TeamKinetic has over a decade of experience working in the volunteer management sector. In these blogs we offer our insight and hope to shed light on new tips for volunteer managers everywhere.
With a main focus on digital solutions, we’ll take you through best-practice advice for volunteer management and operating in the third sector as a whole.
Even if you haven’t seen the lastest news or attempted to buy hand sanitiser recently, you may have noticed a decline in volunteer participation, and that pasta and toilet roll are now worth more than GOLD!
Keeping your volunteers volunteering and coming to sessions can often be challenging. During a virus pandemic, it’s sure to make that job even harder. In this blog Teaminetic aims to give some practical advice to keep your volunteers volunteering.
Reassure
Reassurance will be key. The message to volunteers should be to not panic, that volunteering should be proceeded as normal unless specific advice is received. During this time you may need a higher level of communication between yourself and your volunteers. Clear communication will help to remove the anxiety that volunteers may be feeling, and help you restore confidence through reassurance that you are doing everything possible to reduce risk.
Prepare
Preparation is key, and following a few simple rules will help.
Assuring hand sanitizing stations are filled and available
Surfaces that are regularly used have been cleaned, countertops, doorknobs etc.
Asking politely that anyone who isn’t feeling well to not attend sessions.
Provide disposable wipes so that commonly used surfaces like keyboards, remote controls, desks etc can be wiped down by volunteers before each use.
Enable micro-volunteering or volunteering from home.
Notifications
Keep volunteers up to date with the latest news from your organisation, via newsletters, emails, texts and social media channels. A lot can happen in 24 hours as we’ve previously seen. The fluid situation could mean that sessions or events might need to be cancelled at short notice, so try to keep your volunteers informed.
Volunteering from home
There is a high probability that people could be asked to work from home. If, or when, the government issues these measures, perhaps your organisation could adopt virtual or micro-volunteering in order to maintain volunteer involvement.
Micro volunteering involves low commitment action towards a cause. Micro-volunteers can choose how and when they volunteer, providing they have access to the internet via a laptop, tablet smartphone etc.
Micro-volunteering opportunities could involve.
Signing online petitions
Writing blogs
Re-tweeting and posting relevant content on Facebook and Twitter.
Providing feedback on marketing materials.
Creating Facebook Live meetings or Google Hangouts meetings.
Getting creative by generating material for upcoming events.
Micro-volunteering and virtual volunteering will not replace traditional volunteering. However, during COVID-19 it maybe your best option in order to maintain engagement and stay tuned with your volunteers.
In the meantime
What can we all do to help prevent the spread of COVID-19?
Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or your sleeve (not your hands) when you cough or sneeze.
Put used tissues in the bin.
Wash your hands with soap and water often – use hand sanitiser gel if soap and water are not available. Remember to wash your hands for 20 seconds, whilst singing God save the Queen (Other songs are available).
Try to avoid close contact with people who are unwell.
Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces.
Refrain from touching your eyes, nose or mouth if your hands are not clean.
Stay positive, remain calm and don’t worry, there’s enough toilet roll for everyone…
What positive changes should volunteer managers be anticipating throughout the upcoming year? TeamKinetic aims to explore the changing avenues in which you may find yourself turning down at any given point.
Embracing Technology
This year alone there are predicted to be 51 million smartphone users, who will have access to various apps on their phones. For the volunteer manager, this is brilliant as many volunteer management systems – including our own can operate through an app. Creating more ways in which you can manage and communicate with your volunteers. Which will help your volunteer management run a lot smoother, not just for you but your volunteers as well.
Training
Phone calls and face to face meeting could be starting to become a thing of the past. Many organisations including ourselves are now adopting the use of ‘virtual help’. This being online support which is readily available for all volunteers. Virtual help makes good use of platforms like YouTube, instant messaging and help forms. Which in short saves the volunteer manager time.
Ageing Population
People are living longer and healthier lives, which isn’t a surprise. People are starting to take a lot better care of themselves by feeling more inclined than ever to live healthier active lifestyles.
Therefore volunteer managers should expect a rise in the number of older volunteers with time and energy to volunteer. Perhaps its time volunteer managers shifted perceptions of the ‘old’ volunteer, and started removing aged based limits on volunteering opportunities. Although people aged 65 and over are 45% more likely to volunteer than any other age group, only 6% of those over 65 actually feel old. Meaning older volunteers are more than happy to take part in more physical volunteering opportunities – if given the opportunities to do so.
A common theme that our customer relations team has found here at TeamKinetic is that. The wording of opportunities can often make volunteers not want to join an opportunity. Volunteer managers should try to be mindful when writing volunteering opportunities, as certain words can make opportunities sound more physically tiring, boring or even more complex than they actually are.
Younger Volunteers
There are small indications that the younger generations are starting to volunteer a lot more than they used to. 70% of 18 – 24-year-olds have reported having volunteered at some point in the last year. Recent interviews held by TeamKinetic and student volunteers help support this statistic, as many students did volunteer in some shape or form. Either to improve their academic profile or just because they wanted to give back to their community and have fun. This increase in younger people volunteering only gives volunteer managers more options and opportunities to attract younger volunteers, who are enthusiastic to help and be apart of a volunteering programme.
Volunteer Led Opportunities
Volunteer-led opportunities involve listening and understanding what your volunteers want to do. It’s a growing trend that organisations are listening more to their staff and their customers. It would only be right to suggest that volunteer managers could do the same. A volunteers feedback could pose to be very useful as they are the ones taking part in the opportunities on a regular basis (on the front line as you may say). Suggesting it might be worth allowing volunteers to take lead on some opportunities, as this could be more impactful or at the very least, given the time to suggest new ideas.
A Question of Flexibility
How much flexibility volunteers have is always going to be a changing factor. Pictured above are some of the many reasons why the average person is soo busy. Considering these in modern volunteer management could mean thinking about running more “one-off opportunities”. which are opportunities that don’t happen on a regular basis (perhaps monthly), allowing time for volunteers to adjust their schedules, making it so they don’t have to commit to a specific time frame every week.
For more information on TeamKinetic volunteer management, visit our website or call us on 0161 914 5757.
Phil and his co-workers wanted to manage their volunteers, however, things took a turn for the worst & now Phil and his co-workers are here…
Probably the most annoying platform to manage anything – never mind volunteers. My deepest sympathies are with those who have fallen down the bottomless rabbit hole of endless Excel Spreadsheets, which are over-occupied with volunteers.
Does anyone truly understand Excel?
Few people truly understand all the functionalities of spreadsheets – because there are way too many! Therefore the job is left to one person, who quickly becomes very demotivated and almost consumed by the spreadsheet itself.
Just keep scrolling…
Scroll, after scroll. This is often associated with your current method of managing your volunteers. Finding the volunteer Jack Jones who wants to volunteer at the annual 10K run, couldn’t get any more complicated. However, by having a volunteer management system in place, your job could be a lot easier. Volunteer profiles can be easily searched for across the whole system.
Worry less
When it comes to your volunteers there are a few things that they are guaranteed to ask. Where, when and what. Volunteer management systems worry about all this for you, by giving your volunteers their own profile and portal where they can access all this information and even more.
The nightmare of event planning
You may have noticed Excel isn’t exactly the best for building your events, making the process highly laborious. No template on Excel can simplify all of that! But it doesn’t have to be this way. Volunteer management systems provide a simplified solution to what once seemed a strenuous task. Save your own time and leave your explicit language along with Excel.
Manage volunteers with more confidence
You may be able to encrypt and password-protect the data stored on your Excel Spreadsheets. However, what happens when someone cracks your spreadsheet’s ‘safe password’? Every piece of data is then stolen, this won’t be just your budgets and accounts, this will be the personal data of your volunteers. But you don’t need to take this kind of risk with your volunteer’s data. Volunteer management systems are fully protected and encrypted with the most up-to-date security encryptions and they follow all new GDPR data regulations.
An open-ended platform for everyone to access easily.
Consider the simple life and save on the sheets, one personalised and customisable system is all you need. Consider TeamKinetic, we might just be able to help.
You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:
Note: One of the greatest Christmas movies EVER! besides Love Actually
Christmas is slowly gaining upon all of us, for those with children it can be a time of bliss and happiness. To wake up and see your children’s faces, as they quickly become overwhelmed by the sight of the over stacked present and a half-eaten carrot left by Rudolph. It’s also the time that we get to see all the family members that we hugely avoid all year, I mean love seeing… well at least pretend to for the day.
But before I continuously ramble on about how much I love Christmas (Bah humbug) I must dive into talking about gifting Santa’s real helpers.
Santa’s real helpers
Volunteers are very much the real helpers in the world. Like Elves, volunteers work tirelessly without pay and put the needs of others before themselves all year round. Such selfless acts should not go unrecognised. So I think it would only be right if we all rewarded our helpers with a little something this Christmas. A thank you is all very well and an excellent way to show your appreciation. But at Christmas, everyone loves a present.
I’ve made a list, I’ve checked it twice and I know which gifts are just right…
Custom thank you boxes
A cost-effective gift that can be customed to your helpers. Perhaps more for the lady helpers in the world, but will look very impressive under the tree. In the box could be bath bombs, creams, soaps and candles (no one holds a candle to you). You can thank me for that one later.
Handwritten cards
Simple but a handwritten heartfelt card with true meaning will pull at the heartstrings of your helpers. The words which you write will really count.
Helping hand tree
Volunteers love a personal touch! Which I highly recommend for those helpers who work with children. Using cut-outs of the children’s hands and getting them to write a small personal message. This would be a well-received gift.
Thank You for your Thyme Plant
Small but comical gesture for your helpers, after all, they have spent a lot of their thyme with you. Maybe it’s about thyme you gave some back… Okay, I’ll stop now.
Christmas Party
Go on throw a Christmas party, celebrate your volunteers for a whole evening. Awards, certificates and special guest speakers would help show your true appreciation to your helpers. Watch out for Mary on the double Ports though!
Everyone loves a mug
Now we know for a fact, volunteers love a good cuppa tea. And I’m sure as a volunteer manager you know only too well. So logically your helpers would probably appreciate a customised mug.
The true spirit
No matter what you end up giving your volunteers this Christmas, really it doesn’t matter. Providing you’ve put sincerity behind your gift I’m sure your helpers will be thankful to have received something.
Volunteer managers are vital to a number of organisations and do a lot more than you may even realise. Managers should be celebrated all year, not just on the 5th of November. We’d like to say a huge well done to all the volunteer managers we work with and have met; keep up the amazing work!
Importance of volunteering
Let’s go back to basics… Why should we place so much importance on volunteering in the first place?
Well, volunteering has a range of benefits:
It’s good for your mental and physical health.
It connects you to others, allowing you to make friends and improve social skills.
It can advance your career, teaching you valuable job (and life) skills.
It brings fun and fulfilment to your life while letting you give back to your local community.
Even reduces the risk of mortality!
Volunteer Managers
Volunteer managers all across the world help to bring these benefits to people who work with their organisation, making them one of the most important positions at any non-profit. They have to keep volunteers engaged, excited about the work, and productive. It is also important that the volunteer manager thank volunteers for their contributions by any small means possible, being polite can mean a lot to your volunteers.
While the volunteer manager is responsible for rewarding their volunteers, we believe they should be recognized for all their hard work too. What better day to celebrate them on than International Volunteer Managers Day?
Perfect time to say thank you
If you’re a volunteer, work for a non-profit, or just know someone who is a volunteer manager, why not send them a quick message thanking them for all their hard work? And if you’ve come across this blog on any day other than the 5th of November, you can still thank them! We shouldn’t feel like we need an excuse to appreciate the hard work of others.
Thinking of becoming a volunteer manager?
Here are a few things you can expect to be in your job role.
Working with departments within your own organisation or with organisations for which you’re recruiting volunteers (e.g. charities and councils). By understanding how they work and developing partnerships.
Generating appropriate volunteering opportunities based on the needs of the organisation.
Promoting volunteering (internally and externally) through recruitment and publicity strategies and campaigns.
Ensuring there are appropriate supports and training for volunteers.
This is just a few, to say the least, but you never know what your future may hold. We could be celebrating you on a day like today.
Are you a volunteer manager wondering how to make your life easier?
Why not look into volunteer management software? It can save you massive amounts of time and let you direct your efforts to what really matters. What’s more, any good system will allow your volunteers to take ownership of their accounts, show you a variety of reports, and enable you to reward those who give their time for you.
If you’re interested, go to our website, follow us on socials, and check out what TeamKinetic can do for you.
You may have witnessed driving past a rescue team late at night in gruelling weather conditions, with deafening sirens and eye-capturing flashing lights. Or alternatively, you may know someone personally who may have ended their night by dialling the emergency services. Many UK rescue teams work voluntarily like Mountain Rescue and British Red Cross. But why would anyone want to keep volunteering for a cause which is considered physically and mentally tiring?
Here are 5 ways how your organisation can help retain your hardworking volunteers and keep them smiling.
1. Be Realistic
The Earth isn’t flat.
Let us skip back to basics if you want to engage your volunteers. Opportunities should have actionable goals in which will enable your volunteers to be successful when volunteering. If your volunteers have no clear set of directions, then how will he or she find their way? Volunteers also need to be clear on what your organisation stands for. Volunteers should be made clear of your mission and vision statements. This will then allow them to understand the type of organisation they are working for. Retaining volunteers to work coherently to achieving what your business wants will help aid success.
2. Show Results
It’s all very well getting volunteers to join opportunities, however where are the results? Showing results is highly important to positively motivate your volunteers. Volunteers want to hear feedback from an opportunity they have participated in. This can easily be communicated in a polite informal email or text, this would make the volunteer then feel valued. It’s key that your volunteers feel valued for their efforts. Because this generates a sense of belonging, which is a key psychological need which will help retain volunteers. Volunteers who feel like they belong will not need to leave.
3. Communicate And Recognize
The best way to establish trust between an organisation and its volunteers is to talk to them. This is a really simple way of further developing relationships. Which can be done over a vast amount of platforms, emails, text messages, phone calls, and social media. It’s important to know where your audience is so you can communicate with them in the most appropriate form.
Everybody likes to be recognized for their achievements, even your non-profit volunteers. This recognition will stimulate a sense of gratitude between the volunteers and yourselves, making them want to volunteer again. A key part of retaining volunteers is recognising any type of achievement because this affects the self-esteem of anybody. Think about yourself for a moment, would you like an achievement you’ve done to be praised? I know personally that any form of praise or congratulations lifts my mood and motivates me to keep on the right path. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a huge gesture, it could be verbal or written. Volunteers who are recognized for their achievements are more likely to have higher self-esteem, a more positive outlook on life, and better mental health.
4. Involve the community
Try to be inclusive to everyone to retain volunteers, by encouraging volunteers to get neighbours, friends, and family members from the community to join opportunities with them. This will only make the experience more enjoyable for the volunteer. We all need to feel emotionally and physically safe, and we all need close supportive relationships. A sense of community provides this, by giving local people a voice to connect with one another and meet new people.
5. Volunteer Management
Does your organisation offer opportunities which are concise, clear and easy to connect to online. If not, then it will be vitally important that you consider using volunteering management software. If your services are easy to use then you are ten times more likely to retain existing volunteers. Making your volunteering management system easier will help your organisations productivity, plus will help the volunteers connect to your opportunities. Statistically, adults over the age of 65 are more likely to volunteer; this age group of people do not consider themselves to be most confident online and are hesitant to use a computer. Meaning the simpler your online portal, the more likely you will be to retain existing volunteers.
A final note from Teamkinetic
Although these five tips for retaining volunteer are important to follow, it’s equally important to note. People consistently volunteer because volunteering is aligned and persistent with their own personal characteristics and self-image. People value what they are doing and are able to extract benefits from the volunteering experience, which helps with their own self-growth. Like anything in life people either want to do something or they don’t, you won’t be able to retain everyone. Although we hope you can.
World Mental Health Day is a day of global mental health awareness and education, which aims to eliminate the stigma behind mental health. Life, as we all know, can be difficult and these problems can arise and affect many of us in a whole range of ways. How our bodies cope with this can have different effects on our mind and soul. Before we judge one another be mindful of what that person may have gone through, what wars they may have battled and what obstacles they may have overcome or maybe overcoming. It’s time to leave our judgmental thoughts and started looking after each other. The world we live in today faces too much animosity and hostility. We must all learn to love and get along with one another, we all live in one world – it’s time we became one and start working together.
Mental Health in the UK
Around one in four people in the UK will suffer from mental health issues each year, while only one in eight people are receiving treatment for mental health. One in six people in England each week suffer from a common mental health issue such as depression and anxiety.
A total of 70.9 million prescriptions for anti-depressants were given out in England in 2018 by the NHS. This is an increase of 3.4 million from 2017 to 2018. From 2015 to 2018 the number of prescriptions for anti-depressants for young people increased by almost 1 million! From these figures, it is clear to say mental health is an issue which is rising in the UK.
Causes of mental health issues
Mental health issues can affect people for a wide range of reasons. Trauma, loss, isolation, abuse, unemployment and the list keeps going. For many individuals, it’s a various combination of factors/experiences which have lead to negative outcomes. Yet everyone is different, one person’s mental stability will have different variances to what they are more tolerant of than others.
Social media
Over the last decade, social media has grown dramatically making each and every one of us more connected than we ever have been. Developing relationships which are halfway around the world is now a reality. On average a person in the UK checks their phone 28 times per day! It often makes me think what has the world come to, is this right? or is this wrong? or is this just the world we live in today and this is merely just evolution?
Implications of social media
The bottom line is that social media can have a detrimental effect on our mental health. Especially on the younger generation. Who are almost dependable on their mobile device, almost feeling lost without it. I know myself only being 20 that I do find it hard to break away from my device, I’m not proud of this and I do wish I could separate away more easily. Essentially social media is minimizing the human connections we make with one another. Limiting our social and communication skills in the real world because our heads are buried way beneath endless tweets and trending hashtags. Taking us away from the real world and keeping us trapped in virtual reality. Where we only care about our virtual selves and how others view us on various social platforms.
Low self-esteem is something young people suffer with when scrawling down photoshop perfect Instagram profiles. Where the immaculate and perfect image is captured – after hours upon hours of makeup editing and light adjustments! A study found people suffer from envy and self-doubt, as a result of comparing their own lives to those which are deemed to have the perfect lavish lifestyles we apparently all crave.
This leads me to say that it’s no wonder that social media is leading to unhappiness in people if used without caution. Causing anxiety and depression. We’re in a constant battle with ourselves to be better than everyone else, to look and dress the best, when really we should be happy and comfortable in our own skins. However many of generation Z have realised their infatuation with their smartphones and social media and have begun to quit various platforms. In an attempt to restore their mental health.
Volunteering and Mental Health
Volunteering can significantly boost your mental health and well-being. Mental and emotional well-being was found to be better in those who volunteer frequently, and worse in those who didn’t offer their help in any form. Recently universities in Birmingham and Southampton conducted a survey of 5,000 households across the UK. Those that volunteered regularly scored six per cent higher on the health and wellbeing.
Older generations
Voluntary work done by those over the age of 65 is set to be worth £5bn more in 2020 than it was in 2010. Volunteering provides a purpose and meaning, especially to older people who may find themselves more isolated than they used to be. Allowing them to build a social network of friends in which they can meet up with on a regular basis improving the well-being of the volunteer. The association is simple, the higher your well-being the more inclined you will feel to help others. Vice versa, the more you help others the higher your state of well-being.
Unemployed
Those in unemployment tend to have lower self-esteem and mental health. Without employment, people find it hard to motivate themselves for the day ahead. They have no structure, paid income, and feel they have less of an identity. Voluntary work will be able to benefit someone who is unemployed, helping them regain structure in life. Although the work is unpaid and will not be able to replace that aspect, it still gives people meaning and purpose.
Employers are more likely to employ someone has done voluntary work, over someone who has not. Volunteering allows you to acquire skills and knowledge which can be put to good use in employment, demonstrating higher levels of productivity as a potential employee. Also, it’s not just about what you know, it’s who you know to get you in the front door! Volunteering allows people to network giving them the opportunity to meet people they may never have met before, which could lead to great employment opportunities further on.
On a final note
As many of you already know TeamKinetic is a strong believer in volunteering and all the good in which can come from volunteering. But today the most important message of all is to be aware of mental health issues globally. If you suffer from mental health issues seek help and seek advice, don’t be afraid to talk to.
See below specialist mental health services.
The Samaritans offer emotional support 24 hours a day, in full confidence. Call 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org.
Mind provides information on a range of mental health topics to support people in their own area from 9.00 am to 6.00 pm, Monday to Friday. Call 0300 123 3393 or email info@mind.org.uk.
Anxiety UK runs a helpline staffed by volunteers with personal experience of anxiety from 9:30-5:30, Monday to Friday. Call 08444 775 774.
MindEd is a free educational resource on children and young people’s mental health for all adults.
As a purveyor of volunteer management software, you would not be surprised to hear me evangelise about the importance of technology in volunteer management and the potential opportunities for efficiency, scale and reduced operating costs. In this article, I want to explore what technologies we think are important now and will be important in the future, but more importantly than the technology itself. I want to look at how the technology works with the human experience to build stronger more coherent communities.
I don’t need to tell the readers of this blog, that volunteers and volunteer management do not easily fit into any single box. Unlike employees, the relationship between volunteers and the organisations they give their time to is unique and comes with its own set of unique risks and considerations. So what technologies can you leverage to make your volunteer management more effective?
HR Software
Let’s start with the dry and boring, but essential and important stuff. Did you know that only 5% of charities currently have and use HR software? That means 95% of charities are not safeguarding their volunteers. That is a massive number who may be leaving themselves exposed to GDPR and data-breach fines.
Organisations, big and small, must ensure they fulfil their duty of care to their volunteers. They need to keep them safe and ensure they are appropriately trained and inducted. They also need to make sure only people with the appropriate skills and training are allowed to access certain higher-risk roles. Some voluntary opportunities carry significant risks for the volunteer, the service users and the organisation itself, and these risks need to be mitigated.
To ensure an organisation is compliant with employment law, health and safety law and GDPR, HR software provides a methodology to track and report on an ever-changing workforce. From general trends on the demographics of your volunteers, how many men, women etc, to which of my volunteer’s criminal records check is coming up for renewal.
Having all your volunteer records available, searchable and customisable means you can quickly identify training needs, skills gaps and individuals who may pose a potential risk to the organisation or have the ability to do more for the organisation.
Volunteers are not employees! So the data you hold on them is different to that you might have on your paid staff. Under GDPR you must have a valid reason for holding data that might be considered personal or sensitive. Volunteers can be deployed across various business areas and as such certain information will be required to be shared with managers, employees and partners about that volunteer so that they can be deployed safely and appropriately.
Your HR software needs to be flexible enough to deal with the unique nature of volunteers whilst being robust enough to protect the individuals and the organisation.
The question we ask organisations to consider: is your HR system the right place for your volunteer’s data? If not what are your options?
Brokerage
Great! you have a list of potential volunteers, you know a little about them; their demographic information, maybe a little history on their experiences. What do you do next?
Getting the right people into the right roles is the difference between a successful volunteer programme and a failed volunteer programme. How effective your brokerage is, determines how well volunteers are matched. We think the key elements of effective digital brokerage are:
High-quality information so volunteers and organisations can make informed judgements on what suits them and what they want to do.
Effective search and filter tools, that enable users to quickly find what is important to them presented in a way that lets them scan large volumes of information quickly. Time, location, keyword, accessibility are all the types of key data points users want to be able to refine their search criteria by.
Opportunity brokerage that gives the volunteer ownership of their experience but that also allows organisations to check and limit opportunities based on experience, skills, qualifications and available references.
Matching people to opportunities means you need to have what people are looking for. This involves doing two things, having enough opportunities that your volunteers have lots of choices and having real insight into what your volunteers are searching for.
Having enough opportunities to create real choice is a challenge, especially when you first get going, so a system that can pull opportunity data from other sources would be useful.
Being able to share your opportunities across other national brokerage sites via API‘s
Understanding your volunteers and what they are looking for, means you can inform your opportunity providers on what they should be offering, and what keywords they should be used to describe their offer so people can find them.
Do you need brokerage..? Is your brokerage resource-intensive and require your staff to spend too much time data inputting?
I appreciate volunteers are not customers! And they are not Employees! But they do occupy a space in between these two entities. They do have a choice over how they spend their time, they need to be looked after like you would regular customers. So how do you do this?
An effective CRM provides a set of tools that allows you to communicate and measure the effectiveness of those communications with your customers.
Being able to create lists of volunteers based on experience, demographic information or skill and qualification means you can target emails, newsletters or SMS text messages. Tracking the impact of these communications in regards to the performance of your opportunities enables you to understand which of your communications are most effective and perhaps why.
A CRM will provide you with a method for tracking interactions, identifying volunteers who are suited to certain opportunities and will make it easy to use the digital communication tools to reach out to these people.
36% of potential volunteers experienced barriers to volunteering due to potential communication issues, e.g. a lack of response to their application, or lack of clarity and understanding about the role. Could your customer relationship management be limiting the number of volunteers your organisation receives?
Should your volunteers be in your customer relationship software, or is there somewhere else they might be better placed..?
Social
Whatever your view on social media, you can’t ignore it if you are looking to engage an audience.
Social media provides a range of potential benefits for organisations and provides a powerful method of growing your audience via volunteer’s social groups and followers. Sharing opportunities and experiences that you are passionate about with your social media audience will improve your opportunity engagement.
Looking at how you integrate social features into your volunteer’s experience will enhance retention and make your programme more sustainable, help build a feeling of community and allow you to share incentives and future opportunities. Can you use technology that allows you to create groups and communities?
Existing applications such as Facebook, What’s App, Twitter and Linked In all provide tools, but you must also consider that these services have some hidden costs in their use. How exposed are your uses to their data being used by these large organisations, do you as an organisation have the control you need over these external applications to protect your users and your organisation’s reputation, do you want to share all your user’s data with these 3rd party social networks?
It’s important to know your volunteer demographics well enough to be able to target them effectively on social media. The top social media platform used differs by generation – Gen Z (19 and under) use YouTube, Twitter, and Snapchat the most, while the older generations (20 – 70+) spend most of their time on Facebook. (Mintel 2019)
You want to take advantage of the benefits of social media and the potential for your work to become a viral sensation without the inherent risks these platforms pose. You must invest time in developing your organisation’s online persona, growing an engaged audience on the platforms that you identify as appropriate for your volunteers and managing that profile to ensure you stay relevant. To do this requires considerable staff resource and knowledge of the platform to use it effectively.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could find a way to generate social content and link to your accounts.? Would it also be great if your volunteers and providers can share and engage socially as well.?
TeamKinetic
Our ambition at TeamKinetic was to develop a platform that allowed a volunteer manager to take advantage of all the above technology in one place. A platform that was specially designed for working with the unique considerations that arise with volunteers.
TeamKinetic is volunteer-centric – built to make the life of the volunteer as easy as possible. Built to allow volunteers to take ownership of their experiences, to take advantage of their social media and allow them to easily communicate with opportunity providers and other volunteers.
Designed for the entire volunteer life-cycle: from recruitment, through onboarding to deployment, and then with tools that would lead to better volunteer retention. TeamKinetic provides a framework of checks and balances to ensure the volunteers are safe, the wider service users are safe, and the organisation can meet its legal responsibilities and deliver high-quality, insight-driven experiences for its volunteers.
TeamKinetic is built on the principals of open data, with tools that allow the linking and sharing of certain data. This approach means organisations can use TeamKinetic in isolation or as a ‘best in category’ tool or they can link it to other software they use to create a more complete picture of their business. Simple to use features allow data and reporting exports as well as built-in data sharing functions. This allows quick and simple sharing with other brokers and applications.
For most organisations, having multiple applications, software and systems can be too complicated and expensive. TeamKinetic’s ambition is to provide all these services, and the ability to link to more as required, in a specialised volunteer management product. Our hope is that it is both cost-effective and feature-rich. This approach means you can have an ‘available any time’, web-based service that has a free mobile application, powerful data tools, customisable design features, and is built for the express job of managing volunteers. A service that is updated and improved every year at a cost that will not break the bank.
Finally, as a specialist in this sector, TeamKinetic has vast experience in how to use the available technology to get the very best from your volunteers. Our extensive support means volunteer managers can get good advice from both TeamKinetic and other volunteer managers who use the TeamKinetic system, sharing good practice and learning from each other. TeamKinetic’s value does not end with its software. Its true value is in shared best practice and the use of high-quality data that allows all our customers to look at ways in which they can improve their volunteers’ experiences.
If you want to see how TeamKinetic can help you, please feel free to get in touch here. We would love to give you the tour and show you how TeamKinetic could change your world. Just get in touch and we can arrange a 30-minute demo and 30-day free trial, so you can see for yourself how much more you might be able to do.
It is with some sadness that TeamKinetic and Do-it.org will no longer be working together. Users who take advantage of the link between the two applications will no longer be able to share opportunities to Do-it after Friday 27th September.
For those who do use this feature, you may have noticed over the last few months it had become a little unstable and prone to misbehaving. Do-it has decided that they no longer wanted to support this feature and it will be removed on Friday the 27th September. It would be safe to assume all existing opportunities will be removed though we strongly suggest you check if this could affect you after the 27th.
Do-it.org did not provide detail as to why they no longer wanted to support the TeamKinetic link, but we know they continue to review their platform and develop their technology and sometimes these types of features are no longer a priority for an organisation to support. We thank Do-it for their support over the last 3 years and wish them all the very best, moving forward.
All our customers will still be able to link their opportunities to our own free national platform at TryVolunteering.com, which will continue to give you extra reach and exposure. We recommend always sharing with TryVolunteering if you can.
TeamKinetic customers in Wales and Scotland can also continue to link with Volunteering-wales.net and VolunteerScotland.
TeamKinetic continues to look at how we can use our data to benefit the volunteer sector and stand by our ‘open data’ principals. We will continue to explore opportunities to work with partners to grow volunteer participation and we hope those customers who used this feature are able to work with us as we look at new partners for them to share their opportunities with.
If you have any questions as to how this might impact you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via email, twitter, facebook or give us a call here in the office.
This blog has been inspired by Rob Preston, a senior reporter at Charity Finance Magazine and the author of a recent article highlighting that fewer people are volunteering.
The article (Fewer people volunteering, says DCMS survey), highlights that only 36 per cent of people volunteered at least once in the year to March 2019. The lowest level recorded by the survey, which was run by The Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. However, here at TeamKinetic we are committed to knocking down those barriers!
Childcare issues
Milo and his son intensely playing with Lego!
I know from being a parent myself looking after your child can be, to say the least, a tiring task. However, it is highly enjoyable, especially if you love playing with Lego as much as they do!
Childcare constraints do not need to stop you from volunteering, many volunteering opportunities can be done with your children.
MCRVIP has many child-friendly opportunities around the city like the cleaner city opportunity and the park maintenance opportunity, these are just two examples of where you and your children could volunteer and bond together. Not only is this something to do instead of being housebound but, it teaches the children the importance of volunteering and giving back to your community.
Having an illness or disability
Never let a disability hold you back, is the advice from Nicola Taylor, who didn’t let her disability get in the way of what she wanted to achieve in volunteering.
“I have cerebral palsy and am a wheelchair user. I felt very isolated as I had no social outlet. Previously I was invited to a presentation evening with Volunteering Matters and started talking to Mandy, from the SAFE project. About doing some volunteering for the project with her as I wanted to do something for myself and help others.
I have a particular interest in working with those with autism spectrum disorder as I have a nephew who is on the spectrum. When Mandy told me she would be starting a group with girls from the integrated autism service, I was very keen but felt there might be a financial impact as I would have to get an accessible taxi from my home. However, Mandy assured me that Volunteering Matters would cover the travel expenses – and that the venue would have disability access.
I am now co-facilitating the group and love it! I am helping others receive important messages and love seeing them gaining confidence week by week. Volunteering has helped me a lot; I feel pretty good about myself and I have also learned a lot from the workshops. I am keen to learn more and help out at further workshops in the future.”
Nicola Taylor
I hope Nicola’s story can inspire people to give volunteering a go. Volunteering has made a life-changing impact on Nicola’s life and It might just be able to do the same to yours.
Study commitments
Being a student myself I know the workload can be high, especially around deadline dates. So I understand finding spare time can be difficult. However, I recently got to chat with the successful student and volunteer El Afzal. El has been volunteering for quite some time now, some would say she’s a bit of a volunteering athlete!
How did you get into volunteering whilst at university?
“Through my tutors on my course (Event Management), and also through the MMU Sports TeamKinetic portal. I had very little experience in Events and really wanted to give myself the best start to my university time and career. My tutor guided me to a matchday volunteering with Manchester Futsal, running the reception and ticketing on matchdays. And I found my own volunteering through TeamKinetic where I volunteered at BUTL (British University Taekwondo League) UK Regional Taekwondo championships.”
How do you manage Studying and Volunteering at the same time?
“Despite most of it being linked to my degree and my career goals, I find the volunteering I’m doing to be my downtime. I have such a variety of volunteering under my belt that now I know what I’ll enjoy, and what will help me relax. So the first week of every month I go to Desert Island Discs with Manchester Cares in Ancoats, and have a brew with older neighbours and laugh and dance to some music. Or having post-match wings and drinks with Manchester Futsal team is a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
I do make sure that with my studying I have at least one evening off working and revision to do something I enjoy and that makes me feel happy, it helps keep a balance and stop me from getting too bogged down.”
Do you feel volunteering whilst being at university has helped you, and if so why?
“Yes, definitely! Volunteering has opened a lot of doors for me. It’s led me onto new roles in organisations I already volunteered at which has led to further job offers.
Volunteering genuinely has helped me develop some vital skills and industry knowledge which I needed. Also, it’s a fantastic way of naturally networking with others; I’ve had fellow volunteers wanting to help and offer introductions and work experience/internships with people they know.”
What would you say to any student who is studying at university but is apprehensive about volunteering?
“I’d say to do some research and find a role you actually want. Don’t volunteer somewhere if it doesn’t interest you because you won’t get as much out of it. Try looking at something that could fit your current skill set, or is with a company/charity you actually want to work with. But volunteering is more rewarding the more you put in, so you have to go in and be willing to get out of your comfort zone. So research, apply, enjoy and get stuck in!”
Never considered it or not aware of groups that need help
Many people don’t really know how they can get involved in volunteering, it can be on your doorstep, or abroad. Many just have never given it a second thought. But I hope I can enlighten a few people to give volunteering a go, all you need is your laptop, mobile or tablet to get started on your first opportunity near you. Here are a handful of sites which could kick start your volunteering opportunities.
Your local city or town council is the perfect place to start. Your council website will additionally assist you in being able to volunteer locally. For first time volunteers, I would highly recommend trying your council’s website as your first call to action.
You may not have realised it yet but local accredited volunteer centres are everywhere. They’re an excellent way for first-time volunteers to get involved, by understanding your interests they can match you with suitable volunteering opportunities.
TryVolunteering.com ran by us here at TeamKinetic, encourages all people from all walks of life to get involved in volunteering. TryVolunteering.com also allows people to set up accounts as opportunity providers, providers can then advertise volunteering opportunities – but don’t worry its all FREE!
Don’t just do it for yourself, do it for someone else. That’s the true motivation behind volunteering. Do-it.org connecting volunteers to volunteering opportunities from all around the country.
Charity Job is the UK’s largest site for charity jobs and volunteering. Thousands of positions can be found up and down the UK, no matter your location there will be something near you.
A final note from TeamKinetic
Life can throw up many barriers, some of which are hard to get over and may challenge us along our paths. But it’s the journey of how we get over these barriers and what we can learn from climbing over them. The secret is passion. Martin Luther King said, “A man who has not found something he is willing to die for, is not fit to live.” Perhaps an extreme sentiment, however, the point is very clear. We all must find a passion in life which we care about more than ourselves; this will give you the motivation, and inspiration to do more in life. Your passion may be volunteering and helping to improve other peoples lives; whatever it maybe it doesn’t matter, as long as your passionate – then you can overcome anything.
