things like award ceremonies, volunteer of the month awards, and certificates.

In contrast, informal rewards are the smaller things you would use on a day-to-day basis. Instead, it focuses on improving the experience for volunteers. You might reward volunteers in this way through bringing them refreshments while they work, having conversations about how their experience could be improved. A great benefit of informal rewards is their low cost and significant ongoing impact.

Intrinsic v Extrinsic Motivation

Volunteering can be personally rewarding to many people and this good feeling is often a big motivator. Intrinsic motivation is all about helping your volunteers continually feel good about the work they’re doing and the difference they’re making, rather than working towards one particular reward. It follows the same premise as informal rewards – you want to reward volunteers by continually improving the state of your volunteer programme.

On the other hand, extrinsic motivation involves volunteering because of outside factors, such as receiving a reward. This isn’t always a negative thing, as mentioned above, people often volunteer as part of something else. For example, a student may volunteer in a charity shop in order to fulfil one of the requirements of the Duke of Edinburgh Award.

There’s always potential to retain this kind of volunteer through intrinsic motivation. If they become motivated by the way volunteering makes them feel, rather than fulfilling a requirement, they’ll be more likely to keep volunteering for you.

Physical v Digital

Now we know about the different types of motivation and rewards, we can start thinking how to deliver them. Those of you who are not yet fully engaging with digital may feel more comfortable delivering purely physical rewards (such as thank you cards and teas/coffee).
One Welsh charity even decided to help the local community beyond their existing efforts. The Gellideg Foundation Group gave their volunteers gift cards to small local businesses as a reward, helping boost the local economy and keep local shops open!

However, there are a whole host more options available to you via digital means. And you never have to stick to purely digital or physical rewards – there’s room for both to be used effectively.

How can I reward volunteers with TeamKinetic?

TeamKinetic can facilitate a range of options when it comes to rewarding your hard-working volunteers.

First of all, after every opportunity, volunteers and opportunity providers are asked to leave feedback. This feedback serves as a way to praise the volunteer but can also be used to improve internally. If any volunteers have issues, these will be sent to you and you can deal with them. Giving volunteers a great place to work is a great step to help them feel appreciated.



Furthermore, the system offers HourTrades. These are rewards for reaching a certain number of volunteering hours logged. This can be set to anything you desire, offering a wide range of incentives to your charity retail volunteers.

We also have Opportunity and Achievement Badges.
Opportunity badges can identify opportunities that will contribute to an award, such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Achievement Badges are awarded over time – the more hours a volunteer logs, the better badge they receive! These are saved digitally but for an added touch you could create physical badges to match!

Try it for yourself

You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website, giving you access to everything the system has to offer for 30 days.

If you want to find out more about the system, or have any questions you can use the chat feature on our website, email us, phone us on 0161 914 5757, or find us on social media:

You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram       Podcast

 

Have you enjoyed using TeamKinetic? If you could leave us a review on Capterra, we’d really appreciate it! We’ll even send you a little thank you.

Why Analysing Your Volunteer Programme is so Important

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On 1st December 2021

In Charity, Volunteer Management

If your organisation has an established volunteer programme, you’ll have your volunteers up and running with good quality opportunities, but now it’s time to evaluate. Maybe you’re already analysing your volunteer programme, but is it enough?

Analysing your volunteer programme can provide key insight into the impact of your programme. This could include how you’ve improved the lives of people in the local community and key demographics of your volunteers. So let’s dive right in…

The Fundamentals

Let’s start with your goals. Do you have them and are you achieving them?

Simple reporting tools can help you recognise whether you’re hitting these goals. If you are, it can inform how you go about setting new goals. If not, it’ll give you an idea of how to adjust your operations in order to achieve them. And if you’re yet to set any goals, key KPIs can help you draw some up.

What are KPIs?

Key Performance Indicators: a set of quantifiable measurements used to gauge a company’s overall long-term performance. This could include things like:

  • Total number of active volunteers
  • Volunteer retention rate
  • Total number of hours logged
  • Volunteer demographics (gender, age, ethnicity, location, etc.)
  • The monetary value of services rendered by volunteer support
  • Number of people in the community served by volunteers

So Why Is It Important?

Analysing your volunteer programme is a pathway to discovering a whole host of things.

Volunteer retention rate can suggest the happiness of your volunteers or quality of your opportunities. If volunteers aren’t happy and don’t have access to good opportunities, they won’t keep coming back. You can read more on how to fix this issue in our ‘How to Increase Volunteer Retention (and keep it!)‘ blog.
Just remember: a happy volunteer is a loyal volunteer!

Furthermore, volunteer demographics can be compared to demographics in your area to see whether your programme is attracting an expected variety of people. If not, why not?
For example, demographics showing a very high proportion of white volunteers in a very ethnically diverse area could suggest there are barriers to people in your community who want to volunteer. Our recent post ‘Is Your Pool of Volunteers Diverse and Inclusive?‘ provides valuable tips on how to improve this within your own organisation.

However, data isn’t just about spotting areas for improvement. It could also be used to identify those who are going above and beyond for your organisation. With tools like hour logging and feedback, you can see which volunteers are giving their time the most and receiving praise for their work.

How can I get started?

There’s a good chance you’re already managing your volunteers digitally, but are you using volunteer management software? Software can put everything in one place for you, allowing you to manage, communicate, and analyse your volunteers in a few clicks. You can read more about implementing volunteer management software in this blog.

While it’s possible to analyse your volunteers using spreadsheets and other software, it’s definitely much easier to have everything in one place. Instantly have everything you need to manage your volunteers all in one place, leaving you more time to focus on the important stuff.

Why not try TeamKinetic?

You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website. This will let you check out all our features for 30 days. This includes features such as volunteer-owned profiles, the ability to log hours completed, and reporting tools. If you like what you see, contact us to book a demo and see how we can help your organisation manage your volunteers and start analysing your volunteer programme!

Contact us:
– Email: alex@teamkinetic.co.uk
– Phone: 0161 914 5757
– Social media:

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram

Is Your Pool of Volunteers Diverse and Inclusive?

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On 24th November 2021

In Charity, News & Views, Volunteer Management

Organisations should be diverse and inclusive to the communities they serve, and your volunteers should mirror that. So, how do organisations achieve this? A recent agenda consulting survey gives us some more detail into how volunteering organisations value diversity.

Agenda Consulting undertook a survey as part of their ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the UK Third Sector’ report. The report looks to understand people’s views and experiences of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within the organisations they work with. The survey covers 8 sectors: Gender, Gender different to that originally assigned at birth; Ethnicity, Disability, Religion, Sexual Orientation and Age.

Agenda Consulting Survey:

The overall view from survey results states the average positivity for DEI is 72%, with neutrality being 21%. The average negativity is 7%. What is most surprising is that the highest level of negativity is regarding age: at 12% negativity overall. 

It’s clear that while there are mostly positive results, there’s still work to be done: 67% of respondents feel the leadership groups display their commitment to DEI. However, just 48% of people feel their organisation is committed to promoting the representation of diverse groups. By recruiting and retaining a workforce that is diverse, you can work towards building stronger perceptions. 

Sector Results:

The results show for gender little difference between men’s and women’s perception, yet statistics from Agenda’s People Count, show that gender balance shifts as we move through levels of seniority. There may be an imbalance in results. 76% of the survey sample are female, fitting with Volunteers Count of 70% of all volunteers being female. For more information, we have a blog post which dives into the reasons why women volunteer more than men. 

For those whose gender is different to that originally assigned at birth: results suggest there needs to be education within the sector. Only 50% believe that, regardless of gender reassignment, people are treated equally. By increasing the education or knowledge of volunteers surrounding DEI, it becomes an organisation-wide initiative, instead of being held to within one department. 

There is a strong perception that there is equal treatment regarding ethnicity, with 73% of people feeling like everyone is treated equally irrespective of race/ ethnicity: but 10% disagree. Perceptions of equal treatment are considerably lower for those respondents from an ethnic minority. More awareness is needed throughout organisations: and this should be done by the very people who it directly affects. We’ve looked deeper into the socio-economic status surrounding volunteers and whether volunteering is too white and wealthy… 

Disability, Religion, Sexual Orientation and Age:

The results from disability-related questions show that 67% feel people are treated equally, with 24% neutral and 9% feel negatively. This use of ‘neutral’ suggests that volunteers don’t have enough insight. This is possibly due to the fact that just 4% of volunteers are disabled (according to Volunteers Count). If we remove those barriers, we open volunteering up to a wider community with fresh ideas and skills, representing wider society as a whole.

74% feel that people are treated equally despite a person’s religious beliefs, with 22% of people feeling neutral and 4% opposing the statement. There are several groups who are the least positive. Agenda’s report outlines those who identify in another way and ethnic minorities as standouts for those who aren’t as positive. It can be suggested that this is down to wider societal stereotypes, which are translating into the volunteering sector. 

Overall, only 1% of those who identify as Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual (LGB) felt they weren’t treated equally due to their sexual orientation, whereas 84% of people did. During the survey, it was LGB groups who thought less positively about the statements being asked of them. This possibly suggests that they are more aware than others about the inequalities minorities face.

As mentioned above, it is age that has the greatest discrepancy when it comes to being treated equally. Out of the 3% of under 25s who took part in the survey, only 59% felt positively, with 18% negative. As age increases, the negativity does too. This suggests a divide within organisations among age groups on whether certain groups of people are treated equally.

So Why Should We Increase the Diversity of Volunteer Programmes?

Harvard Business Review confirms that when a team member shares the ethnicity of their client, the entire team is 152% more likely to fully understand the client. This ability is crucial for volunteer programmes. By increasing the diversity of your organisation you receive new ideas and approaches to your work; with new volunteers, you gain people from different educational backgrounds with different soft skills, like communication. 

All of this helps your organisation, but it also helps those you volunteer for: your volunteers can be role models. Those who can see themselves within volunteers can inspire and increase their aspirations. They may also want to volunteer in some capacity too! Organisations should be looking towards becoming inclusive for all, for a stronger future.

So How Do We Increase the Diversity of Volunteer programmes?

There are a number of strategies to ensure your volunteer programme can become inclusive for all. Starting with your language. Switching up your language to attract certain groups of people can help you gain a wider audience.

Start to build relationships! Building up relationships with communities means you can speak freely and they can too! It’s important to identify those communities you want to engage with: it’s important you’re authentic. 

The policies that your organisation has may need rewriting. What you have written down versus the culture surrounding your volunteer programme can be drastically different.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are so important for volunteer programmes who want to move forward. It’s simple, organisations must be inclusive for all. Your pool of volunteers should mirror the community you work in. With a diverse pool of volunteers, you have an opportunity. Team bonding exercises can bring people together. 

AVM’s Making an Inclusive and Accessible Recruitment and Onboarding Experience

Save the Date! Wednesday the 27th April, 9:30am- 12:30pm, AVM are hosting an event helping you to create an inclusive and accessible recruitment and onboarding experience! Straight from AVM, at this event you will…

  • Hear ideas on how you could adapt your recruitment and onboarding process to be more inclusive
  • Learn how organisations have overcome some of the barriers to inclusive recruitment
  • Reasonable adjustments that can be made to ensure your recruitment process is accessible to all
  • How to attract a diverse range of volunteers and what you might need to consider
  • Have an opportunity to plan your next steps, in small groups with your peers

Learn more about the event and how you get your tickets here! 

Manage Your Volunteers:

We now know how important diversity and inclusion are to volunteer organisations and volunteer management. An efficient and effective management system is needed to help you help your volunteers and the community. TeamKinetic can help you recruit, retain and realise the potential of your volunteers… 

You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram       Podcast

 

Have you enjoyed using TeamKinetic? If you could leave us a review on Capterra, we’d really appreciate it! We’ll even send you a little thank you.

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