Category: News & Views Page 19 of 42

Will Volunteering Come Out Stronger After Covid?

Coronavirus has introduced so many new challenges for communities over the past 18 months, but it’s also presented foundations to build a stronger community. Moving out of the pandemic means the focus is now on building the relationships between volunteers and organisations; along with renewing that drive to volunteer in the first place. This could mean we have to rethink the roles within volunteering moving forward.

Remote Volunteering? 

The use of remote volunteering over the pandemic has been phenomenal in helping those who’ve really needed it. Due to this, there is a larger market for this kind of volunteering, as so many people have volunteered in this way lately. In order for virtual volunteering to continue, volunteers must be attracted to your organisation’s missions as the social aspect towards volunteering has been stripped back. Communicating that their small contribution will make a difference will keep them involved and feeling positive for helping the community.

The pandemic has also increased the amount of online recruitment. So how have organisations found and kept in touch with their volunteers? It feels inevitable that recruiting volunteers online is something that will carry on far into the future. For organisations, their next steps may be to solidify their presence online. This is where a volunteer management system would come in handy; with TeamKinetic you can recruit more volunteers than ever before, and have constant contact to keep them informed. 

Flexibility…

To create a more accessible volunteering route, there needs to be flexibility. For those who cannot commit to certain dates and times: flexibility allows for no obligation to return. It also means that volunteers can now access the risks beforehand (because they haven’t committed to a continuous role). Despite saying we’re coming out of the pandemic, people still have to assess the risks before going out (coronavirus included)! While it becomes more of a challenge for organisations to be flexible, breaking down roles into smaller opportunities is a way to include more flexibility.

Looking towards the future

There is a feeling that volunteering has taken a strong leap forward over the past 18 months. There is a renewed purpose to help those who really need it: we’re more aware of our communities’ vulnerabilities. Volunteering has increased massively over the pandemic and as a result we have to focus on preserving the positive changes that we have seen.

Interested in TeamKinetic? 

Why not come and try our system for free! You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website. This will let you check out all our features for 30 days. If you like what you see, contact us to book a demo and see how we can help your organisation manage your volunteers.

You can also follow our social media pages: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

We’re Sorry 😓

You may be aware that the newest TeamKinetic update was due to go live at the beginning of the month. However, we ran into some issues and we have taken the difficult decision to delay the release until next Sunday (15th). We know this is a little bit disappointing but it was important to us that this new version met your high expectations and we were not confident we could achieve that this weekend.

Although our testing was complete and everything appeared to be in order, we discovered some instability in the changes we had made. Although infrequent, it could lead to issues with accounts being logged out and other frustrating random issues. 

The team have been working non-stop on getting this update ready for launch and share your disappointment in it not being released, but we would much rather take longer to put out an update that is completely stable and satisfactory than rush one out that has issues and could cause our users any inconvenience. 

We would like to thank everyone for their continued patience. We hope you love TeamKinetic version 2.0 once you get chance to use it. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

We also aim to have the new mobile app released around late September/October. 

In the meantime, you can read about some of the key new features in the update here
We also held some masterclasses going through some key v2 features. You can watch all of those here.

The Whitworth Gallery, in partnership with TeamKinetic

At the start of 2020, The Whitworth made the leap to take on TeamKinetic as their volunteer management software provider. They made this change just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning working from home gave them the perfect opportunity to understand and implement the system.

The Whitworth Gallery is described as historic, contemporary, academic, and playful. Founded in 1889, the first English gallery in a park has been transformed by a £15 million development in 2015. As part of their volunteer programme, volunteers are able to contribute across the gallery. This includes supporting artists, textile care, art gardening, digitising their collection, cataloguing their library, assisting in the delivery of workshops, and much more.

Fiona Cariss, volunteer manager at The Whitworth says,

“We chose TeamKinetic as they’re a local organisation to our gallery and already supply the volunteer system for Manchester City Councils Volunteering opportunities.

The Whitworth is in partnership with Manchester Art Gallery, along with Manchester Museum too, so it means in the future we could look at sharing our volunteers and opportunities across the partnership through the system.

In a way the past 18 months has been a perfect time to implement the new system with TeamKinetic, as we’ve managed to test it with our volunteers whilst everyone has been at home-  it helped us reach out further to our locality making it easier for them to register their interest and hear about the volunteering opportunities straight away. The data and reporting aspects of the system has and will definitely help in combining everything we need when we’re evaluating the programme and reporting back to various funders.

So far all our volunteers have found it easy to register and it’s a very usable system, in which you get a lot of support from TeamKinetic too. The Whitworth Volunteer Programme is looking forward to working with TeamKinetic further in the future when we have more volunteering opportunities coming up.”

Find Out More…

If you’d like to volunteer with the Whitworth, you can check out their opportunities here.

TeamKinetic helps to build better volunteer communities by providing great tools for volunteer managers that save time, increase impact and improve insight. Our goal is to make volunteering easy for everyone no matter what. But don’t take our word for it, why not check out our customer reviews.

For more information on how we can assist with your volunteer management and getting the best out of all your volunteers visit our website or contact us on – 0161 914 5757

Celebrities That Do Great Charity Work…Part Two

In our last ‘Celebrities That Do Good Charity Work‘ blog, we only mentioned a few celebrities that do charitable work. But there were (and are) so many more we wanted to let you know about. So here you have it, a part two showcasing celebrities that use their time and money towards charitable causes. And maybe, this might encourage you to take up some volunteering opportunities…. 

Ashton Kutcher

Ashton Kutcher also donated $4 million to Ellen Degeneres’ Wildlife Fund.
  • Alongside Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher founded Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children. The charity works mainly to address the role of technology in the sexual exploitation of children. So far the organisation has helped to identify over 20,000 children in danger since 2014.
    Furthermore, their Spotlight feature (a data-analytics program) has assisted the authorities, reducing agents’ investigation time by over 55% in 2020. 
  • Ashton also helped in the set up of The Native Fund. The foundation is committed to raising funds and organising volunteer efforts to assist the people and communities of Iowa in times of need.
  • In April 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis started making their own wine for charity! It’s called ‘Quarantine Pinot Noir’ and 100% of the profits go towards charities providing Covid-19 relief.

Taylor Swift

Swift donated $4 million to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville for the education centre – their biggest ever donation!

Taylor Swift is known for her deeply personal lyrical storytelling, but between all that love and heartache she finds time to give to causes that mean a lot to her personally and to her fans. 

  • In 2007, she launched a campaign called Delete Online Predators to fight internet crime against children.
  • She held a “Speak Now Help Now” benefit concert in 2011 for victims of tornadoes in the United States Southeast region. The concert raised more than $750,000. 
  • During Kesha’s much publicised legal battle with producer DJ Luke, she supported her fellow artist by giving $250,000 to help pay her legal fees. After this, she faced her own legal battle against David Mueller for sexual harassment in 2017. She won the case for a statement $1 and vowed to help organisations that aid victims of sexual harassment/assault. She has done so, making “generous” donations to both the Joyful Heart Foundation (for survivors of sexual assault) and RAINN (an anti-sexual assault organization).
  • She also gives back to her fans directly, supporting them in a number of ways. For example, she donated $50,000 to a fan battling cancer on GoFundMe, helping pay her medical bills.

Jackie Chan

Many of us know Jackie Chan for his work as an actor, as a stuntman, a producer, film director, or even for his martial arts. But we can now add ‘big charity giver’ to his list of achievements…

  • In 1988, he founded the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation. A foundation that aides Hong Kong’s residents by offering scholarships, medical services, and assisting in natural disasters and illnesses. 
  • Then in 2002, he founded The Dragon Heart Foundation. This foundation is driven to fulfil the needs of the less fortunate populations in China.
  • Jackie Chan has also stated that he plans to leave his estimated $370 million fortune to charity, rather than his son, Jaycee.

Feel inspired?

Are you feeling more inspired thanks to our quick rundown of charitable superstars? Check out our website as a starting point to see the clients we work with, and what new volunteering opportunities they have available for you today.

How to get your volunteers to log hours

Volunteering at its core is an entirely selfless activity completed by people with no expectation of acknowledgement. Despite this, we believe volunteers deserve to be rewarded for their hard work. But how do you do this without them logging hours? 

Why is logging hours so important?

In short, data. This data is key to your organisation to:

  • Measure success. Logged hours can represent the amount of work your volunteers are doing for their community or particular cause. 
  • Track your audience. Knowing which volunteers are continually volunteering and which ones aren’t could be incredibly insightful. Is there a particular demographic volunteering more than others? Is there a demographic that is hard to retain? This data could uncover aspects that need to change, leading onto our next point…
  • Make improvements. No volunteering programmes are perfect, but the best ones regularly review and make changes to improve. If there’s a particular demographic that isn’t returning, why?

So how do I persuade volunteers to log their hours?

  • Show them how easy it is. Showing volunteers how quickly they can log hours might help them 
  • Incentivise! Offering rewards can be a great way to get volunteers logging their hours. However, the best way to do this is to offer low-value rewards as often as possible. 
  • Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Imagine this: you offer one big prize (e.g. a hoodie), after a volunteer has logged 100 hours. They log hours as a way of reaching that prize, but once they reach those 100 hours they lose motivation to log future hours – or worse, return at all. (Extrinsic motivation)
    However, if you offer small rewards such as thank you messages they will be consistently motivated by the positive way the act makes them feel. (Intrinsic motivation)

Intrinsic motivation is all about making your volunteers continually feel good about the work they’re doing and the difference they’re making, rather than working towards one particular reward. 

So how do you keep up this motivation? Giving them nice feedback is a great place to start! This will show how much you value them and will mean more to them than you may think. 

Utilising TeamKinetic to Incentivise Volunteers

Leaving Feedback

TeamKinetic allows you to leave feedback when logging a volunteer’s hours. If you forget or don’t have time to personally thank your volunteer at the end of their session, this section gives you the chance to do so. It also lets the volunteer log their own hours and leave feedback about the opportunity they joined.

Ask anyone who has volunteered – receiving feedback is a great feeling and can push volunteers to return and continue volunteering for you.

Achievement Badges

This incentive is a great way to push your volunteers to log more hours. Once a volunteer logs their hours, they will add together to create their total volunteer hours. A small way to help increase volunteers’ hours is to have achievement badges when they reach certain hour milestones.

TeamKinetic has achievement badges automatically built into the system. The achievement badge pictures and names can be customised. These badges are a great way to incentivise volunteers and get them to keep on volunteering so they can reach the next milestone.

Custom Badges

Have you ever thought about starting a ‘volunteer of the month’ award? To give your volunteers an extra incentive to volunteer more or make them feel appreciated? Yes? Keep reading, you may like what you see…

TeamKinetic allows you to create custom award badges for your volunteers. These could be ‘volunteer of the month’ or ‘volunteer of the year’. They can be absolutely anything you want and look however you want, with the fully customisable option! Once you have assigned the award to a volunteer, they will receive an email with the award in it to congratulate them. Again, this recognises the efforts your volunteers put in, helping you to retain more volunteers and hopefully gain more.

Logging hours with TeamKinetic

Logging hours with TeamKinetic is easy – as it should be on any volunteer management system. See below for the full process laid out in less than 25 seconds!

And if that’s not clear enough you can check out our full tutorial videos on logging hours as an opportunity provider and logging hours as a volunteer

Think it’s time to invest in volunteer management software?

You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website. This will let you check out all our features for 30 days. If you like what you see, contact us to book a demo and see how we can help your organisation manage your volunteers!

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

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.

(Re)Introducing TeamKinetic: Alex Evans – Another Chapter

If you read my goodbye blog last year, you’ll have to pretend you didn’t. I just can’t stay away!

I’m back again and excited to get (re)started – this time as TeamKinetic’s Marketing Manager. It’s a role that I’m excited to get stuck into and continue to grow in. 

My Journey

Back in 2017 I started university with no idea where it would take me. My biggest concerns were making friends, exploring Manchester (aka finding the best cheapest pubs), playing football, and whether I’d enjoy my course or not. 

In my second year it was time to start looking for a work placement – as someone who lacked confidence, this was a daunting task! One day the Social Media and Marketing intern role at TeamKinetic popped up and the rest is history. 

My placement year was full of personal and professional development. It gave me good quality real-world experience of marketing and helped me build confidence amongst other important life skills. 

I went into my final year of university ready to finish those assignments and get back into the world of work. What I didn’t expect was to be offered a full-time position at TeamKinetic. But what I was certain of was that I had to grab the opportunity with both hands.

From passing my responsibilities over to Sammy and Chloe in 2020 to taking over from them in 2021 – the circle of Marketing!

So who am I?

In short:

Hi, I’m Alex, I’m 22 and I’m from Sheffield!

But if you want something deeper I could tell you that Taylor Swift has been my Spotify top artist for three years in a row. Or that I’ve been a Sheffield United season ticket holder for as long as I can remember. But if that isn’t enough, you can read my original introductory blog here.

All you really need to know is that I’m incredibly happy to work for TeamKinetic, a team full of good people doing great work. It’s time to put all the things I learned at university into practice and help this company grow! 

New Faces and Farewells

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Chloe and Sammy for all their hard work over the past year. They’ve done some great stuff and have been a real asset to the team.

However, now it’s time to welcome the newest member of the TeamKinetic family – Katie. She’ll be completing her placement year with us and I hope she gets as much out of it as I did. You join us in welcoming her by reading her introductory blog here.

You Can Join The Family Too

If your organisation is in need of a quick, easy, and reliable way to manage your volunteers look no further! No matter how big or small, we can help you. We’ll work around your budget to get you building better volunteer communities with our volunteer management software. 

Best of all, you can go to our website to set up your very own demo site free of cost to see how our system can work for you!

Introducing TeamKinetic: Katie – The Start of Something

Ginger Roots:

My marketing journey started in a life-sized cardboard smart car. 11 year old me presented a hover board advert at school, and between the transport creations and the chariots of fire theme tune, I think I sold the hoverboard 6000 rather well. I fell in love with marketing before I even knew what it was. 

Fast forward 6 years and I’m completing a creative media degree at my local college when the history of adverts is assigned to me. A 12,000 word document later, I decided that my passion lay in some form of marketing – photography and film now were hobbies. As a pledged university student studying Public Relations and Marketing, I’ve never felt more determined to set myself going on a career path, and succeed. 

A Helping Hand:

When I think back to when I was younger, I realise just how much volunteering my family took part in. During school summer fairs, my mum manned the sweets stall and my dad fired up the BBQ, all because they wanted to help. It’s members of my family who taught me the importance of volunteering and started me on my journey. 

For the past couple of years I have been part of ‘Save The Streets’, a university charity focused on helping end homelessness in Manchester. Through volunteering, fundraising and spreading awareness we try and do our bit where we can: last Christmas we raised £1,235 for A Bed Every Night. I’m honoured to have been their Social Media Secretary over the past 12 months and I’m looking forward to working with them closely in the future. 

In The Mean Time: 

As mentioned above, what I studied in college, I now like to do in my free time. I’m passionate in capturing moments from angles others might not see – from holidays to birthdays I’ve taken over the mantle as resident cameraman from my Grandad. When I’m not capturing my Nan’s famous birthday cakes, I am an avid true crime fan – having watched nearly every documentary and docuseries on Netflix. I’m not quite sure what intrigues me about it, but somehow every time a new one pops onto the platform I’m ready and waiting to click play. 

One Final Note: 

Looking at the next 12 months, I’m excited to put what theory I’ve learnt over the past 2 years into practice and see how my skills develop. My Dad always told me that if you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. I try to live by my Dad’s nuggets of wisdom, so I’m grateful that TeamKinetic have given me a chance to put my knowledge and skills together in a motivated, practical environment for the next year. 

Katie Brindle 

katie@teamkinetic.co.uk

For more information on volunteer management software visit our website or call 01619145747

Becoming a TeamKinetic Enterprise Customer

Welcome to the family!  Its great that you are about to join hundreds of other organisations that use TeamKinetic to manage their volunteers.  We have put together this short blog that tells you what happens next and how to get ready to launch your site.

Once we have your contract signed we can have you up and running in no time, this blog outlines the steps to get your site ready and the pit falls to avoid.

Trial Site

If you already have a trial site up and running, you can get started playing around and getting to know the TeamKinetic service right away.  We have a simple to follow “Getting Started” lesson program for you to follow.  Just click here and follow the 10 quick and easy lessons.  If you get stuck just drop us a support ticket or a chat message direct from your help menu.

If you don’t have a trial or demo site set up yet, just let your TeamKinetic contact know and they will have that sorted out for you in no time.  This will help you get acclimatised to the product and give you a good idea of how you might like to use the service.

We’d love your feedback on our Getting Started lessons, so if there is something we can do to make it easier for you please let us know.

Getting set up on our implementation management system.

To help make your implementation go super smooth we use a service that ensures you know what you have to do and what we have to do.  This system provides you with detailed information on how you undertake each task and lets you record what you have done, when you are ready to pass things back to us and if yo have any questions you can ask them really easily.

As soon as the contract is signed we will invite the key members of your project team to join us on the task list and you can get going right away with your tasks, getting your site ready to go live.

Choosing A URL

As an enterprise customer, you get to choose where your TeamKinetic powered website will live or what URL you want to use.  There are a few options available to you.  It has a tendancy to get a little technical here so my apologies in advance.  The options are:

  1. You can set up your TeamKinetic powered site as a “Sub-Domain” of your existing website.  That means you can have something like https://volunteer.YourOrgNamehere.org
  2. You can have a new domain that no one else has yet.  To choose a new domain use a service such as NameCheap.com and see what’s available.  

What ever you choose, your TeamKinetic implementation advisor will help you with the technical aspects of getting your trail site moved onto your new URL.  You wont lose anything you have done up to this point if you don’t want to, or we can always delete the data and let you start again, its completely up to you.

Setting up the ‘Look and Feel’ of your TeamKinetic site

You can start this process as soon as you have your trail or demo site set up, it is actually part of the 10 steps mentioned above in the ‘trial site’ section of this blog. 

All settings and changes to the look and feel of your site will be copied over when your site is moved to its final website address.

To make changes to the look and feel of your site, first click on the cog in the top right of your screen which will display the super admin menu.  

(NB. If you can’t see it, you may not be a Super Admin, don’t worry drop us a quick message and we will get you sorted!)

This menu is where you find all the settings for your site and its where you go if you want to change the colours, fonts, messages and images on your site.   

From here you can change all aspects of the site as you require.  Some of the more advanced options can require a little technical ability, but we are here to support you through the process.  There is lots of detailed help to support you and we are always at the end of the phone or available on live chat if you get stuck.  

You can read the help documents for customising your website at the top right of the screen as shown below.

All this is covered in your training and implementation support but if you want to get started there is nothing stopping you.

Getting your site working the way you want it!

TeamKinetic offers so many options and choices to make sure you can manage your volunteers in the way that works for you and them.  Many of these options you only really need to think about once.  

Again, in the Super Admin menu you have choices that cover Profile, Set Up and Options.  If you want to start to have a play around with these then feel free. 

We have this (really long, sorry!) video that walks you through each option and what impact they might have on how you choose to use TeamKinetic.  Break it into manageable chunks and start to make your way through the menus until you have the setting you think will work for you.  Again, we will go through all this with you in your training, but there is nothing to stop you having a play around as you get to know what TeamKinetic can do.

The default settings are fine for a lot of our customers so don’t worry too much about investigating them all straight away.

Training

As soon as your contract is signed we will be looking to get your training booked.  This is normally delivered online over two half day sessions, though there is lots of flexibility and all this can be adjusted to meet your needs. 

We want you to get the most out of these sessions, so if you have followed the instruction in this blog and had a play around you will come to that first session with lots of questions that we can help you with. 

If you are a little nervous, please don’t worry.  No matter what your technical ability we will have you up and running in no time. 

Go Live!

Once you have got your site set up as you want, and you have started the process of adding your opportunities to the site, you are almost ready to tell the world about your new system.

Our implementation team will work with you on a plan to make all this happen and will provide advice on how to link up your TeamKinetic powered portal with your existing web site.

We are often asked how long this takes, and its a tricky one to answer, as it really depends upon how quickly you are able to get through the set up tasks and how many providers and opportunities you need to add.  We have had customers up and running in less than a week and others who have taken 3 or 4 months.  The key consideration is that you are comfortable with the system and how it works and that it has lot of interesting opportunities for your volunteers to look at.  

Remember, we are with you every step of the way, its really difficult to break TeamKinetic so don’t be worried or sacred about having a play around and good luck on your first step in taking your volunteer management to the next level. We look forward to working with you.

Before we go

Keep up to date with everything TeamKinetic by following us on the following social media channels where you will find useful content, support and access to offers and discounts you will not want to miss.

YouTube for great interviews and how to videos.

https://www.youtube.com/TeamKinetic

LinkedIn to read our latest blogs and thoughts (TeamKinetic) https://www.linkedin.com/company/15082852/admin/

Twitter for the inspirational quotes and funnies (@TeamKineticUK) https://twitter.com/TeamKineticUK

Facebook to talk with our other volunteer managers and to join our master class sessions. (TeamKinetic) https://www.facebook.com/TeamKineticUK/

We want you to help us grow this community.

See you all soon

Chris and the Team

SPAM – THE WORST KIND OF MAIL!

Urgh spam. No, not the canned meat. The inconvenient annoyance that seems to find its way to my email every day! It’s a human thing to receive spam/junk but why do we get it and how can we spot spam? These are the questions that come to mind when I’m staring at an email asking me to click a link to pay for something I swear I never bought! Well, here at TeamKinetic we are going to explain how we protect you against spam, why we get spam and how to spot it… 

Protecting against spam

At TeamKinetic, we don’t want our customers being bombarded with spam emails. So, to help with this we first used Google Captcha, a method which tries to distinguish between robots and humans. But, the robots got smarter! There were signs that the system was getting easily defeated by the bots… Don’t worry it isn’t an i, Robot situation!

Now, we have found a better way to detect and remove as much spam as possible, we use a multifaceted approach which includes:

  • A non human visible honeypot which forms elements that bots love to fill in.
  • Testing to see if JavaScript had been run.
  • Timing how long it takes to complete and submit a form (robots are much faster than humans)!

Why do we get spam?

Its practically impossible to stop all spam. If you are too strict you lose valid emails but if you are not strict enough, too much spam will get through the cracks. It is difficult to find the perfect balance but we feel we have have hit the nail on the head. I can tell you that we get 98% less spam using the combination methods above than when the contact us form is left without protections. Sounds great, but what about that 2% that gets through, how can you spot those types of emails? Keep reading to find out…

How to spot spam emails

Most of the phishing and spam messages we get contain dire messages about your domain name and or the search engine optimisation (SEO) for your website. Your domain, if its is managed by us, is automatically renewed, there is no danger of it being de-registered and neither do you need to pay to keep it registered. The same goes for SSL certificates. Others talk about errors on the website and offer to fix them if you download a program; DONT! As a general rule don’t follow any links in any unsolicited email or message. There are some useful tips for how to spot phishing messages on the IT governance website.

What we advise…

If you get any emails which seem suspicious or you seem to be receiving many at once, never click on a link or send personal information. Open a support ticket or head to our website to start a live chat and we will gladly look into this for you. 

Remember, stay safe offline and online!

3 Reasons Why You Don’t Use SMS Text Messages

If you are reading this, you might not be using SMS text messages to manage your volunteers. And you will have your reasons as to why you feel that SMS text messages would not benefit you, your organisation, or your volunteers. This is where we come in. We’re here to debunk some of the common reasons why organisations think they don’t need text messages to manage their volunteers.

1) You don’t know how to use them

If you have never bought them before, then of course you’re not going to know how to use them. But, it is very easy to pick up. In fact, we have created a video that shows you exactly how to turn text messages on, how to set up automatic messages, how to send texts to specific volunteers, and how to send texts to the volunteers on a specific opportunity. Sending text messages to volunteers has never been so easy!

2) You don’t know the Impact

So, you think your organisation doesn’t need SMS text messages. But, do you know about the impact?

It will make you wonder why you didn’t use them earlier. Here are just a few ways it can ompact your volunteers:

  • You can automatically alert your volunteers by text when they have a session coming up, if their criminal check is due for renewal, or even when one of the providers they follow adds a new opportunity. Not only does this help engagement and encourage volunteers to attend sessions, it also makes your life a lot easier. 
  • Our SMS text messages function has been proved to be a more effective way to reach people and ensure they read your message over email. No longer will you have to worry about people not receiving your email because it either got lost in their inbox, they rarely check their emails, or it just went to spam; sending texts gives a higher chance of volunteers seeing your message.
  • You can easily text groups of volunteers, individual volunteers, or all volunteers on a particular opportunity, and give them the information they need. Alternatively, if you enter a valid mobile number as the reply-to number, volunteers will be able to text you back and continue the conversation. Or you can provide a short name that will let volunteers know where the message has come from, but they will not be able to reply directly. This makes communication a lot easier for both the volunteer and the volunteer manager.

Let’s look at some scenarios for example:

3) It costs too much money

You may worry that using text messages is just another ongoing expense for your organisation, and it is, but, it’s all the brilliant benefits, like the ones mentioned above, that makes it worth the expense.

We also have an offer available for a short time, which may help your organisation if one of your reasons for not buying SMS messages is money. Currently, for every 2 messages you buy, we give you one for free. So when you buy 500 texts, you get 750 and when you buy 1000 texts, you get 1,500. Meaning, the more you buy the more money you save! Perfect for communicating with volunteers, both when in a lockdown and when out of a lockdown. 

So, should I use them?

After reading all through the reasons why you thought you didn’t need SMS text messages, you might be thinking there could be benefits after all. So why not check out our SMS text offer? After all, it is saving you money in the long term. Take a look at our video below which explains how to do this:

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