Page 12 of 56

Retail Volunteer Recruitment

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On 1st February 2023

In Charity, Hospice, News & Views, Volunteer Management

New data from Charity Finance Magazine’s ‘Charity shop survey for 2022’ reveals that there has been a decrease in charity shop volunteers since the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of volunteers at charity shops in the UK has fallen by 24% since 2019. People who took part in the survey said that they have struggled to operate as usual due to volunteers not returning to their roles once the restrictions lifted. How can retail volunteers be successfully recruited in 2023?

Successful Retail Volunteer Recruitment

An example of successful and efficient volunteer retail recruitment is an idea which came from Dorothy House. Dorothy House provides compassionate care and support for people in our community with life-limiting illnesses. They have 25 high street shops that sell pre-loved items which provide a large part of their income. Dorothy House have shared its success in recruiting volunteers for retail. 

After the pandemic, Dorothy House found that many of their volunteers decided not to return or felt they were no longer able to continue volunteering. At the end of 2019, they had 674 volunteers however in 2022 this decreased to just 470 volunteers. Dorothy House started by reorganising its volunteer team in 2022 and engaging with its retail team to see what they felt was needed. They ended up recruiting a deputy shop manager from one of their shops to be their Retail Volunteering Support Officer. As the shop manager already worked in a Dorothy House shop they were able to understand the challenges and how crucial retail volunteers are to ensure their shops are running efficiently.

Their approach was to visit all 25 of their shops to access their needs for volunteer recruitment. They supported them with in-store recruitment such as putting up posters in the local community and identifying potential sources of volunteers. The managers for each shop were worked with closely so they could create their own ongoing plan for recruitment. The outcome of this is that Dorothy House has now achieved a net gain of a hundred extra volunteers since March this year.

Other Strategies To Successfully Recruit Retail Volunteers:

  • Attending community events and connecting with potential volunteers in person. This can include fairs, festivals, and other gatherings where you can set up a booth or table and talk to people about your volunteer opportunities.
  • Utilising word-of-mouth marketing. Encourage current volunteers to spread the word about opportunities to their friends and family.
  • Developing clear and concise job descriptions for volunteer positions, including responsibilities and expectations.
  • Having a clear and easy application process encourages people that it is a quick and easy process to become retail volunteers.
  • Offering perks for volunteers such as discounts, special offers, or early access to new products.
  • Being open to feedback and adjusting the recruitment strategy accordingly.

 

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

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Major Service Loss January 30th 2023: Response and Recommendations

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On 31st January 2023

In Security and GDPR, Technical Updates

What Happened?

Web servers and other public servers are always under attack. Our systems deflect and mitigate thousands of unauthorised attempts to gain access every day, both direct login attempts and denial of service attacks where volumes of junk traffic are thrown at servers.

It is impossible to both have an accessible service and an inaccessible service and we are always trying to tread that line and this time we failed to get it right.

We experienced intermittent connection issues across the weekend but some access was still available.

All connection and service was lost during the early hours of Monday morning when the full attack was started.

An attempted ‘ransomware attack’ on the main server encrypted some files before it was stopped by our anti-malware processes. This was an automated scripted bot attack. There was no unauthorised access to customer data or backup data which is separately encrypted and stored. There was no evidence of any data exfiltration (access to data stores, virtual servers, external storage, no increase in bandwidth consumption, and no FTP/SFTP access).

To be clear, no data was viewed, accessed, or removed during this attack. 

As we had complete backups from shortly before the attack started it was deemed that the most secure response would be to wipe the main server and so negate any potential additional issues with lingering malware or potential trojans/backdoor attacks.

As per our standard operating procedures in such an event, the servers hard drives and RAID arrays were wiped and reinitialised and the process of reinstalling the base operating system started.

Although the initial steps of installation were successful we experienced additional issues when the new operating system would not load. The server was troubleshooted for potential issues/changes that were preventing the new operating system from loading.

Working with our hosting providers, we established that the attack had also led to a hardware fault with the RAID controller. This additional issue meant our existing server hardware was no longer viable and a new server provision was initiated.

The new server was brought online and the server operating system was installed. This initially failed due to the unavailability of Microsoft’s license approval servers.

By Monday evening at 19:30, the new server was responsive and the restoration process could begin.

Our established processes did kick in but we lost approximately 12 hours of user data when rolling back.  However, this episode has provided a valuable learning experience and we have started a more in depth review of our response, looking at our successes and failures and how this might any future response.   

We have been proud of our performance to date when it comes to cyber security, with this being our first ever full day outage in our twelve year history, but, as always, there are lessons we can learn and things we can do better.

Below is the details timeline of events, actions taken, and lessons learned.

Timeline

07:00 Initial investigations of the affected server begin

08:00 Attack was identified and its severity assessed

08:30 Total loss of our main server was suspected

09:00 Decision was made to wipe main server and restore to earlier backups.

10:30 The affected server was wiped and the new raid array of hard drives initialised

10:50 Raid completed and new OS installation was started

11:50 New OS installation fails to start correctly

12:00 Second attempt to install new OS

12:40 Second attempt also fails

13:00 Troubleshooting starts on the hardware to try to get Windows to boot

14:30 New server is provisioned

15:40 New server built and brought online

15:40 New OS installation started on new hardware

16:15 New OS installation unsuccessful due to licesne server unavailability from Microsoft

18:00 New OS configuration complete

18:30 Required software and utility installation

19:30 Begin to restore backups

20:20 Backups restored

20:45 Applications start to be restored and access gained

22:30 All services responding normally

 

Review of the Disaster Recovery Procedure

Our full recovery plans can be viewed on our website;

https://teamkinetic.co.uk/policies/Contingency%20and%20Continuity%20Planning%20Policy

https://teamkinetic.co.uk/policies/Data%20Asset%20Protection%20and%20Resilience

In summary, we failed to meet our recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours because of the continued knock-on effects of hardware issues. The actual recovery process from downloading, extracting and installing the most recent backups was close to 2 hours once the hardware and operating system platform was stable.

Incidence Reporting, Communication, and Support

Once the outage was affecting our customers we started to send out regular updates to keep customers informed. 

These were sent via email as all internal messaging systems were affected. We also posted on our Facebook page and volunteer manager groups with the current status.

We had multiple members of staff available all day on the phone to take calls and requests for support and believe we did a satisfactory job of keeping people up to date.

This was a major and long-lasting outage and all our affected customers are entitled to a month’s service credit that is redeemable at the next invoicing period. We know this doesn’t make up for lost time and the frustration of not having access to your applications.

What Did We Learn?

Our notification system for monitoring server health failed and was not able to cope with the specific complexity of this attack. We had a situation where our network accessible servers and systems were alive but not working correctly.

Our response times during the weekend exacerbated the monitoring issues.

Our hypervisor server is our most critical single point of failure.

It takes longer to download and extract backups now than it did as they are considerably larger and so our RTO needs to be updated.

Our transactional database backups (which fill in the gaps between full backups) need to be available from off-site backups to further limit the data loss in total failure events like this.

Our hardware provider was too slow to respond and made mistakes in provisioning that were made worse by lower staff numbers over the weekend, changes in shifts, and lack of communication between those shifts.

Almost 70% of the time to restoration of services was spent waiting for our hardware providers to execute their responsibilities.

Our customers are incredibly understanding and supportive, thank you!

Mitigations and Improvements

Add in more sensitive monitoring and also include positive monitoring that tells us that things are OK not just negative monitoring.

Mandate two factor authentication for UAC as well as login.

Switch to a new hardware provider with better response times and procedures for dealing with issues.

Recalculate our RTO bearing in mind the increase in size of our systems.

Move transactional data logs to temp off-site storage at regular intervals within a 24 hour period. Retain these logs transactions for 48 hours.

Provision a duplicate server for quicker server reinstatment. If we get a total failure/loss of the mainserver we can rollback to the most recent backup within the RTO period.

Look at a double daily complete backup of virtual servers. Would need to test the impact of backups on serve performance during regular accessing hours (right now the backup is performed at our quietest time). This would half our potential data loss in the case of complete failure.

Follow up

An attack of this type can cause anxiety for our users, and it is important to us here at TeamKinetic, that you feel confident in our response to this incident and trust that we have taken away the important lessons from this experience.

If you would like to speak to a member of the team, we would be only too happy to spend some time answering your questions. Feel free to use this link to arrange a call with the team.

You can also subscribe to service status updates here.



 

Volunteer And Volunteer Manager Expectations

By

On 25th January 2023

In Volunteer Management

Volunteer Expectations – Do They Expect Too Much?

Volunteering is promoted to volunteers to give them purpose, improve their mental health and develop social skills. Volunteers might go into the experience with high expectations and hope that it will change their life forever. However, volunteering may not always be the experience people expect it to be. If volunteers don’t receive the right support from their volunteer managers or the organisation they are volunteering for then they might feel isolated and disappointed with their experience.

Volunteers may have different expectations depending on the organization and the specific role they are volunteering for. These expectations may vary from person to person and from one organisation to another. It’s a good idea to talk with potential volunteers about their expectations before they start volunteering. 

Some common expectations Volunteers may have are: 

  • Clear communication and expectations from the organization, including the volunteer’s role, responsibilities, and the organization’s goals.
  • Flexibility in terms of scheduling and location.
  • A supportive and positive environment. 
  • Recognition and appreciation for their time and contributions.
  • Fair treatment and respect. 
  • A sense of belonging and community.
  • Safety and good working conditions.
  • Reimbursement of expenses if necessary.

What Do Volunteer Managers Expect From Volunteers? 

It’s possible that some volunteer managers may have expectations that are not realistic for volunteers to meet. However, it’s also essential to note that volunteer managers often have a wide range of responsibilities and may need volunteers to take on certain tasks and responsibilities in order for the organization to function effectively. Some common expectations Volunteer Managers expect are listed below. 

  • Positive attitude and willingness to work as part of a team.
  • Willingness to learn and take on new tasks.
  • Flexibility and adaptability to changing circumstances.
  • Willingness to provide feedback and suggestions for improvement.
  • Compliance with health and safety regulations and procedures.
  • Good communication skills and ability to work with different people.

It’s important for organisations to have clear and open communication with volunteers about their expectations, roles and responsibilities before they start volunteering. This can help ensure that volunteers understand what they can expect from the organisation and what the organisation expects from them, and can help prevent any misunderstandings or disappointment.

 

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

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TeamKinetic Admin Guide

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On 19th January 2023

In Application Features and Tutorials, Training

Welcome to this TeamKinetic Admin Guide. This is essential for any admin user setting up a new TeamKinetic site, or any new member of staff using an existing TeamKinetic site.

In this post, you’ll have access to all the TeamKinetic quickstart videos. You can get help at any time by clicking the ? help icon in the top right of your screen within the system.

Overview

An overview of system users and what functions each user has access to.

A look at the relationships between each user.

Initial Setup

The initial setup steps confirm things like your about us page and other application content.

It’s also important to set up your registration settings including what data to collect, and opportunity categories.

Remember there is always help available on every page by clicking the ? at the top right of your screen.

Look and Feel

During step 3 we will cover how to add your logo, set up all the colours for menus and links, and set your page backgrounds and the home page content.

Your First Opportunity

Adding opportunities is of course a fundamental skill to learn!

We have a number of different types of opportunities and many options available for creating an opportunity that serves your needs.

It can be as simple as a quick opportunity which has only a few questions to answer, all the way up to a complex repeating opportunity that spans months.

Invite Volunteers

Now you have your application set up just how you want it and have some shiny new opportunities ready for your volunteers, you’ll need some volunteers.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to get your volunteers registered is to send them an invite email with a special link they can follow to register.

You can keep track of all your invites by going to Volunteer Management → Invite Volunteer.

Manage Opportunities

Once your opportunities have been added and volunteers are starting to sign up you will spend a good percentage of your time managing your opportunities and the volunteers that have joined.

Our opportunity management dashboard has all the tools you’ll need to communicate effectively with your volunteers, schedule new sessions, place and move volunteers between sessions and lots more. It is probably the major hub for your application.

Create Events

An event is a group of opportunities that has something in common.

Each event gets its own mini-site with a picture that you can share and link to.

Events also show up on the opportunity search page and in the weekly newsletter. This makes it easier for volunteers who are not bothered about what they do but just want to be part of the big event.

Volunteer Rewards

Rewarding your volunteers is vital to maintain and improving retention rates.

We have a few ways you can reward volunteers including the achievement badges, both automatic for hours served and your own Award Badges that you can award for any reason (volunteer of the month etc.).

We strongly encourage you to set up your own Award Badges and bring a smile to your volunteers.

Communication

You’ll need to stay in touch with your volunteers and there is a myriad of ways to do that with TeamKinetic.

There are a range of customisable automatic emails, email groups, email filters (by age, gender etc.), system notifications, Facebook, Twitter and using SMS texts.

You’ll always be in close contact with your volunteers.

Reporting

Reporting and insight are invaluable to finding out what has been going on in your programme.

Here you’ll learn about the various reporting, maps and visualisations that are available out of the box with TeamKinetic.

You can also request custom reports just for your organisation if required.

Mobile Use

Volunteers can download the TeamKinetic mobile app for their Android or Apple phones, allowing them to log in, join opportunities, log hours, update their information and much more.

If you still need some help using TeamKinetic, don’t hesitate to use our live chat feature. This can be accessed under Help and Support.

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

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram       Podcast

 

Are you enjoying using TeamKinetic? If you could leave us a review on G2, we’d really appreciate it! We’ll even send you a little thank you.

Let’s Help To #ChangeTheStory

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On 18th January 2023

In Charity, News & Views

Reach Volunteering have created a campaign to celebrate the humanity that exists in the world. Reach Volunteering is the leading skills-based volunteering charity and the UK’s single biggest source of trustees for the voluntary sector. Their vision is to create a world where people come together to create a thriving, fair and sustainable society.

Reach Volunteering are encouraging people to #ChangeTheStory. Millions of people in the UK volunteer their time to help others, creating a better society. As a volunteer you can change the story and create change and inspire others to do the same.

The Common Cause Foundation Human Values 

Values help determine what is important to us and shape how we interact with other people and the more-than-human world. Values are important influences in many aspects of our lives. They also influence how we act on issues that affect the world around us. Research from The Common Cause Foundation found that 74% of us hold compassionate values as the most important. Yet 77% believe that everyone else holds selfish values as the most important. The misperception of other people’s values holds us back from tackling society’s challenges.

How You Can Help To #ChangeTheStory

Every day in the UK, people are acting on their compassionate values through volunteering. People need to see this and celebrate and encourage it. Both volunteers and organisations that involve volunteers can take part in helping to spread the message. 

  • Talk about the #ChangeTheStory campaign with other volunteers, your friends and people around you to encourage them to participate.
  • Volunteers can share their reasons for volunteering, this can inspire and motivate others to volunteer. Reach Volunteering have suggested posting a video to social media explaining your volunteer story. 
  • Whether you are a volunteer, or an organisation that involves volunteers, you can spread the message and post promotional content on social media using #ChangeTheStory until the end of January 2023.
  • If you are already a volunteer, keep doing what you are doing. You could also find new places to volunteer and encourage your friends and people around you to do the same.
  • As a volunteer, you can share your expertise with a charity that aligns with your values. You can find new opportunities here.
  • Get inspiration for how you can share your compassion and be kind to others with this article of 52 ways to spread love through acts of kindness.
  • As an organisation that involves volunteers, you can become a campaign partner which involves promoting the campaign and seeking quotes from your volunteers to share. You can email Reach Volunteering here to get involved: changethestory@reachvolunteering.org.uk

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

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TeamKinetic Volunteer Guide

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On 16th January 2023

In Application Features and Tutorials

Welcome to the TeamKinetic Volunteer Guide. We’ll go through the key things you’ll need to know about the system so you can get started volunteering for the causes that speak to you.

You’ll have received the welcome email by now and we urge you to take a look as it will contain essential information.

The first screen you’ll see after registering is your Dashboard.

This is the hub for your volunteering and where you will find most of the information you need. You can access the various sections from the menu on the left-hand side, just click any of the headings to move to that section. Lets take a look at some of the key pages;

Click below to go to each page.

Volunteering Is For Life, Not Just For Christmas

By

On 11th January 2023

In Charity, Community, Education, Hospice, Local Authority, NHS, Sport

Charity work and volunteering are usually largely associated with the festive period, people want to donate their time to give back to help those less fortunate during Christmas.

Before Christmas, we posted a blog discussing the many available opportunities and ideas of where to volunteer at Christmas time. The reality is these organisations need help and support from volunteers all year round and not just during the festive period and volunteer managers may also find a large decrease in volunteers after this time. People in need aren’t just homeless or lonely during the festive period, similar to the well knowing saying from the Dogs Trust organisation, “A dog is for life, not just for Christmas”.

Support for people in need will need volunteers and donations more than ever especially due to the cost of living crisis. There are plenty of opportunities where organisations need help from volunteers all year round below and some ways volunteer managers can retain these volunteers throughout the year. 

Volunteering At Crisis

Crisis is a charity for people experiencing homelessness, each year they support thousands of people to help find safe and stable accommodation. Over the festive period, Crisis had thousands of volunteers across the UK providing companionship and serving and delivering hot meals. These volunteers are still needed throughout the year as homelessness is an ongoing issue, Crisis estimated that around 227,000 people were experiencing the worst forms of homelessness across England, Scotland and Wales in 2021. The charity is consistently creating new opportunities so you can find the one that suits you best.

You can find available volunteering opportunities near you on the Crisis website. 

Volunteering At Age UK

Age UK is a charity that helps older people that don’t have care or support from others or anyone to turn to, leading to 1.2 million older people in the UK experiencing loneliness each year. You can become a part of the Age UK community and provide support and raise money so people can get the help they deserve. Although older people may be particularly lonely during the festive period, they will also experience this all year round. A simple way you can make a difference is the telephone friendship service, just as little as 30 minutes of your time a week to talk to an elderly person over the phone can largely impact an older person’s life.

Volunteering At Charity Shops 

Volunteers for charity shops are needed now more than ever, since the pandemic thousands of volunteers in retail have been lost. The number of volunteers at charity shops in the UK has fallen by 24% since 2019.

There are plenty of organisations including Barnardo’s UK, British Heart Foundation and more that have hundreds of charity shops across the UK. Roles could include working the tills, decorating window displays or managing donations. Barnardo’s UK currently has 10,000 shop volunteers keeping their 700 shops up and running, but without the help of volunteers, these organisations could struggle. 

Tips For Volunteer Managers

As a volunteer manager, it may be difficult to retain these volunteers to carry on volunteering throughout the year and not just at Christmas time. Promoting that volunteering is a rewarding New Years’ resolution idea on your organisation’s website or social media, could encourage people to continue volunteering. 

Another way to retain your volunteers throughout the year is to offer flexible scheduling options for roles. People may be drawn to volunteering over Christmas because it means they only have to volunteer for a day or two. By making future opportunities flexible, people won’t have to commit to volunteering full-time.

You can read more about how to engage and retain your volunteers in 2023 here!

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

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Re-Engaging Volunteers After a Break

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On 5th January 2023

In News & Views, Volunteer Management

After the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it’s not uncommon for volunteers to lose their enthusiasm and drive. As a result, it’s important to find ways to re-engage your volunteers and get them excited about volunteering again. So how can you start re-engaging volunteers after a break?

re-engaging volunteers

First of all, you should define the problem. Volunteer engagement isn’t always easy, especially if your organisation has had volunteers take breaks from their terms of service. But if you identify exactly what the problem is, it’s easier to come up with solutions tailored to you and your volunteers.

Secondly, you should set goals before you start. If your goal is to have more effective volunteers who stay longer than [x] months at a time, then that should be reflected in all aspects of their experience with your organisation. Starting with their onboarding process, through to training sessions and regular check-ins or evaluations.

Remind them of their impact

One way to reengage your volunteers is to focus on the impact that their work has on the organisation and the community. Remind them of the difference that they are making and the reasons why their contributions are so valuable. You can also highlight any recent successes or achievements that the organisation has made, and how your volunteers played a key role in making those achievements possible.

Feedback for a volunteer left via TeamKinetic’s volunteer management system.

Through TeamKinetic, you can reward volunteers through HourTrades, custom reward badges, or simple ‘Thank you’ communications.

Offer exciting new opportunities

Another way to reengage your volunteers is to offer them new and exciting opportunities to get involved. This could include working on a special project or event, taking on a leadership role, or learning a new skill. By providing your volunteers with fresh challenges and experiences, you can help them stay engaged and motivated.

You can also try to make the volunteering experience more enjoyable and rewarding for your volunteers. This could include providing regular recognition and appreciation for their hard work, offering flexible scheduling options, and creating a supportive and inclusive volunteer community. By creating a positive and engaging volunteer culture, you can help your volunteers feel valued and connected to the organisation.

With TeamKinetic, you can utilise our many opportunity creation options to create something that stands out to your volunteers and will help them feel excited about getting back into volunteering with you.

Reach out individually

Finally, consider reaching out to your volunteers individually to check in with them and see how they’re feeling. If you can put together a list of disengaged volunteers, you may want to consider asking them if there’s anything specific you could do in order for them to return. Perhaps they need more support than other volunteers with similar roles, or maybe they just need some time away from volunteering altogether.

This can be a great opportunity to listen to their feedback and address any concerns they may have. You can also offer support and guidance to help them overcome any challenges they may be facing. By showing that you care about your volunteers and their well-being, you can help them feel more engaged and motivated to continue volunteering.

TeamKinetic’s search filters allow you to find those volunteers who seem to be disengaged. Reaching out to them directly can help them feel valued and like their work for you makes a real difference.

In conclusion, re-engaging your volunteers after the holiday season is crucial for the success of your organisation. By focusing on the impact of their work, offering new opportunities, creating a positive volunteer culture, and providing individual support, you can help your volunteers regain their enthusiasm and continue making a difference.

See also: How To Retain And Engage Your Volunteers for tips on how to keep your volunteers engaged all year round!

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

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram       Podcast

 

Have you enjoyed using TeamKinetic? If you could leave us a review on Capterra, we’d really appreciate it! We’ll even send you a little thank you.

How To Retain And Engage Your Volunteers In 2023

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On 21st December 2022

In News & Views, Volunteer Management

2023 could be a challenging year to engage and retain volunteers due to the cost of living crisis; people may not have as much time to volunteer as they did previously because now people may replace volunteering with paid work. Ensure you start the year off by providing a high level of support to your volunteers, when volunteers don’t feel supported it can lead them to feel unmotivated and unengaged in the organisation. Below are some ways you can help retain and engage volunteers in 2023. 

Recognition And Rewards 

Show your volunteers how they make a difference. In the previous blog post, we spoke about how to reward your volunteers at Christmas, but volunteers shouldn’t just be rewarded at Christmas time, they should be rewarded all year round too. Highlight your volunteers’ successes to show them how their hard work has helped your organisation. You could note down the things they have done to help make a difference and then let the volunteer know, this will make them feel seen within the organisation. Volunteers want to feel needed, appreciated, and that they’re making a difference.

Stay Connected

Keep in touch with your volunteers and communicate on a regular basis. Whether this is through emails, phone calls or text messages it would be a good idea to see how people are getting on and if they are enjoying volunteering for the organisation. Also, due to the cost of living crisis and the new year, people may be struggling with their mental health and could be facing money issues, you can support your volunteers by regularly contacting them so you are the first to know if they are feeling unmotivated or burnt out. It’s also important to be in contact with your volunteers so you can let them know if there are any last-minute changes to shifts. 

Ensure that how you are communicating with the volunteers is personalised, by acknowledging the volunteers’ names and what they do you are able to connect with them on a much deeper level and they will feel noticed. Listen to what feedback your volunteers have to say, they can give you valuable information and important questions and concerns that you need to address.

Develop A Community

Build a sense of community among your volunteers. This way they can feel connected to each other and become better connected to you which can help with volunteer retention. If the volunteers build friendships and get to know others in the organisation then it will encourage them to stay and continue volunteering for the organisation as they are surrounded by a friendly and welcoming environment. 

Online catch-ups with all of your volunteers or in-person social events can help them to feel comfortable around one another and develop relationships. Having fun catch-ups or socials with volunteers can also allow them to feel engaged and supported through their volunteering experience.

Training And Upskilling 

Understand the motivations of your volunteers, this way you can help them to accomplish what they want to achieve. You can talk to your volunteers to understand what they would like to learn from their volunteer experience. This can help you provide value to your volunteers which can keep them engaged. Motivations could be people wanting to gain different skills or improve current ones. By training volunteers they can feel supported and volunteers can feel valued. Improving their skills can also benefit the organisation too as fully trained staff can help make an effective difference to the organisation. If volunteers are fully trained they can complete the volunteering to the best standards and feel satisfied with the hard work and the support they have been given.

Key Takeaways

Overall 2023 could be a very challenging year to engage and retain your volunteers, a combination of strategies may work best to keep people volunteering for your organisation. Flexible opportunities may be more suitable as people might not have the time to volunteer as they are picking up extra paid work elsewhere to help them through the current cost of living crisis.

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

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram       Podcast

 

Have you enjoyed using TeamKinetic? If you could leave us a review on G2, we’d really appreciate it! We’ll even send you a little thank you.

TeamKinetic 2022 Round-Up

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On 20th December 2022

In News & Views

The end of 2022 is fast approaching – what better time than now to look back at the past year with a TeamKinetic 2022 round-up?

It’s been another challenging year for everyone, but the amazing work done by volunteer-involving organisations continues.

We have had a year full of development, with regular updates and one major release. We also had a few staff highlights, like Rolf’s volunteering-filled trip to Borneo and Alex seeing England take home the Women’s EURO 2022 trophy.

January – March

In January we started our own podcast! Chris had been wanting to start one for a while, but at the start of the year we finally took the plunge and TeamTalk with TeamKinetic was born.

We kicked things off with Season 1, featuring Willowbrook Hospice, The Pankhurst Trust, Manchester City Council and the Association of Volunteer Managers.

Find and listen to all our current episodes below.


We also brought out a 2.1.1 Interim Release that included new features like email failure reports, more sortable tables, and a refresh to the news feature.

April & May

In April, the Kindocoin SBRI project officially launched Phase 2. TeamKinetic is one of two companies developing and evaluating our prototype solution in a real-world setting. You can read more about what we’ve been working on here, along with more information from Health Innovation South East Scotland.

In May, we attended Volunteer Expo – a fantastic event that connects communities and brings together many sectors under one roof to celebrate what it is that unites us. There were a range of interesting talks held at the event, but one that really caught our eye was the launch of the Vision for Volunteering.

There are five threads of the launch:
1. Awareness and Appreciation,
2. Equity and Inclusion,
3. Experimentation,
4. Collaboration
5. Power

For each of these themes, the Vision for Volunteering highlights their ambitions and what volunteering should be like 10 years from now.

June

In June we said hello to our new Marketing Coordinator, Isabella! You can read her introductory blog here.

However, that meant we had to say goodbye to Katie as she returned to her final year at university to finish her degree. We wish Katie the best of luck and hope to continue seeing her at occasional TeamKinetic socials!

As is always the case with new arrivals and staff members leaving, we had to go on a little work social. We made our way over to Roxy Ball Room to have a few games of shuffleboard and crazy pool – along with a few drinks of course!

@teamkineticuk

did we know the rules of shuffleboard before this? no. do we now? …still no.

♬ FEEL THE GROOVE – Queens Road, Fabian Graetz

July and August

In July, we restarted the TeamKinetic Masterclasses! These seem to have been well received and hopefully, we can continue them into the new year.

If you have any suggestions for topics you might like to see covered in the future, please let us know. Either reach out via email or through our website’s live chat.

You can see most of our Masterclasses over on our YouTube channel by clicking here.

In August, we announced our next major update, the TeamKinetic 2.20 Major Release. We invited our users to start beta testing to iron out any remaining bugs and received lots of helpful feedback.

September

September saw the return of the TeamKinetic annual conference! This year we brought a range of exciting speakers from across the third sector together, all tying into our main conference theme:

‘Volunteering to 2030: What might the future look like?’

Day One took a deeper look at the TeamKinetic system as it stands today and how it could change in the future. Day Two focused on the third sector as a whole. Our speakers shared their views on best volunteer management practices and how managers may need to adapt for the future.

If you couldn’t attend the conference, don’t worry, you can catch up on some of the sessions in this playlist.

 October

After the warm reception for Season 1, we decided to refresh the format of our TeamTalk Podcast. Season 2 saw the introduction of a co-host: Imogen Greatbatch! Chris and Imogen delved into the world of sport volunteering together, talking to a range of people from organisations such as Sport England, British Blind Sport, and Formula E.

Who knows what’s in store for season 3… If you have any suggestions or would like to be in an episode please do let us know by contacting either Chris or Alex.

November

In early November, after meticulous testing and taking in all user feedback, we rolled out the update across all sites. The new update included:
– A new system for creating opportunities.
– Better sharing options via LinkWide & the national Scottish system MILO.
– Bulk email scheduling.
– Reporting improvements
and much more!

We also headed out on a work social. We got some drinks, ate some pizza and headed over to the lovely Albert Hall to play some Bongo’s Bingo. I think it’s safe to say some of us played more bingo than others…

December

And here we are now, in December. We just rolled out two exciting new features: Admin Chat and Bulk Actions on Sessions.

The Admin Chat gives all our admin users a space to interact with each other. Whether it be a general chat or sharing your volunteer management hints and tips. The new Bulk Actions on Sessions allows you greater control over editing multiple opportunity sessions in one go.

It’s been an eventful year, one we can really build on in the future. We hope to continue to grow as a company and make the TeamKinetic system the best it can be.

Thank you for coming on this journey with us.

All that’s left to say is Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to those that celebrate. And, finally, have a Happy New Year – we’ll see you in 2022! 

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

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram       Podcast

 

Have you enjoyed using TeamKinetic? If you could leave us a review on G2, we’d really appreciate it! We’ll even send you a little thank you.

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