Pictured above is a visible representation of how I picture myself leaving TeamKinetic on my last day.
Unfortunately for me, this is not quite accurate. And I don’t plan on any casual arson…
But this is officially my last and final blog for TeamKinetic, which has come around a lot faster than I ever could have imagined. TeamKinetic has mirrored a second home for me over the last year. You might even say, a home from home, with most weeks having spent more time with colleges than I had done with my actual family.
At The Beginning Of Time
Like starting any new job, initiation is always needed. You know the usual.
Chris (director): Here are the toilets, this is what to do in case of a fire, oh and do you like roller coasters?
Me: Erm… yeah sure, obviously lying not willing to let the other team members down, and completely ruin the works outing.
All I’m going to say is, never EVER again.
When starting any new job there are always initial uncertainties (some more terrifying than others). Will I be able to fulfil the job role? What if I hate my boss? What if he hates me? What if I don’t know the answer to something? All these little things almost fester in the mind. For me personally, I’m not a huge worrier and have a laid back approach to life. What will be, will be. However, I’m only human and these little things did bother me in the initial few weeks.
But I soon found my footing and so the journey began.
The Journey
Once I had found my inner confidence I was soon able to achieve more than I thought I initially could with TeamKinetic. Working alongside my trusty more literate colleague Alex, I or we were able to take on all the challenges which lay ahead. But I’m not here to bore you with the specific’s of all our adventures. So instead here’s a visual montage of a few things we have been involved with.
Between us
Over 100 blogs published
Consistent development of TeamKinetics SEO
Many many hours spent editing videos
Campaign planning our brains out…
Email, after email, after email
And many office laughs and giggles to accompany
In The End
Like any good story, the end is always near. But it’s been a great story to live.
Huge thanks to Chris, Steve and Rolf for having me.
And do give TeamKinetic volunteer management software a good look around, what they’ve developed over the years is actually pretty good!
Advertising an engaging volunteering opportunity is not always the simplest task. And often the clearest messages can become disfigured, resulting in your opportunity becoming less attractive to prospective volunteers. Below we’ve identified some examples of how to design and present a strong volunteering opportunity on your TeamKinetic platform. Each element has been streamlined to guide you through an on-brand TeamKinetic experience that is engaging and most importantly, eye appealing to your volunteers.
Where should your opportunity live
The most obvious place of all is your own website, for your prospective and current volunteers your website provides a safe and secure portal in which you can display your volunteering opportunities clearly for all to see. In turn, it will also allow you to easily collate data on the number of people viewing your opportunities page, by monitoring web analytics with Google Analytics.
Name your opportunity
Be clear and concise, over the years we’ve seen many volunteer managers fall victim to the mistake of over advertising their volunteering opportunity. The best practice would be describing the opportunity in its simplest form by using as few words as possible, for example ‘volunteer caretaker’. By over complicating simple roles with complex names will only off put your volunteers. You may also wish to add a location, contact email and phone number as these are the key details which your volunteer is likely to need straightaway.
Outline your opportunity
Now here’s your opportunity to say more, no pun intended… When writing your descriptions keep them short and sweet, whilst listing the main tasks the volunteers will be expected to do during the opportunity.
Why not offer an incentive? We’ve found from customer feedback that these make the opportunities more appealing to volunteers. For example, an incentive may be unlimited tea and biscuits or a free T-shirt. If we know anything about volunteers we know they love tea and biscuits.
Finally, summarise the benefits. In this part you will want to describe how this volunteering opportunity will bring your volunteer’s fulfilment. How will their volunteering efforts make a direct impact?
Be clear in your presentations of your opportunity, make key information stand out.
When and where?
These are the fundamental outlines which are absolutely necessary when creating your volunteering opportunity. Day, time and location will outline the commitment time frame in which your volunteers will have to make. Also if possible make clear what type of volunteering opportunity this is, event, ongoing or just a one-off.
Show off the good REVIEWS
Make your feedback visible, think of your feedback like your own personal catalogue of reviews. In a modern world filled with decisions, reviews offer simple and relevant guidance. Similarly to this, the feedback from previous volunteers will provide guidance to your potential volunteers, encouraging them to enjoy the same positive experience.
Call for action
Always leave some visible call to actions, these will encourage the volunteer to perform some form of action. Call to actions may be subtle but they are all nudging your volunteer to do one thing. And that’s registering on your opportunity.
Call actions can include
Social media sharing links
Document printing
Internal links (other opportunities, company website)
Register / Logging in options
Here at TeamKinetic we can help with all your volunteer management needs. Go to our website to create a demo site – it’s completely free! You can also call us on 0161 914 5757 with any questions.
Don’t hesitate to reach out on social media, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can also go to our YouTube channel to see some examples of the features we have to offer and some of the people we already work with.
I was 17 and working at The Blackpool Tower, studying history and art at college. At this point, I was certain that I wanted to study Ancient History at university and leave my creative side behind! This changed (one week before my UCAS deadline, might I add) when I chose a different route instead…talk about last minute! This time, I chose to pursue a creative route within the world of business. Working within the creative world of events at The Blackpool Tower , made me realise I wanted to study Events Management at university.
University
Marketing media for Luna Vision Events
Marketing media for Luna Vision Events
I’m now studying Events Management at Manchester Metropolitan University. Now, contrary to the name, the course isn’t actually just events. The course also covers areas such as law, finance, and marketing. Overall, it is an extremely creative and engaging course, and I began to notice my interests lied within the area of marketing.
Marketing offered the most creative outlet of all areas of my studies. Not only did I get to learn about creative marketing strategies, but I also learnt about designing marketing materials. The most exciting part for me was the design concept, which I got to experience within my events management group. Within the group, I got to design social media posts and promotional posters for our events. This was a new and exciting way for me to be creative, and I couldn’t have enjoyed it more! I knew I wanted to go into a marketing placement where I could expand my knowledge on marketing and enhance my creativity.
Volunteering at University
Volunteering at Village Screen
Studying events management at university also brought me endless volunteering opportunities in the events industry. Since being at university I have volunteered across for multiple companies, but my favourite was The Village Screen. Their pop up cinemas operate all year round and are incredibly creative and immersive. From volunteering at this one event I gained so much. I was able to witness amazing creativity which then inspired my own creativity on my course. I also gained a valuable contact who I continued to work with closely; this gave me valuable work experience. The impact that volunteering has on the volunteer and the company is something I reiterate to everyone I know who is considering volunteering, it can’t be under estimated.
Spare Time
Aside from all things marketing and university, in my spare time I’ve found myself taking up new art projects. I’m always trying to learn new techniques and trying out new styles….although my house is now covered in random canvases.
I have also recently taken up learning BSL sign language. It’s an online course and I hope to retain this skill for years to come. It has been highly engaging and it something I am going to continue to work on so I can help others.
On A Final Note
I am incredibly excited to began my marketing journey within TeamKinetic. I am looking forward to learning more skills that I can continue to use within my progressing career. Also I look forward to meeting some of our clients and understanding more about what they do.
Chloe Isherwood
chloe@teamkinetic.co.uk
For more information on volunteer management software visit our website or call 01619145747
Starting off in life my ultimate dream was to become a dancer. Training 6 days a week, performing once a week and competing twice a month was all I ever knew. The styles of dance I enjoyed ranged from ballet to tap to the latest cheerleading. Each has taught me different life skills and lessons along the way. Dancing has also helped me to grow as an individual, giving me experiences I would never take back, however, I soon came to realise my aching knees weren’t going to take it much longer and decided to drastically change my career path, cue the degree in events.
The Buzz Of Marketing
When starting my Events Management degree marketing was not something I considered as a career. Not until I studied a unit titled marketing an event did I realise this was my passion. From creating a website for a new, trendy (fake) festival to even turning a yellow Corsa into a giant bee to market a real-life event. Each of these projects pushed me creatively in ways I didn’t know possible!
Marketing is the art of revealing peoples emotions through just something as simple as a poster or video. It has amazed me as to how something so simple can impact 1000’s of people. This has inspired me to follow the marketing path as a career and to continue my learning within this industry.
Bee themed car for a marketing campaign.
Volunteer Times
Volunteering was not something I was very aware of, it wasn’t until University when my first volunteering role showed me just how important volunteers can be.
Some of my first roles were for small charities who rely on volunteers to survive. Having that experience changed my perception of volunteering and how much these organisations value their volunteers. Not only this but from working on sporting events and major festivals I have had unbelievable experiences. Being able to see bands and artists for free or watching the Rugby League Grand Final. These opportunities have allowed me to meet like-minded people and have some of the most amazing moments in my life, just from volunteering!
Seeing TeamKinetic create an easy to use volunteer management software for organisations instantly made me want to work for them. Knowing organisations rely heavily on volunteers and also having lived the exciting experiences as a volunteer, I knew this company were creating something incredible and I was keen to be involved.
Lockdown Hobby
During the lockdown, like most people, I decided to take up a new hobby to keep myself busy. I have always been into shoes and clothes, so I decided to start painting them. Each design has opened up my creative mind and has helped me relax, however, this hobby has quickly turned into quite the obsession and I find myself painting till 3 am!
Painted butterfly shoes.
Final Words
I am excited to start this new chapter in my life and am thankful for this opportunity to work with TeamKinetic who will help me to develop my skills in marketing and get some hands-on experience at the same time. I am looking forward to working with a motivated team who share the same values and drive as I do and meeting TeamKinetic’s customers, getting to know more about their organisations and what I can offer for them! I can’t wait to get stuck in!
Sammy Reid
sammy@teamkinetic.co.uk
For more information on volunteer management software visit our website or call 01619145747
All football fans are aware of the current quality of Liverpool FC – a team that won the Champions League earlier this year and looks well suited to win the Premier League now that football is returning.
But away from the pitch, they’re true champions of volunteering. The LFC Foundation has used TeamKinetic’s volunteer management system since May 2018, and we’ve seen first-hand how great the work they do is!
A bit of background info:
The LFC Foundation is the official charity of Liverpool Football Club. Building on the Club’s work in the community over the past 20 years, the charity was formed in 2010. The Foundation delivers 24 community programmes across their three impact areas; Wellbeing, Skills and Communities, every week.
We’ve loved helping the LFC Foundation recruit, retain, and manage their volunteers. We’ve even volunteered with them ourselves! You can find all our LFC Foundation blogs by going to this link.
Liverpool FC dedicating so much time and energy to their foundation volunteers is admirable. Now, of course, other clubs have foundations and recruit volunteers, but do they see it as a focus? It appears that most do not. The work done by the Liverpool FC Foundation gives people from all walks of life a chance to do what they love – play football. When we volunteered there in August, it was great to see how happy everyone was. That happiness was mostly made possible by the LFC Foundation staff and volunteers. We salute you!
A quick look into Premier League teams tells you that not many other clubs place such a focus in their volunteer programmes. In fact, LFC might be the only ones investing in a volunteer management system for their foundation. Is this because other clubs don’t see volunteering as a focus? We hope not! We prefer to believe they just aren’t aware of the benefits of having a volunteer management system yet.
Let me tell you about the benefits of a volunteer management system
Oh, here we go. Another company trying to sell something. While, yes I am trying to sell you something, I’m also trying to save you countless hours and effort you already waste on your current volunteer management processes.
First of all, volunteer management systems help you recruit volunteers more easily. When they sign up to your system, they’ll see all active volunteering opportunities instantly. Beats sending your contact details into an abyss, doesn’t it?
Secondly, a volunteer management system can aid volunteer retention rates. The system will display all ongoing volunteering opportunities, even allowing you to invite volunteers you think will be interested. Meaning that they won’t have to wait for you to contact them about the opportunities your club is hosting. This is likely to encourage your volunteers to keep on volunteering with you for a long time.
Finally, any good volunteer management system should make managing your volunteers a piece of cake. With the ability to communicate with all volunteers through a chat room, create groups, and analyse your volunteers through our reporting features, our volunteer management system should give you all the tools you need to become a champion volunteer manager – and make your life easier!
Want to become a champion too?
Here at TeamKinetic we can help with all your volunteer management needs. Go to our website to create a demo site – it’s completely free! You can also call us on 0161 914 5757 with any questions.
Don’t hesitate to reach out on social media, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can also go to our YouTube channel to see some examples of the features we have to offer and some of the people we already work with.
Think back to New Year’s Eve, 2019. Did you make resolutions? When you pictured 2020 what did it look like? I’m not sure anyone could have predicted what we’re living through right now.
Despite living in such unpredictable circumstances filled with loss, there are still good things happening out in the world. In particular, I want to talk about COVID volunteers – especially during Volunteers’ Week 2020.
Helping Their Communities Through Crisis
The most common form of volunteering recently has been deliveries. Delivering food parcels to those who are most at-risk is a great way volunteers have been helping their local communities.
A further example of volunteers providing basic necessities comes from Compassion London. They’re a group of professional chefs and volunteers who worked out of Wembley Stadium to provide meals for thousands of local people.
A little closer to home for us, The Bread and Butter Thing operates across Greater Manchester. The service redistributes surplus food from supermarkets and manufacturers to people on low incomes – the number of people using this service has risen greatly as a consequence of COVID-19.
Volunteers have also been called upon to ‘befriend’ members of their communities. The scheme pairs volunteers with someone who is alone in isolation. This tackles loneliness which is especially prevalent right now due to lockdown rules.
The key to finding a cure?
Scientists across the world have proposed that human trials could be introduced to test a vaccine quickly. These trials would involve volunteers, and while there are many dangers involved, it could help provide a cure much sooner.
Volunteers would have to be fairly young (mid-twenties) and in good health to apply for the trials. Knowing the potential risks associated with the Coronavirus, volunteers for the trials would be doing an incredibly selfless act.
Want to help?
For anyone considering face-to-face volunteering, you must ensure you are fit and healthy to do so. You can access the latest government advice relating to COVID-19 here. To find local volunteering opportunities, contact your council or simply do a quick ‘volunteering opportunities near me‘ internet search.
You can also search for existing opportunities near you with TryVolunteering.
What have TeamKinetic done to help?
We started offering our volunteer management system free of charge for the duration of the pandemic to help organisations recruit larger numbers of covid volunteers. Furthermore, we created a whole new community tasks dashboard to make it easier for covid-specific tasks to be created and completed. It is our hope that more people are involved with volunteering than ever before!
Find out more about our work through these blog posts:
Take a moment to picture your perfect world, to dream………….Compare that image to what you perceive right now. I suspect it feels different from your perfect world. We wanted to take some time to reflect on what is happening right now, and talk about how what we all can do to make a difference.
This week marks National Volunteers’ Week in the UK, which would usually be a great cause for celebration here at TeamKinetic, as it is a celebration of what can be achieved when people come together. However, this year, this has been overshadowed by the news from America. Yet again, we see the ugly spectre of racism raise its vile head, in the terrible murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. Graphically captured on video and shared a billion times across social media. This shocking scene has put into motion a series of events that look set to rock the world.
Our challenge is how do we plot a course through these terrible events and come out of the darkness to stand together united and stronger, how do we make our dream of a more fair and equitable society for all people, no matter their colour, race, sexual orientation, come true?
Be the change you want to see in the world!
What does it take to build a healthy community? A community operates on some basic fundamental ideals. You need to share beliefs by which you will all choose to live. To do this there needs to be a level of trust between the members. Individuals respect the rights and beliefs of others even if they are different from their own. Individuals have a responsibility to their community to do what is necessary to ensure the beliefs of that community are upheld.
Communities, like families, support and help one another. They don’t always agree on everything, they sometimes have significant disagreements about how to do things, but with effective leadership, trust and respect they can achieve things which seem quite impossible.
Tribalism, partisan politics, popularism, and a rampant misinformation engine are forces that divide society. So now, more than ever we need to make the impossible, possible. To take this dreadful incident and use it as a driver for positive change. No matter your ethnicity, religious or political beliefs, we’re all members of one community, the human race, and if we are to all live together we must all be willing to accept and respect one another.
Each and every one of us has the ability to make a difference, to be a better member of our community. We must take personal responsibility for our actions, its not enough to do nothing, to stay silent. Community is not passive, you need to proactively work for your beliefs and to make your world the place you want to live. It will not be easy, there will be failure and argument, but if you believe in the dream we started this blog with we must all accept our responsibilities.
Be vocal, be organised, but remember. You can’t solve violence with violence
Real change takes time, it requires many millions of people to generate inertia, to vote for politicians that offer hope not hate, that offer a progressive choice not the status quo. This message is not just a hashtag or a social post. Real change, the kind that lasts for generations must be built on a bedrock of a change in peoples beliefs and values. We must all be more vocal when we see discrimination in any form, we must call it out for what it is, as saying nothing is as good as supporting it. We must look at how we support those who have dedicated their lives to fight discrimination.
People are angry. We are seeing violence, born of frustration and fear, but violence can not be the only option, it can’t be the default response, as it will only lead to more fear and more violence. Instead, we need organisation, action and a new community built on the shared beliefs of equality.
Spirit of Volunteering
2020 has been full of lessons about what people are truly capable of, both the good and the bad. We began lockdown by working together and looking after one another, with a pandemic still hanging over all of our heads, we must continue to look after each other through taking responsibility for our own actions. Volunteering has helped massively during this health crisis and is an amazing example of what people are willing to do. I hope we can take similar lessons from the COVID-19 response and use that same energy to make the world a little better for all minority people. Volunteering, getting involved, doing your bit, being an engaged and proactive member within your community, charity, education, sport or health group. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as we continue to unite and work together our dream may one day come true.
We are all one race The Human Race
TeamKinetic want to live by the same values we have discussed here. We want to support the type of organisations that are trying to make the world a more equitable place to live. That is why we are offering the use of our service for FREE for any community group for 6 months that can demonstrate how their work will help address these inequalities. If you would like to take advantage of this offer please contact the team here
We know that the world feels a little uncertain right now and for many of our customers and users, there is significant unease about how they will be able to fund some of their services during this crisis and beyond.
So when we hear of a potential funding source we like to try and share that information with our customers and users. The Community fund has been around for a long time and is a tried and test source of funds for community organisations of all sizes.
They are prioritising funding for communities affected by COVID-19 with a new £200 million fund.
Prioritising projects and organisations supporting communities through the COVID-19 pandemic. To apply for funds click the links below:
If you know of other sources of funding that might be of benefit to our other TeamKinetic users and would be happy to share that information please feel free to get in touch and we will do our best to share that information.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been at the centre of our lives for the past few months. As the chaos begins to settle (slightly), we thought we’d take the time to reflect on our response to the virus.
Let’s go back to the 17th of March. Following new advice from the government to cut all non-essential contact with others, TeamKinetic closed our office and made the switch to working from home.
Business as usual?
Being a provider of volunteer management, we had to wonder whether volunteering could even continue if people were being told to stay at home. However, there were at-risk people out there who were in need of medical supplies and food.
The biggest question we had was how exactly we could help these people in a safe way for both those who were at-risk and the volunteers. We not only had to consider the physical safety of everyone involved, but also the safety of their personal data.
We quickly set to work developing a new system that would connect volunteers wanting to help in their community with people who were in need of help.
New Features Developed
A new simpler, customised home page for organisations to let their volunteers know what their options and opportunities are during the COVID pandemic
Brand new community task feature set that allows for the creation, assignment and management of community requested tasks for vulnerable and at need individuals
API for the community task management
Progressive Web App for volunteers to search/find/join and complete community tasks
Volunteer ID card and QR code for the community task app users
Chat between the assigned volunteer and organisation admins
Push notifications
New Hardware and Infrastructure
Furthermore, we were anticipating spikes in traffic as various announcements were made so made some internal changes to help manage these spikes.
Transferred community task load to AWS elastic servers
New Google map management and capacity (for directions and geo location)
New logging and monitoring installed to check capacity and demand in near real time
Overall, with the new system changes it is now easier and faster to create volunteering opportunities (now called tasks). We believe this significantly helped combat the chaos felt by volunteer managers in the early stages of the pandemic.
Next, we had to find a way to make all our current users aware of this system while also targeting organisations that we thought could benefit from using it.
Creating awareness
The enterprise version of the system is entirely free of charge for the duration of the pandemic. By offering this extended trial period, we hoped as many organisations could get their own systems up and running to spread the positive influence of volunteering as much as possible!
We also hosted a string of webinars showing how to use the system. This allowed viewers to interact with our developers, ask questions, and raise any concerns they had. This seemed to be very beneficial for both us and our customers. It was great to hear from people directly, especially if the comments were full of praise!
You can read all our blogs related to the COVID pandemic by clicking here.
What’s next?
The system is being continually developed to meet the needs of our customers and make the volunteer management process as easy as possible. It’s also important to consider how the system can be used in a post-COVID world. Which is hard to imagine right now! The activities done by these volunteers don’t have to be confined to this pandemic, they can be done at any time. We believe that the kindness shown by these volunteers to help the more vulnerable members of their communities should be the norm across society.
Why can’t we continue to help each other on a daily basis?
Want to try it for yourself?
If you’d like to see how the TeamKinetic system can help you recruit and manage volunteers during COVID and beyond, check out our website to get started with a free trial.
We are delighted to see more organisations decide to use our COVID community task app and we recently zipped past the 2000 completed task mark.
We have been responding to feedback and continuing to develop the application and functionality; the most recent additions are showcased below.
Remember if you want to enable the COVID community task features you can do this at anytime from your super admin options menu.
Push Notifications
Users of compatible devices and browsers will now receive push notifications when new tasks are created or when any actions that concern them directly are performed; task application updates and new task chat messages. Unfortunately, Apple iOS devices do not offer support for push notifications via progressive web apps. Apple iOS users will continue to receive notifications via email when their task status changes or chat messages are sent.
Password Reset
Volunteers can now reset their password directly from the app. They can enter their registered email address and will be sent a PIN which they can enter directly into the app and generate a new password.
Photo Upload
When logging in, if the volunteer does not yet have a profile picture uploaded, the app will ask them to upload one.
The volunteer can change their profile picture at anytime by tapping on the current photo.
ID Card and QR Code
We have added an ID card to the volunteer app so that if challenged when outside the volunteer can show some evidence that they have a valid reason for leaving their home. The included QR code when scanned confirms the volunteers photograph and current status.
Repeat Tasks
A volunteer can now enter a repeat task when completing an existing one. So if the recipient asks the volunteer if they can come back next week, they can record it and you can track it just like a regular task that you have added.
All the task details will be replicated, except the date and time and auto assigned to the volunteer.
Target Completion Date Shown
The target completion date is now shown on the assigned task list without having to tap to show the task details.
