When it comes to recruiting new volunteers, there are a range of factors to consider regarding safeguarding. Screening volunteers is essential to ensure they’re the right person for the job. This might include criminal checks and references, especially in an organisation such as a hospice.
Any good volunteer management software should facilitate these checks, making the process as efficient as possible.
Starting the Journey: Registration
So you have a volunteer ready and willing to give their time. But first, they need to register. Any good system should allow you to customise your volunteer registration forms to get the information you need. After all, every organisation is different – checks needed by one may not be needed by another. TeamKinetic allows you to create a range of custom questions to add to registration.
Not only this, but once the volunteer has registered you can add further questions for them to complete in their profile at any time.
Criminal Checks in TeamKinetic
Now you have your registered volunteer, you might want them to undergo a criminal check. In TeamKinetic you can add details of a volunteer’s criminal check within their profile.
The system will then keep you updated on any checks that have expired or are due to expire soon – handy, right?
You can also filter volunteer searches by those who have been checked.
Managing References in TeamKinetic
So now you’ve got a volunteer who has undergone criminal checks and is ready to go. But wait – what about references?! In TeamKinetic, you can create your own reference forms. These can then be emailed to the referees given by volunteers, or filled in yourself. They’re then kept within the volunteer’s profile on your system.
Creating Reference Forms within TeamKinetic is easy. It’s all done within the system and you can add a range of question types, such as Yes/No, multiple choice, and free text.
Reference Forms can then be: – Assigned to volunteers. – Emailed to the referees. – Completed manually on their behalf.
All completed reference forms will then be saved to the volunteer’s profile for future… well.. reference.
And there you have it – a volunteer who has gone through all necessary checks and is ready to go!
Do you need help screening volunteers?
Start a free trial with TeamKinetic to see if our system has the right tools for you. Starting a free trial is easy and only requires basic information such as your name and email. Just go to our website to get started.
Every hospice volunteer, specifically those working in direct care, are often in contact with patients and their families for a few hours a week. This, more than likely leads to a long-term commitment requested by hospices to ensure patients are able to bond with the same volunteer throughout time.
It’s safe to say that volunteers play such an important role in hospices; which is exactly why you have to find a hospice volunteer that is the right fit to offer support. So, what are some qualities to look out for?
What Qualities Are Hospices Looking For?
Hospice volunteers have to be able to listen intensively and hold conversations with patients. Many patients will spend time talking about their lives, families, and what regrets or memories they have. As this is a sensitive time for patients and their families, volunteers can help by being a listening ear, giving no judgment.
Volunteers are given an opportunity to learn and develop their understanding – and a patient’s understanding – of finding peace. Being able to control their emotions can be a benefit. Many conversations revolve around death and grief, being in touch with those feelings, and knowing when to be emotional can help build a bond with a patient, helping them (and possibly themselves) with the acceptance of death.
Volunteers who are able to understand the physical and emotional boundaries needed when volunteering in hospice care can be deemed as essential. Having personal limits is not only essential, it helps create the safest care possible to those patients and their families- a limit means that it may make it easier to disconnect from the patient and family, once the patient has passed.
The Quality of Comfort…
Hospices will be looking to those volunteers who have a comfort level for those patients who may need assistance. Many patients experience deteriorating functioning in their final weeks of life. They may start to need help with daily tasks, which is where volunteers come in. Volunteers should be able to feel comfortable in these situations- from dressing to feeding. Training is most likely to be provided by hospices, so volunteers can assist patients effectively.
For hospice volunteers, being kind is a necessary quality to have. Having compassion can give immense comfort to those coming to the end of their life, along with comforting any family members too. It is important for volunteers to have respect for life in all ways, including religion, views, and cultures.
A volunteer’s company can be the best quality for them to have. With a myriad of commitments, a patient’s loved ones may not be able to be around all the time. This is why it’s crucial for volunteers to be around, providing comfort and keeping patients company throughout the day.
Volunteers are most likely going to be matched with a patient that they then frequently visit; during these visits they can talk, read, apply holistic therapies, write letters, or even document their life. It’s a time to connect with a patient and comfort them at this point in life.
Volunteers are one of, if not, the most important piece of hospice care…
It’s easy to sit here and type out the qualities found in hospice volunteers up and down the country, but the work they do to provide comfort and support to patients and their families is something to be proud of. They’re one of, if not, the most important pieces in hospice care.
If you’re looking for a volunteer management system, why not take a look at us? You can start a FREE trial over on our website.
You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:
Most Hospices rely on volunteers to support the work they complete- they help ease the challenges faced. Volunteers have been important since the modern hospice movement, founded by Dame Cicely Saunders in the 1960s…
In the next 10-15 years, hospice’s will face challenges and high demand from the UK’s ageing population. People are now living for a longer time with complex and chronic health conditions. A Help the Hospice survey found that 7 out of 10 people think the pressure on hospice care will ‘rocket’ in the coming years.
So how can Hospices make sure their volunteer management systems keeps up with this demand, and ensures volunteers feel connected to the hospice they help?
Exploring what works and the current challenges.
The role of volunteer managers can be demanding, most are responsible for a long list of responsibilities including: recruitment, training and ensuring volunteer recognition…Volunteer managers play a significant role in making sure volunteers have the right resources to volunteer adequately.
A volunteer management system can help volunteer managers collect contact information, preferences, volunteer schedules and stay in touch with volunteers to ensure volunteers know exactly where to go to find the support they need. Luckily, we know a good volunteer management system you can look into- us! You can start a FREE trial with us on our website, and start your volunteer management journey today…
After that little plug, it’s back to business. The covid-19 pandemic has raised some concerns around volunteering in the future, and while all hospices are different, there are some concerns felt across the UK. These include:
Management structures and cultures across hospices for volunteering.
The importance of volunteers towards hospices.
In a post covid world- how will volunteering look?
In other words, volunteers not only help inside hospices, but in the community too. If your volunteer management system doesn’t work effectively, these coils pose a risk for the reputation of your hospice if your volunteers aren’t comfortable.
Managing your volunteers.
Volunteer Managers have found managing volunteers as time consuming and ‘not easy.’ To relieve this pressure, hospices have undergone strategic changes which have been pivotal to understanding more about hospice volunteers and how they can best support staff.
Similarly, there is some concern that managing volunteers and managing paid staff isn’t always distinct. Specifically the distinction between HR and Volunteer service management is becoming blurred between their roles and skills.
Having a separate volunteer management system for volunteers ensures that your volunteers would know exactly what the roles and responsibilities will have within a hospice. This service can help manage a professional and consistent volunteer programme that works for everyone.
In order to achieve full potential, systems should also listen and engage with volunteers. A two-way communication system is beneficial for hospices looking for retention and improving the overall volunteer experience. With TeamKinetic, we have numerous ways you can communicate with your volunteers. Notifications, email, SMS text- the list goes on. Why so many options? Preferences. Not all volunteers want to be emailed- some may want to receive an SMS text. Above all- communication is key.
The executive team and inclusivity.
A hospice’s executive team is important in driving a positive and inclusive culture across the whole hospice. Inclusivity within hospices is about treating staff and volunteers equally, but also ensuring access to training and support for all. Everyone should be treated with respect and treated fairly.
For some there is still a feeling of ‘them’ and ‘us’ culture within hospices. This is divisive and can stop the potential of a volunteer programme being successful. This, along with changing volunteer roles due to the pandemic, has meant that the full nature of volunteering is changing.
However, there is a fear that hospice’s could get left behind and may not be able to compete for volunteers with our programmes. A volunteer management system can help with this. At TeamKinetic, we help recruit, retain and realise your volunteers and the potential they have. If you’d like to have a chat about what we offer, email us at katie@teamkinetic.co.uk or call us on 0161 914 5757.
For many, covid-19 has put these issues in the forefront of conversations within hospices, and how they are going to run their volunteer programmes in the future.
The challenges faced through covid-19.
It’s known that hospices attract a demographic of elderly volunteers, which has also been the demographic most affected by the pandemic. This means that hospices have fallen short of active volunteers, as those in older demographic groups need to take extra care (even if they’ve had the vaccine, with new variants, the future is still rather uncertain).
Along with this, volunteer roles have also adapted and changed given the situation we’ve found ourselves in. It’s become the perfect opportunity for hospices to look at their volunteer programmes and assess how appealing it is for other demographics. Can certain roles attract younger volunteers? This may mean looking at changing roles to add more flexibility or expanding wider networks.
Looking into the future, managing volunteers is crucial for the sustainability of hospices. If you’d like to know more about how hospices can become more sustainable, you can read our blogs on our website: ‘How Can Hospices Become More Sustainable, Part One and Part Two’.
Looking for a volunteer management system?
If you’d like to look into developing a volunteer management system, why not start a FREE trial with us! Head over to our website and within minutes, you can be exploring your new volunteer management system.
Can hospices become sustainable? It’s time for part two. In last week’s post we delved into the first 5 principles, today is the final four! Hopefully this has helped you to start thinking about how your hospice can become more sustainable…
Become cost effective to be sustainable…
A threat of a severe recession and climbing competition for charitable giving could leave a lasting decrease in charitable revenue. Maintaining a grip on Hospice finances and implementing sustainable practices means there’s a chance to maximise costeffectiveness. However, it isn’t easy to develop cost effective routes. When handed a sustainable alternative, there is rarely any evidence that proves it true- but alternative practices have to start somewhere.
Stakeholders spoken to by Hospice UK want all Hospices to be aware of their own visibility. This way, they’re able to identify services which need to be redesigned for sustainability. Being more transparent about financial positions with commissioners has led to balanced financial risk in numerous areas.
Key benefits and outcomes of greater control of costs:
“The operational model for each service delivers agreed outcomes and benefits.”
“Proactive and reactive: anticipate critical issues and plan for sustainability in advance.”
“Quantify and help provide an evidence base to support decisions that require major trade-offs.”
“Increased certainty in responding to current and future demand by taking a rigorous, outcome based approach.”
Maximise your commercial revenue!
There has been a decrease in income for many Hospices, especially retail income over the past 2 years. It means that those Hospices reliant on a particular area of funding are susceptible to downturns and falling trends. So, Hospices are key in finding the effectiveness in their current revenue. The key is maximising commercial revenue.
Hospice UK has found recurring themes that Hospices could explore… Start re-thinking commercial spaces – are you getting the best out of the spaces you occupy? New revenue models, including collaborations, which has always been a strong starter that benefits multiple hospices at once. And teaming up with local third sector parties or partners.
Are you deploying the correct people around your patients?
Start reviewing the shape of your workforce. Deploy the correct people around your patients. Hospices need to start looking into how their workforce is going to look in the future due to the changes occurring across the end of life and palliative care sector. We suggest Workforce Shaping.
Workforce Shaping can determine your team’s structure in the future and what will be required to introduce new ways of working. Hospices should be (re)considering:
“Consider new staffing models to better deliver care.”
“Embrace new roles and ways of working.”
Shape careers of the future, sustainably…
To attract people towards a career in end of life and palliative care, a development needs to be made in order to make careers and jobs more competitive. While most stakeholders believe it wouldn’t be sustainable to match NHS pay, they do believe that improving career pathways is a clear step in the right direction. Why not start by finding out why people want to join, stay and perform for your Hospice.
Understand and map out the journeys colleagues can take to move up within the Hospice, within their own career. Once you have this down, can you start to implement it? If you’re struggling on potential pathways, what about?
Managerial: Allow them to move up the ladder into managerial roles with more responsibility.
Expert: Build and refine their roles based on their knowledge, skills and abilities while keeping them in the speciality they want.
Mobility: For those who want to increase their knowledge, allow them to cross functions within Hospices or the NHS – they can increase their skills and abilities too!
Ways to make palliative care a place to grow a career:
Leadership and Culture: Culture is critical. The challenge for Hospice leaders is to connect the workforce to the ‘core purpose’- to help them see how their job everyday impacts the lives of everyone within their communities.
Vision and Values: A key factor that attracts people to a career in palliative and end-of-life care is the vision and mission to provide high quality, person-centred care.
Rotations and Preceptorships: There is a lot of interest across the sector for developing greater opportunities from clinical staff to undertake ‘rations’ across different providers and specialities.
Devolved Decision Making: Stakeholders noted that covid-19 has helped to break down previous hierarchical structures and devolve decision making to team members closest to the patient.
Diversity and Inclusion: Hospice leaders we spoke with talked about a desire to create a more inclusive culture where all employees thrive. Many noted that there was still more to be done in order to increase the representation of different diversity groups within the sector.
And there you have it!
And that’s that! Over the past 2 weeks, we hope we’ve been able to give insight into how Hospices can become more sustainable and rounded up The Discovery Phase of Future Vision Programme run by Hospice UK for you too.
If you’re looking for a volunteer management software that can help you:
Recruit more volunteers than ever before.
Fully customise your site and volunteer registration.
Communicate with your volunteers easily, all in one place.
Motivate and reward your volunteers with our achievement badges or create your own!
Head over to our website and set yourself up a FREE trial!
Demand for palliative and end of life care is increasing. As a result, Hospices are under greater pressure to find ways to do more with less. The Discovery Phase of the Future Vision Programme, by Hospice UK, starts a conversation around developing a more sustainable future. The charity has outlined nine principles of sustainability and today, we’ll be exploring the first 5!
So, how can hospices become more sustainable?
Integrated Care Systems for sustainability
Integrated Care Systems may have a big role to play in the coming years. Helping to ensure the public and voluntary sector act together in the best interests of patients, service users and families.
While many are in support of partnerships, there are also concerns for Hospice independence. It’s important for Hospices to develop greater integration, in addition to keeping a Hospice’s unique identity, values and high quality care. In Hospice UK’s survey, 99% of respondents thought there should be either full or partial integration with the wider Integrated Care System.
If you’re looking for ways to explore integration, why not try…
Starting at the clinical service level. What services are you going to provide and by whom? Where are these services going to take place?
Build relationships with other Hospices- it’s key to greater integration, while it takes time, you’ll reap the benefits.
Start aligning your data and reports. In order to seamless integration (further down the line) one patient record shared between all providers of a system is critical.
Start collaborating…
Through integration, it also presents the opportunity to collaborate. Covid-19 has inevitably intensified the pressure on constrained resources, and yet despite this, there’s a drive for positive change present.
Why not look towards collaborating with neighbouring Hospices on service deliveries? Similarly, look towards exploring back office joint posts and funding? Each Hospice is different, so we know that not everything suggested will work best for you, but it’s best to explore your options.
Collaboration means you can reach out and work with a wider range of partners in the sector- you aren’t limited.
Time to get technological
As a volunteer management system, we’re all for talking technology– and it’s crucial for you to define your digital strategy. With the increasing demand for care, the opportunities to look digitally as an enabler to change is exciting.
To succeed, as Hospice UK say, is to look from a patient-centric perspective- make sure that the leadership and governance of your digital systems is in place for fostering future innovation.
Speaking to stakeholders Hospice UK picked on multiple themes that need to be addressed for greater digital enablement:
Improve patient experience and engagement. Allowing your patients to have more choice and control over their care, and how they’d like to receive it.
Help provide integrated care- it will be easier to connect individuals to the right parts of the health system. You can strengthen the partnerships across sectors.
Help decreasing the demand for palliative and end of life services driven by the UK’s aging population, a growing population, and an increasing prevalence of chronic conditions and diseases (just to name a few).
Technology can also help with making systems more efficient- there’ll be less time looking for information or duplicating patients.
Influencers for sustainability
Alongside rising demand, hospices may also be providing services to just a minority of people who need it. So, Hospices need to start reaching greater numbers of people with the limited resources they have. Stakeholders have expressed that the focus has to shift from efficient delivery of direct services to patients towards earlier system interventions and advanced care planning- to do this? Influence.
Hospices can use their own influence to bring additional resources in to meet the evolving demands:
Influencing the system through closer working relationships with other providers.
There is a value in education, and adding family members/friends to support delivery of care can help avoid crises alongside meeting a patient’s needs.
Covid-19 has sped up education through online learning and training. Hospices can use this to their advantage to promote awareness and help drive referrals to other sectors in the system.
Hospices can use their unique data insight, this complemented with other systems intelligence, gives opportunity to enable a needs-based approach to the allocation of resources in future.
Is the current funding model sustainable?
The Hospice UK’s survey also highlighted that 83% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the current funding model is unsustainable in the long term. Most respondents went on to point towards a renegotiation of the funding offer with relevant commissioners as a high priority to ensure stable sustainability in the future.
An example of this would be End of Life Together in Nottinghamshire. The collaboration between a number of local Hospices’, Trusts and Primary care providers formed a partnership to secure funding and create an integrated care model. There key services included:
One point of referral providing a triage, assessment and coordination of a person’s needs.
‘Hospice at Home’ services with community hospice beds.
Access to bereavement and carer support services.
And more!
To conclude…
After all that, we’re coming back with a part 2! This week we’ve looked at the first 5 principles for sustainability through the Discovery Phase of the Future Vision Programme. Hopefully, you’ll be gathering some ideas on how you can develop the sustainability of your Hospice, we’ll be back next week for the final 4 principles- we’ll see you there!
Above all, if you’re interested in developing your volunteer management processes, why not start a trial? Head over to our site and sign up today!
The pressure and demand on hospices is only increasing. With an aging population, it’s important to note, this demand will continue to increase in the next few years. So, how important will volunteers be in the future? We’re aware of the immense impact volunteers make today- they are the backbone for many hospice services.
In 10 years time, could the role of volunteers look?
Building on best practice…
Hospices will need to adapt to the growing demand for care so can we strengthen hospices best practices to help ease increasing pressures. In the context of volunteers, a large volunteer workforce could be needed. To do so, there should be plans to encourage growing recruitment.
It would be beneficial to have a volunteer management system in these times to help you recruit, retain and realise the potential of your volunteers (and yes, we mean us!) You can start a FREE trial with us, here at TeamKinetic, through our website – or book in a demo with us today!
After all that plugging, why not work towards developing a package for volunteer training. The quality of training is key for volunteers to deliver the best care to patients and their families. While training costs money, it means volunteers become an integrated part of hospices and their team. These packages should be general and available to all, but they should also have the chance to be adopted and changed at a local level…
The perception of volunteers also looks to have improved. They are too essential to be left out of any hospice strategy for extending the impact a hospice can make to those who need its services. If you’re looking for new volunteer recruits, why not get your current volunteers to help? They may have reaches in the community that the hospice doesn’t.
As volunteers become more significant in the supporting of hospices, we could also see:
Clear boundaries for those volunteers working in patient-facing roles.
Extend the supervision of volunteers in patient-facing working roles too.
There should be common applications for approaches that sustain volunteer practice safely.
Promoting excellence in the future
There is a belief that investing volunteers and voluntary management can push more volunteers to contribute more, and we have to agree. We find volunteer management systems (whether it’s our own or others) helps build up communication, and a relationship between organisation and volunteer. In turn, this encourages the volunteer to volunteer more.
In the future, hospice models could look towards changing models and programmes that, while might be working now, could become unsustainable with increasing pressure. Therefore, more innovation is needed. Hospice UK believes this can start in three core areas…
Enabling volunteers to play a full role in the work of the clinical team- working in partnership with clinical colleagues.
Having volunteers contribute to the services and strategy for hospices. They play an important role and should be recognised as the vital connection between hospice and community.
Take new approaches to sustaining and nurturing volunteer contribution through volunteer stewardship…
Exploring new approaches for the future
It’s encouraged that hospices look to experiment with volunteer roles. Like a trial and error process, hospices can learn, evaluate and share their findings to pinpoint the useful roles volunteers can play. There are a number of new approaches which could be taken…
Encouraging new organisation forms of hospice-owned but volunteer-led volunteer services at the end-of-life. Volunteers may be able to organise ways that support their contributions across end-of-life providers. They may be able to bring knowledge and continuity to systems of care.
Volunteers can take on significant roles for helping people, and their carers and families. This can relieve pressure on other providers, who may have other responsibilities to attend to; you can’t have one person in two places at once.
There is a call for extensive research in hospices, in particular hospice volunteering. It can build a base around the effectiveness and economic impact of volunteer-led, volunteer delivered and volunteer enable innovation.
In conclusion…
It’s known to us now just how important volunteers are for Hospices. There is no doubt that this importance is only going to increase as pressure on hospices increases. Volunteers will continue to be the backbone of hospice services, and more should be done to support volunteering in these circumstances.
If you’re looking for a volunteer management system, why not sign up for a FREE trial with us! Head over to our website, and set your site up now…
Palliative care and hospice volunteers support those with life-limiting diseases and their families. Their purpose, to improve quality of life and build deeper relationships with patients, gives valuable insight to hospices and their overall care.
Being able to understand the role that volunteers play within hospices helps improve their effectiveness and will better aid those who are thinking of volunteering. Recent evidence suggests that in order to make an impact on the development of volunteering, stronger resources and commitment from those in high positions is required.
More care and support is needed now more than ever – volunteering can play a key role in adapting to the changing needs.
Do Hospice Volunteers Need Training?
Before anyone becomes a hospice volunteer, it’s likely that training will need to be completed. Volunteer training helps prepare them for any services they may perform and understand how they will be assisting patients and their families.
It’s likely that a hospice training program will include:
Understanding the hospice’s philosophy of care.
Understanding the services delivered by the organisation.
How to properly communicate with patients, caregivers and families.
Understanding patient privacy regarding their health information.
Through this training, hospices have recorded common traits that make effective volunteers:
A sense of understanding and compassion towards those on their end-of-life journey.
A respect for all customers’ cultures and religious views.
The ability to listen when needed and be comfortable in silence.
Awareness of personal limitations.
The Types of Volunteering for Hospice Volunteers…
Hospice volunteers provide an immense amount of hours through two main categories: Direct and Indirect Care volunteering…
Direct Care Volunteering is defined by those volunteers who work directly with patients, caregivers and families. They provide comfort and support in a number of ways:
Indirect Care Volunteering, on the other hand, is for volunteers who would like to work behind the scenes. They help the hospice with any administrative tasks. For instance, preparing mailing and/or newsletters to the community. They’ll also be looking to input any general data and other clerical duties needed to be completed. Indirect Care involves making sure the hospice is known within the community and day-to-day tasks are completed for everything to run smoothly.
The Challenges for Hospices
There are concerns about the accessibility of those who can benefit from hospices services which have become a challenge. Volunteers have been a significant part of responding to this and, as a result, can be a significant advantage for hospices.
Volunteers extend the scale of availability to hospices in order to deliver a wide range of services. Importantly, they offer a prolonged connection of care to those with life-shortening illnesses in ways beyond clinical. Volunteers can help extend the reach a hospice can make in the community through stronger social activities.
A diverse range of volunteers can broaden the range of skills and benefits available to you. Hospices can reach out to the same broad community mirrored within the hospice. It’s extremely important to acknowledge the work and benefits volunteers bring, while starting to think about how volunteers can work effectively to push back against rising challenges.
How Can We Help?
With a broad range of volunteers, you might be wondering how you’re going to connect and reward them for their work… Here’s where we come in. A volunteer management system, like TeamKinetic, can help you:
Recruit more volunteers than ever before.
Fully customise your site and volunteer registration.
Communicate with your volunteers easily, all in one place.
Motive and reward your volunteers with our achievement badges or create your own!
As an act that is entirely selfless, rewarding volunteers may seem like an impossible task – surely the work is rewarding enough? While, yes, the work is rewarding. It doesn’t keep a volunteer motivated to keep volunteering for you. So how do we reward charity retail volunteers?
In this blog we’ll go through a variety of ways, because not every volunteer will respond to the same methods.
First, why do they volunteer?
Understanding the reasoning behind your volunteer’s commitment can help you tailor recognition and rewards to them personally. Here are some common reasons:
Because they care about the cause/have been personally impacted by the organisation.
As a good way to fill their time.
To join friends and family who volunteer.
Because it’s a good networking opportunity.
Because it contributes to something wider – e.g. the Duke of Edinburgh award.
So how do we reward charity retail volunteers?
This is where it starts to feel complicated: formal vs informal, intrinsic vs extrinsic, physical v digital, etc. But don’t worry! We’ll lay it all out for you so you just have to worry about picking the right method for your volunteers.
Formal v Informal Rewards
Formal rewards are usually regarded as those you plan ahead of time. This could include things like award ceremonies, volunteer of the month awards, and certificates.
In contrast, informal rewards are the smaller things you would use on a day-to-day basis. Instead, it focuses on improving the experience for volunteers. You might reward volunteers in this way through bringing them refreshments while they work, having conversations about how their experience could be improved. A great benefit of informal rewards is their low cost and significant ongoing impact.
Intrinsic v Extrinsic Motivation
Volunteering can be personally rewarding to many people and this good feeling is often a big motivator. Intrinsic motivation is all about helping your volunteers continually feel good about the work they’re doing and the difference they’re making, rather than working towards one particular reward. It follows the same premise as informal rewards – you want to reward volunteers by continually improving the state of your volunteer programme.
On the other hand, extrinsic motivation involves volunteering because of outside factors, such as receiving a reward. This isn’t always a negative thing, as mentioned above, people often volunteer as part of something else. For example, a student may volunteer in a charity shop in order to fulfil one of the requirements of the Duke of Edinburgh Award.
There’s always potential to retain this kind of volunteer through intrinsic motivation. If they become motivated by the way volunteering makes them feel, rather than fulfilling a requirement, they’ll be more likely to keep volunteering for you.
Physical v Digital
Now we know about the different types of motivation and rewards, we can start thinking how to deliver them. Those of you who are not yet fully engaging with digital may feel more comfortable delivering purely physical rewards (such as thank you cards and teas/coffee). One Welsh charity even decided to help the local community beyond their existing efforts. The Gellideg Foundation Group gave their volunteers gift cards to small local businesses as a reward, helping boost the local economy and keep local shops open!
However, there are a whole host more options available to you via digital means. And you never have to stick to purely digital or physical rewards – there’s room for both to be used effectively.
How can I reward volunteers with TeamKinetic?
TeamKinetic can facilitate a range of options when it comes to rewarding your hard-working volunteers.
First of all, after every opportunity, volunteers and opportunity providers are asked to leave feedback. This feedback serves as a way to praise the volunteer but can also be used to improve internally. If any volunteers have issues, these will be sent to you and you can deal with them. Giving volunteers a great place to work is a great step to help them feel appreciated.
Furthermore, the system offers HourTrades. These are rewards for reaching a certain number of volunteering hours logged. This can be set to anything you desire, offering a wide range of incentives to your charity retail volunteers.
We also have Opportunity and Achievement Badges. Opportunity badges can identify opportunities that will contribute to an award, such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Achievement Badges are awarded over time – the more hours a volunteer logs, the better badge they receive! These are saved digitally but for an added touch you could create physical badges to match!
Try it for yourself
You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website, giving you access to everything the system has to offer for 30 days.
If you want to find out more about the system, or have any questions you can use the chat feature on our website, email us, phone us on 0161 914 5757, or find us on social media:
You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:
If your organisation has an established volunteer programme, you’ll have your volunteers up and running with good quality opportunities, but now it’s time to evaluate. Maybe you’re already analysing your volunteer programme, but is it enough?
Analysing your volunteer programme can provide key insight into the impact of your programme. This could include how you’ve improved the lives of people in the local community and key demographics of your volunteers. So let’s dive right in…
The Fundamentals
Let’s start with your goals. Do you have them and are you achieving them?
Simple reporting tools can help you recognise whether you’re hitting these goals. If you are, it can inform how you go about setting new goals. If not, it’ll give you an idea of how to adjust your operations in order to achieve them. And if you’re yet to set any goals, key KPIs can help you draw some up.
What are KPIs?
Key Performance Indicators: a set of quantifiable measurements used to gauge a company’s overall long-term performance. This could include things like:
The monetary value of services rendered by volunteer support
Number of people in the community served by volunteers
So Why Is It Important?
Analysing your volunteer programme is a pathway to discovering a whole host of things.
Volunteer retention rate can suggest the happiness of your volunteers or quality of your opportunities. If volunteers aren’t happy and don’t have access to good opportunities, they won’t keep coming back. You can read more on how to fix this issue in our ‘How to Increase Volunteer Retention (and keep it!)‘ blog. Just remember: a happy volunteer is a loyal volunteer!
Furthermore, volunteer demographics can be compared to demographics in your area to see whether your programme is attracting an expected variety of people. If not, why not? For example, demographics showing a very high proportion of white volunteers in a very ethnically diverse area could suggest there are barriers to people in your community who want to volunteer. Our recent post ‘Is Your Pool of Volunteers Diverse and Inclusive?‘ provides valuable tips on how to improve this within your own organisation.
However, data isn’t just about spotting areas for improvement. It could also be used to identify those who are going above and beyond for your organisation. With tools like hour logging and feedback, you can see which volunteers are giving their time the most and receiving praise for their work.
How can I get started?
There’s a good chance you’re already managing your volunteers digitally, but are you using volunteer management software? Software can put everything in one place for you, allowing you to manage, communicate, and analyse your volunteers in a few clicks. You can read more about implementing volunteer management software in this blog.
While it’s possible to analyse your volunteers using spreadsheets and other software, it’s definitely much easier to have everything in one place. Instantly have everything you need to manage your volunteers all in one place, leaving you more time to focus on the important stuff.
Why not try TeamKinetic?
You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website. This will let you check out all our features for 30 days. This includes features such as volunteer-owned profiles, the ability to log hours completed, and reporting tools. If you like what you see, contact us to book a demo and see how we can help your organisation manage your volunteers and start analysing your volunteer programme!
Organisations should be diverse and inclusive to the communities they serve, and your volunteers should mirror that. So, how do organisations achieve this? A recent agenda consulting survey gives us some more detail into how volunteering organisations value diversity.
Agenda Consulting undertook a survey as part of their ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the UK Third Sector’ report. The report looks to understand people’s views and experiences of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within the organisations they work with. The survey covers 8 sectors: Gender, Gender different to that originally assigned at birth; Ethnicity, Disability, Religion, Sexual Orientation and Age.
Agenda Consulting Survey:
The overall view from survey results states the average positivity for DEI is 72%, with neutrality being 21%. The average negativity is 7%. What is most surprising is that the highest level of negativity is regarding age: at 12% negativity overall.
It’s clear that while there are mostly positive results, there’s still work to be done: 67% of respondents feel the leadership groups display their commitment to DEI. However, just 48% of people feel their organisation is committed to promoting the representation of diverse groups. By recruiting and retaining a workforce that is diverse, you can work towards building stronger perceptions.
Sector Results:
The results show for gender little difference between men’s and women’s perception, yet statistics from Agenda’s People Count, show that gender balance shifts as we move through levels of seniority. There may be an imbalance in results. 76% of the survey sample are female, fitting with Volunteers Count of 70% of all volunteers being female. For more information, we have a blog post which dives into the reasons why women volunteer more than men.
For those whose gender is different to that originally assigned at birth: results suggest there needs to be education within the sector. Only 50% believe that, regardless of gender reassignment, people are treated equally. By increasing the education or knowledge of volunteers surrounding DEI, it becomes an organisation-wide initiative, instead of being held to within one department.
There is a strong perception that there is equal treatment regarding ethnicity, with 73% of people feeling like everyone is treated equally irrespective of race/ ethnicity: but 10% disagree. Perceptions of equal treatment are considerably lower for those respondents from an ethnic minority. More awareness is needed throughout organisations: and this should be done by the very people who it directly affects. We’ve looked deeper into the socio-economic status surrounding volunteers and whether volunteering is too white and wealthy…
Disability, Religion, Sexual Orientation and Age:
The results from disability-related questions show that 67% feel people are treated equally, with 24% neutral and 9% feel negatively. This use of ‘neutral’ suggests that volunteers don’t have enough insight. This is possibly due to the fact that just 4% of volunteers are disabled (according to Volunteers Count). If we remove those barriers, we open volunteering up to a wider community with fresh ideas and skills, representing wider society as a whole.
74% feel that people are treated equally despite a person’s religious beliefs, with 22% of people feeling neutral and 4% opposing the statement. There are several groups who are the least positive. Agenda’s report outlines those who identify in another way and ethnic minorities as standouts for those who aren’t as positive. It can be suggested that this is down to wider societal stereotypes, which are translating into the volunteering sector.
Overall, only 1% of those who identify as Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual (LGB) felt they weren’t treated equally due to their sexual orientation, whereas 84% of people did. During the survey, it was LGB groups who thought less positively about the statements being asked of them. This possibly suggests that they are more aware than others about the inequalities minorities face.
As mentioned above, it is age that has the greatest discrepancy when it comes to being treated equally. Out of the 3% of under 25s who took part in the survey, only 59% felt positively, with 18% negative. As age increases, the negativity does too. This suggests a divide within organisations among age groups on whether certain groups of people are treated equally.
So Why Should We Increase the Diversity of Volunteer Programmes?
Harvard Business Review confirms that when a team member shares the ethnicity of their client, the entire team is 152% more likely to fully understand the client. This ability is crucial for volunteer programmes. By increasing the diversity of your organisation you receive new ideas and approaches to your work; with new volunteers, you gain people from different educational backgrounds with different soft skills, like communication.
All of this helps your organisation, but it also helps those you volunteer for: your volunteers can be role models. Those who can see themselves within volunteers can inspire and increase their aspirations. They may also want to volunteer in some capacity too! Organisations should be looking towards becoming inclusive for all, for a stronger future.
So How Do We Increase the Diversity of Volunteer programmes?
There are a number of strategies to ensure your volunteer programme can become inclusive for all. Starting with your language. Switching up your language to attract certain groups of people can help you gain a wider audience.
Start to build relationships! Building up relationships with communities means you can speak freely and they can too! It’s important to identify those communities you want to engage with: it’s important you’re authentic.
The policies that your organisation has may need rewriting. What you have written down versus the culture surrounding your volunteer programme can be drastically different.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are so important for volunteer programmes who want to move forward. It’s simple, organisations must be inclusive for all. Your pool of volunteers should mirror the community you work in. With a diverse pool of volunteers, you have an opportunity. Team bonding exercises can bring people together.
AVM’s Making an Inclusive and Accessible Recruitment and Onboarding Experience
Save the Date! Wednesday the 27th April, 9:30am- 12:30pm, AVM are hosting an event helping you to create an inclusive and accessible recruitment and onboarding experience! Straight from AVM, at this event you will…
Hear ideas on how you could adapt your recruitment and onboarding process to be more inclusive
Learn how organisations have overcome some of the barriers to inclusive recruitment
Reasonable adjustments that can be made to ensure your recruitment process is accessible to all
How to attract a diverse range of volunteers and what you might need to consider
Have an opportunity to plan your next steps, in small groups with your peers
Learn more about the event and how you get your tickets here!
Manage Your Volunteers:
We now know how important diversity and inclusion are to volunteer organisations and volunteer management. An efficient and effective management system is needed to help you help your volunteers and the community. TeamKinetic can help you recruit, retain and realise the potential of your volunteers…
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