TeamKinetic

Support – Ways You Can Help

On 5th June 2020

In COVID-19, News & Views

Think back to New Year’s Eve, 2019. Did you make resolutions?
When you pictured 2020 what did it look like? I’m not sure anyone could have predicted what we’re living through right now.

Despite living in such unpredictable circumstances filled with loss, there are still good things happening out in the world. In particular, I want to talk about COVID volunteers – especially during Volunteers’ Week 2020.

Helping Their Communities Through Crisis

The most common form of volunteering recently has been deliveries. Delivering food parcels to those who are most at-risk is a great way volunteers have been helping their local communities.

A further example of volunteers providing basic necessities comes from Compassion London. They’re a group of professional chefs and volunteers who worked out of Wembley Stadium to provide meals for thousands of local people.

A little closer to home for us, The Bread and Butter Thing operates across Greater Manchester. The service redistributes surplus food from supermarkets and manufacturers to people on low incomes – the number of people using this service has risen greatly as a consequence of COVID-19.

Volunteers have also been called upon to ‘befriend’ members of their communities. The scheme pairs volunteers with someone who is alone in isolation. This tackles loneliness which is especially prevalent right now due to lockdown rules.

The key to finding a cure?

Scientists across the world have proposed that human trials could be introduced to test a vaccine quickly. These trials would involve volunteers, and while there are many dangers involved, it could help provide a cure much sooner.

Volunteers would have to be fairly young (mid-twenties) and in good health to apply for the trials. Knowing the potential risks associated with the Coronavirus, volunteers for the trials would be doing an incredibly selfless act.

Want to help?

For anyone considering face-to-face volunteering, you must ensure you are fit and healthy to do so. You can access the latest government advice relating to COVID-19 here. To find local volunteering opportunities, contact your council or simply do a quick ‘volunteering opportunities near me‘ internet search.

You can also search for existing opportunities near you with TryVolunteering.

What have TeamKinetic done to help?

We started offering our volunteer management system free of charge for the duration of the pandemic to help organisations recruit larger numbers of covid volunteers. Furthermore, we created a whole new community tasks dashboard to make it easier for covid-specific tasks to be created and completed. It is our hope that more people are involved with volunteering than ever before!

Find out more about our work through these blog posts:

We Need to Dream of the Perfect World

By Rolf Herbert

On 3rd June 2020

In News & Views, Press Releases

Take a moment to picture your perfect world, to dream………….Compare that image to what you perceive right now. I suspect it feels different from your perfect world. We wanted to take some time to reflect on what is happening right now, and talk about how what we all can do to make a difference.

This week marks National Volunteers’ Week in the UK, which would usually be a great cause for celebration here at TeamKinetic, as it is a celebration of what can be achieved when people come together. However, this year, this has been overshadowed by the news from America. Yet again, we see the ugly spectre of racism raise its vile head, in the terrible murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. Graphically captured on video and shared a billion times across social media. This shocking scene has put into motion a series of events that look set to rock the world.

Our challenge is how do we plot a course through these terrible events and come out of the darkness to stand together united and stronger, how do we make our dream of a more fair and equitable society for all people, no matter their colour, race, sexual orientation, come true?

Be the change you want to see in the world!

What does it take to build a healthy community? A community operates on some basic fundamental ideals. You need to share beliefs by which you will all choose to live. To do this there needs to be a level of trust between the members. Individuals respect the rights and beliefs of others even if they are different from their own. Individuals have a responsibility to their community to do what is necessary to ensure the beliefs of that community are upheld.

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A reckoning has arrived. Injustice and inequality has been simmering for years and now rightly erupts. How can mankind have advanced so far with our technology and science but systematically failed to grasp the most simple premise that everyone is equal on this earth. George Floyd is the latest victim of the virus that is institutional racism, but it is not unique to the US. Covid has shown us that people of colour are significantly more likely to die than white counterparts in western societies. Ask yourselves why. Direct your anger and frustration. I don’t know what to do and you might not know either. But do something. Be that change. #blacklivesmatter #fuckracism

A post shared by ☰ LINES ⚪ LIGHTS (@nigelkwan) on Jun 1, 2020 at 6:25pm PDT

Communities, like families, support and help one another. They don’t always agree on everything, they sometimes have significant disagreements about how to do things, but with effective leadership, trust and respect they can achieve things which seem quite impossible.

Tribalism, partisan politics, popularism, and a rampant misinformation engine are forces that divide society. So now, more than ever we need to make the impossible, possible. To take this dreadful incident and use it as a driver for positive change. No matter your ethnicity, religious or political beliefs, we’re all members of one community, the human race, and if we are to all live together we must all be willing to accept and respect one another.

Each and every one of us has the ability to make a difference, to be a better member of our community. We must take personal responsibility for our actions, its not enough to do nothing, to stay silent. Community is not passive, you need to proactively work for your beliefs and to make your world the place you want to live. It will not be easy, there will be failure and argument, but if you believe in the dream we started this blog with we must all accept our responsibilities.

Be vocal, be organised, but remember. You can’t solve violence with violence

Real change takes time, it requires many millions of people to generate inertia, to vote for politicians that offer hope not hate, that offer a progressive choice not the status quo. This message is not just a hashtag or a social post. Real change, the kind that lasts for generations must be built on a bedrock of a change in peoples beliefs and values. We must all be more vocal when we see discrimination in any form, we must call it out for what it is, as saying nothing is as good as supporting it. We must look at how we support those who have dedicated their lives to fight discrimination.

Educate – Understanding Racism in America

People are angry. We are seeing violence, born of frustration and fear, but violence can not be the only option, it can’t be the default response, as it will only lead to more fear and more violence. Instead, we need organisation, action and a new community built on the shared beliefs of equality.

Spirit of Volunteering

2020 has been full of lessons about what people are truly capable of, both the good and the bad. We began lockdown by working together and looking after one another, with a pandemic still hanging over all of our heads, we must continue to look after each other through taking responsibility for our own actions. Volunteering has helped massively during this health crisis and is an amazing example of what people are willing to do. I hope we can take similar lessons from the COVID-19 response and use that same energy to make the world a little better for all minority people. Volunteering, getting involved, doing your bit, being an engaged and proactive member within your community, charity, education, sport or health group. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as we continue to unite and work together our dream may one day come true.

TeamKinetic want to live by the same values we have discussed here. We want to support the type of organisations that are trying to make the world a more equitable place to live. That is why we are offering the use of our service for FREE for any community group for 6 months that can demonstrate how their work will help address these inequalities. If you would like to take advantage of this offer please contact the team here

The Community Fund

By Chris Martin

On 2nd June 2020

In Community, Funding, News & Views, Volunteer Management

We know that the world feels a little uncertain right now and for many of our customers and users, there is significant unease about how they will be able to fund some of their services during this crisis and beyond.

So when we hear of a potential funding source we like to try and share that information with our customers and users. The Community fund has been around for a long time and is a tried and test source of funds for community organisations of all sizes.

They are prioritising funding for communities affected by COVID-19 with a new £200 million fund.

Prioritising projects and organisations supporting communities through the COVID-19 pandemic. To apply for funds click the links below:

Apply for funding under £10,000

Apply for funding over £10,000

What types of projects they can fund 

The Community Fund want to fund activities supporting people and communities affected by COVID-19.  They are prioritising:  

organisations supporting people who are at high risk from COVID-19
organisations supporting communities most likely to face increased demand and challenges as a direct result of COVID-19
organisations which connect communities and support communities to work together to respond to COVID-19.

Anyone who applies for our funding needs understand the Community Fund safeguarding policy. If you have any questions, get in touch with the Community Fund.

If you know of other sources of funding that might be of benefit to our other TeamKinetic users and would be happy to share that information please feel free to get in touch and we will do our best to share that information.

Responding to a Global Pandemic: The TeamKinetic Way

On 27th May 2020

In COVID-19, News & Views

The COVID-19 pandemic has been at the centre of our lives for the past few months. As the chaos begins to settle (slightly), we thought we’d take the time to reflect on our response to the virus.

Let’s go back to the 17th of March. Following new advice from the government to cut all non-essential contact with others, TeamKinetic closed our office and made the switch to working from home.

Business as usual?

Being a provider of volunteer management, we had to wonder whether volunteering could even continue if people were being told to stay at home. However, there were at-risk people out there who were in need of medical supplies and food.

The biggest question we had was how exactly we could help these people in a safe way for both those who were at-risk and the volunteers. We not only had to consider the physical safety of everyone involved, but also the safety of their personal data.

We quickly set to work developing a new system that would connect volunteers wanting to help in their community with people who were in need of help.

New Features Developed

A new simpler, customised home page for organisations to let their volunteers know what their options and opportunities are during the COVID pandemic
Brand new community task feature set that allows for the creation, assignment and management of community requested tasks for vulnerable and at need individuals
API for the community task management
Progressive Web App for volunteers to search/find/join and complete community tasks
Volunteer ID card and QR code for the community task app users
Chat between the assigned volunteer and organisation admins
Push notifications

New Hardware and Infrastructure

Furthermore, we were anticipating spikes in traffic as various announcements were made so made some internal changes to help manage these spikes.

Transferred community task load to AWS elastic servers
New Google map management and capacity (for directions and geo location)
New logging and monitoring installed to check capacity and demand in near real time

Overall, with the new system changes it is now easier and faster to create volunteering opportunities (now called tasks). We believe this significantly helped combat the chaos felt by volunteer managers in the early stages of the pandemic.

Next, we had to find a way to make all our current users aware of this system while also targeting organisations that we thought could benefit from using it.

Creating awareness

The enterprise version of the system is entirely free of charge for the duration of the pandemic. By offering this extended trial period, we hoped as many organisations could get their own systems up and running to spread the positive influence of volunteering as much as possible!

We also hosted a string of webinars showing how to use the system. This allowed viewers to interact with our developers, ask questions, and raise any concerns they had. This seemed to be very beneficial for both us and our customers. It was great to hear from people directly, especially if the comments were full of praise!

You can read all our blogs related to the COVID pandemic by clicking here.

What’s next?

The system is being continually developed to meet the needs of our customers and make the volunteer management process as easy as possible. It’s also important to consider how the system can be used in a post-COVID world. Which is hard to imagine right now! The activities done by these volunteers don’t have to be confined to this pandemic, they can be done at any time. We believe that the kindness shown by these volunteers to help the more vulnerable members of their communities should be the norm across society.

Why can’t we continue to help each other on a daily basis?

Want to try it for yourself?

If you’d like to see how the TeamKinetic system can help you recruit and manage volunteers during COVID and beyond, check out our website to get started with a free trial.

Getting Started With TeamKinetic Workbook, volunteer management, volunteer management software, volunteer management system

Getting Started with TeamKinetic: Lesson One – Basic Setup

On 11th May 2020

Now you’re up and running with your own TeamKinetic volunteer management system, it’s important to go through a few basic setup steps. Let’s start by customising things such as your ‘About Us’ page, terms and conditions, and registration fields.

The About Us page tells the people who visit your site the most important things they need to know about you: who you are, what you do, who you help through volunteer work and how you help them, etc.

The Terms and Conditions can be changed if you wish, but if left alone your system will use the default TeamKinetic set of Ts & Cs instead.

Registration Fields can be a very useful thing to customise as we know every organisation is different and may require different pieces of information about volunteers before they can sign up.

Task

Customise your basic TeamKinetic setup options.

The Process

Step One
Click the admin cog in the top right corner.

Step Two
Click ‘Setup’

Step Three
For now, we suggest updating information in the following tabs:
– About Us
– Terms & Conditions
– Registration Fields
– Gender/Ethnicity Lists

You can find out more about configuring your system settings in this playlist. It goes through all the options available in the Super Admin menu (that’s you!)

Workbook Intro

Lesson Two

Getting Started with TeamKinetic: End of the Workbook

We’ve reached the end of this workbook, by now your system should be fully functional and you should be comfortable with the basics on a day-to-day basis. You might even be comfortable enough to start training other people within your organisation to use the system yourself. If not, don’t worry, this workbook can be easily shared!

Now it’s time for you to figure everything else out for yourself…

Just kidding!

While we may not have any more lessons in this workbook, we still have resources to help you out while you continue to figure out the more intricate aspects of your TeamKinetic system.

Case Studies

You can see testimonies from people who have used our system dotted throughout our blog posts. This is probably the best way to find out how to get the most out of the system. Below we’ve linked some of the case studies we’ve done in the past.

Universities: University of Manchester,

Charities: Seashell Trust,

Local Authorities: Stirling Council (Active Sterling),

Sport: The LFC Foundation, GB Taekwondo,

Healthcare: Warrington Halton Hospital,

Help Videos

You can find short videos on almost every feature the system has to offer. They can be found by going to the ? box next to your admin settings cog (see right). There you’ll find an array of searchable help videos that should help you in a couple of minutes or less.

If you can’t find a video for a feature, feel free to contact us either through social media or by raising a support ticket and we’ll help you out!

We’d love your feedback!

We’d be extremely grateful if you could take a quick minute to complete this feedback form. This will help us improve the workbook in the future, helping all our users get the most out of their systems!

Give your feedback here: https://forms.gle/BJc2HLKRVgRc2h86A

Lesson Nine

Getting Started with TeamKinetic: Workbook

Welcome to the Getting Started with TeamKinetic Workbook. The aim of this book is to teach you the basics of your TeamKinetic system in less than ten steps. Basically, this is everything you need to know to get started and improve your overall volunteer management. We recommend that you move through these lessons at your own pace to make sure you get the most out of it.

Before we start…

We’ll be using some key terms in this document that you may not be familiar with yet. To avoid any confusion from the off, let’s go through them now!

Opportunity

An ‘opportunity’ is any activity that a person can volunteer to do. Every opportunity must have a provider. Opportunities can either have set sessions or be flexible.

Session-based Opportunities

Sessions can either be recurring (daily, weekly, monthly, etc) or individual. Use this for opportunities with specific dates and times.

Flexible opportunities

In contrast, volunteers can log hours for flexible opportunities at any time. This is great for opportunities that can be done from any location or at any time.

Provider

The ‘provider’ is the individual or organisation that is offering the opportunity. The provider should be the one communicating with volunteers about opportunities they’ve signed on for. They have their own accounts on the system.

Admin

The system ‘admin’, we hope, is you reading this. The admin has access to all areas of the system that we’ll be going through in this workbook.

Now that’s all cleared up, click below to go to Lesson One

Lesson One

Getting Started with TeamKinetic: Lesson Nine – Reporting

Now you’re more familiar with the system and you’ve completed a few opportunities successfully, it might be time to do some reporting on your volunteer base. Reporting can be an effective way to keep track of your volunteer management programme and how your volunteers are getting on.

Tasks

Create a basic report (e.g. based on a characteristic such as gender/ethnicity/age).
Submit a request for a custom report.

The Process

Task 1

Step One
Go to ‘Reporting’.

Step Two
Click ‘Reports & Analysis’.

Step Three
Go to ‘Volunteers’.

Step Four
Select a date range and data set then click ‘Download CSV’.

Task 2

Step One
Go to ‘Help & Support’.

Step Two
Click ‘Support Tickets’.

Step Three
Click ‘Create New Ticket’.

Step Four
Fill in the required fields and upload a CSV data set of the report you wish to create.

Lesson Eight

End of Workbook Notes

Getting Started with TeamKinetic: Lesson Eight – Communicating With Volunteers