There are a wide array of TeamKinetic features, that’s why we try to explain what each area of the system does, why you use it, and how to use it most effectively.
If there’s something we haven’t covered, let us know!
Next in our on-going FaceBook Live sessions for TeamKinetic 1.4 we will be talking about gifting hours and how TeamKinetic approaches the whole idea of hours and rewards.
Usually a volunteer attends a session or a flexible opp and logs their hours which are then also logged and approved by administrators or providers.
Occasionally however volunteers might have done extra hours, or you want to incorporate hours from historical projects that you know the volunteer deserves.
For these situations you need to gift the volunteer owed hours.
Just pop along to the volunteers management page and find the HOURS tab on the left. Within that section you’ll see an area called Add Owed Hours. Here you can add a title or reason for the owed hours, say ‘Previous work on the footpath programme’, then enter the total hours and minutes the volunteer will be credited with.
These gifted hours are treated exactly like hours earned on opportunities and will show up in your KPIs and reports.
If you mistakenly add owed hours you can remove them at anytime.
When owed hours are added the full hour total is added to the volunteer and provider, so the totals are kept in balance.
I hope you are all settling into TeamKinetic 1.4 and enjoying the new features.
We’ll be continuing our weekly Facebook Live sessions over the coming weeks till we have covered all the new functionality and questions that have come up about the new release.
This week it’s all about the Document Hub that lets you create a repository of documents, links, and text that is accessible online by your volunteers and providers.
The document hub is available from the super admin settings menu (only visible if you are logged in as a super admin). From there you can add a resource for a volunteer or provider and create one of the three types; link, download, or just a plain text information resource.
For volunteers the resource area is available straight from their dashboard.
For providers it’s available from their help and resources menu.
The document hub is a great way to communicate your policies to your volunteers and providers, as well as to provide initial help and guidance for their first few experiences.
This is it… the release date is upon us and on November 5th the next version of TeamKinetic will be appearing on your desktops.
This Facebook Live session will cover the excellent filtering and searching options that we have added to the volunteer, opportunity and provider search. We will also be talking a little about the release schedule and what we will be doing to try to ensure a smooth transition.
The new filtering selection allows you to add multiple filters easily without having to scroll up and down, we’ve also included custom fields where applicable.
You can add or remove filters automatically and the results will update each time.
The navigation bar allows you to scroll through the results, change the displayed number of rows, and tells you how many results in total we have found.
You can also download all the results to a CSV, this will create a file with a copy of every row, not just the ones you are viewing at the time.
If you select any of the results using the checkboxes in the first column the bulk task options will appear at the bottom of your screen.
The available options will alter depending on which search you are performing, but in each case, a window will pop up where you can confirm your action and provide any further details.
If there is only one action available for a row it will just be a simple text link at the end, this is also the case when searching for opportunities.
If there are multiple actions you’ll see the triple dot icon that you can click to bring up the actions, these are things like impersonate, email, manage etc.
You’ll start to see this table search and filtering pattern turning up throughout TeamKinetic, we think its a vast improvement and we hope you’ll think so too.
In our final pre-release Facebook Live session we are going to be looking at the opportunity application process and how to get the most out of applying opportunities.
Many of our customers have specific on-boarding processes for specific opportunities or types of opportunities. These checks take place before a volunteer can join a session on an opportunity.
Unlike requirements like inductions and criminal checks, the application process is specific to the opportunity and so all volunteers are required to complete the on-boarding before being allowed to join an opportunity.
When creating an opportunity look out for the selection options and from there you can choose to create an applying opportunity and also specify some of the other pre-requisites like references.
When a volunteer finds this opportunity they will be presented with an option to apply and will be asked to complete all the pre-requisites.
They provider and volunteer will each receive an email letting them know the application has been received.
The provider or administrator can manage the applicants from the regular opportunity management page. From the applicants tab they can view all the current applicants, approve or deny applicants and download the applicant list.
Once approved the volunteer is sent an email confirmation with a link to the opportunity and can then go ahead and join sessions in the normal way.
If the opportunity is a flexible opportunity the volunteer is automatically joined to the single session that represents the length of the flexible opportunity.
It’s important to remember that when an application is received, the volunteer is not yet on the opportunity, their application must be approved AND they must choose their sessions (if the opportunity is session based).
In summary the application process looks like this;
Create an APPLICATION opportunity
Wait for volunteers to apply
Process your applicants on the opportunity management page applicant tab
Continue to manage the volunteers that have joined your opportunity after having their application approved
This week we will be discussing a much requested new feature, that will give you far more control than ever over the communications TeamKinetic sends to volunteers and providers; customising automated emails.
TeamKinetic keeps your volunteers and providers up to date, with notifications about opportunity activity, chat room messages, applications, registrations and many other actions and events.
We have default content for all these messages but now you can edit and customise over 30 messages.
Its dead simple to edit a message, just click the edit button to bring up a window like below.
Each message has its own set of replacements you can use which will be replaced when sent, like opportunity title, opportunity link or the volunteer name. Just click on any of the blue replacement buttons in the right column and they will appear at the current position in your custom message.
For week three we will be discussing a new feature whose beginnings you may have spotted and wondered about in our last release; trusted providers.
Trusted Providers
Trusted providers have an elevated set of privileges compared to your regular providers. The could represent for instance, providers that are internal to your organisation, or those that have received extra training.
To add the trusted status just use the button in the provider management page. You can also use the new provider search pages to change the status of multiple providers in one go.
What are Trusted Providers?
Trusted providers have some extra abilities over your regular providers;
Their new opportunities are auto authorised
They can add criminal check and induction required status to their opportunities
They can add any volunteer to a session, not just those that have already joined one of their sessions or that is linked to them
Welcome to week two of our pre-release introductions to the new features coming in TeamKinetic 1.4.
This week we will be focusing on the new features in the add opportunity page and when searching for opportunities.
Adding a New Opportunity
When your admins or providers add a new opportunity they will now be given an immediate choice of whether they wish to create a complete or a quick advert opportunity.
If they choose the quick opportunity type they will be presented with a much reduced option list for the opportunity. This is aimed at people that either don’t have much idea of what the final opportunity details will be, but want to get on and start recruiting, or for those organisations that will probably be managing the post sign up process themselves.
The resulting opportunity will be a flexible opp that is set to start immediately and will run continuously.
Once created the provider and admins will have full control over the opportunity and can add further details, or convert to a session based opportunity at anytime.
We have also updated and we hope simplified adding sessions to an opportunity. We’ve taken out some of the confusing language around the types of opportunities you can add and instead just asked them to make a choice between an opportunity with sessions and a flexible opportunity without sessions.
If a user picks the session based opportunity they can then choose a recurring session structure or can add the sessions individually.
Searching Existing Opportunities
For 1.4 we have a great new set of features for searching and filtering opportunities.
You’ll notice straight away that this is very different from our previous opportunity search page!
You can now page through the results, add filters, download the results and perform bulk actions on the opportunities by clicking the checkboxes at the start of each row.
This type of search table will be appearing throughout the application in future version and is already implemented for volunteer and provider searching complete with custom field filtering.
TeamKinetic v1.4 will be released on November 5th, there will be fireworks and parties all across the UK!
1.4 is a big release where we have brought together many requests for new features and also importantly we have made big steps towards unifying the interface to create a consistent experience everywhere.
1.4 will probably be our last new feature focus release for a good while. The next few releases will be focused on continuing the unifying process, improving the foundations, continuing our accessibility improvements and tidying all those loose ends up.
We have added a brand new email editor so that you can customise over 30 of the TeamKinetic automated emails.
New Searching for Volunteers, Providers and Opportunities
Completely rewritten search pages for volunteers, providers and opportunities. Much clearer and cleaner layout with row and bulk actions, paging, and filters.
Search for Volunteers by Custom Field
Custom fields are included in the filters, so you can filter and search for volunteers by all the profile and registration fields you have added.
Ability to Customise Your Genders & Ethnicities
Add, remove,re-order and re-map your gender and ethnicity results. These custom lists will also be reflected in the reports and downloads.
Collect ‘other’ Ethnicity and Gender
If registering volunteers select OTHER from the gender or ethnicity list they will be presented with a text box where they can enter their self identified gender or ethnicity.
You can use the new custom gender and ethnicity management shown above, to view, add and map these other entries.
Trusted Providers
Providers can now be marked as TRUSTED, this means that they will have additional privileges including:
Ability to add ANY volunteer to their opportunities (not just the providers limited cohort of volunteers).
Only allow trusted providers to create opportunities which require CRIMINAL RECORD checks.
Trusted provider opportunities can be auto-authorised.
Set Maximum Volunteers PER SESSION
When creating or editing opportunities you are now able to set a maximum volunteer limit on each session independently. When creating repeating opportunities each session will default to the same maximum but you can then adjust these session by session if required.
Define Time Gaps Between Sessions
Need to define a minimum gap between session that a volunteer can join? Now you can!
If you are hosting an event you may want to enforce a time limit gap to prevent a volunteer joining two opportunity sessions with not enough time to get from one to the other. You can now define the allowable time gap between these sessions. For example, if you define 30 minutes then a volunteer will not be able to join a session that ends at 1:00 pm AND a session that starts at 1:15 pm.
Improve Page Layouts
Courses page
Find Volunteers Page
Find Providers Page
Find Opportunities Listing Page
Parental Consent Phone Number
When a volunteer registers who requires parental consent, it asks for their parents email and in addition for their parents contact number. This information is held against the volunteers profile so the parents can be contacted by telephone if required.
Inviting Volunteers
Administrators and providers can now invite volunteers to your system from their main menu. Volunteers are invited by entering their email address OR uploading a list of email addresses.
Administrators can see the list of all invited volunteers and we have also improved the messaging you receive when duplicates are added.
Volunteer & Provider Downloads Include Custom Fields
When you export your volunteer or provider data it now includes any custom fields.
Volunteer Note Improvements
Providers can now record private notes on their volunteers. These can be used for recording conversations or additional information related to the volunteers personal needs.
Both administrators and providers can now add and remove discrete dated notes creating a history and audit trail for notes.
Improved Interface For Uploading Images
There is now the ability to move and crop images when uploading them to either the front page, providers profile page or the events page.
Registration Captcha Updated To Simpler System
The Google Captcha v2 (the image picking one) has now been thoroughly defeated, which means we are making it harder for people to register but not any harder for robots, so we have removed it.
We now protect your applications from bogus registrations with a number of discreet features that will not get in the way of your volunteers registering.
Improved Interface For Applicants
We have added some notification reminders and visual clues if an opportunity has unprocessed applicants.
If there are any applicants that have not yet received a decision your home page will list them and if you manage the opportunity, the applicant tab will be highlighted and a notification appears in the summary area.
In addition we have improved the default email that is sent to providers when a new application is received to help clarify that difference between an application and a joining event.
Creating Quick Opportunities
The new opportunity screen can be daunting for new users and for those providers that have little or no training. It also assumes that providers wish to manage the entire volunteering life-cycle within TeamKinetic, which is not always the case.
We have added the option when creating a new opportunity to choose a quick opp. This gives a much reduced option list to the provider and allows them to quickly create an open ended flexible opportunity that starts as soon as it is authorised.
Combined Linked Volunteers and Volunteers Searching
Providers can now search for both their active volunteers and linked volunteers from the same search page. They can unlink volunteers directly from the search results and no longer need the separate linked volunteers page.
Pause Emails means PAUSE EMAILS, but not Brexit!
We have changed the pause emails button to pause all emails including when a volunteer is removed from the opportunity or session. When completely removing a volunteer you are given the option of sending the removal email.
Simpler Interface for OWED HOURS
If you have a volunteer who has done some volunteering outside of your system it is now easier than ever to record those hours within you system.
Always Accessible Super Admin Menu
The Super Admin menu is now located on the top right of your screen making it faster for the user to access.
Providers See More About Their Volunteers
We have increased the amount of information that a provider can see on volunteers who join their opportunities, this should help them in identifying who is best suited to particular roles. (NOTE: This also includes external volunteers).
Improved Interface When Copying Opportunities
We have changed the way you copy opportunities, you are now asked ‘what the new start date is?’ and the system will move all associated sessions accordingly.
Adjust The Size Of Your Logo
You can now adjust the displayed height of your logo when uploading.
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.
