When working in the third sector keeping on top of the law is important but it doesn’t have to be scary. Accessibility legislation that effects the sector is changing and here is a summary of what you need to know.
What Is The Law On Accessibility?
Accessibility law is changing and we think this is a great thing. Websites and apps are being used by more people, and being accessed in more varied ways and on more platforms than ever. It’s important that we can give the best experience possible on all platforms.
The law on accessibility states that resources must now be usable for:
Impaired vision
Motor difficulties
Cognitive impairments or learning disabilities
Deafness or impaired hearing
In the UK 1 in 5 people have a disability. Inclusivity is integral to modern society and particularly so in the third sector. Allowing the most amount of people to get involved is great for everyone and this is something that we aspire to.
What Do You Have To Do?
Officially what you have to do is make websites and apps ‘perceivable, operable, understandable and robust’. Which is not as daunting as it sounds!
You must also publish an accessibility statement this must include details of content that doesnt meet accessibility standards. If someone does request this document you must also provide details of why certain aspects of the website do not meet the criteria.
When Do The Changes Happen?
Don’t worry, you will not have to make changes straight away. New websites must be compliant by the 23rd September 2019 which gives us all considerable time to improve our accessibility.
Websites made before 2019 have a years grace period and do not have to be accessible till 23rd September 2020. Native applications must be made accessible by the 23rd June 2021.
Is Anyone Exempt From These Changes?
The changes do not effect everyone;
non-government organisations like charities (unless they provide services that are essential to the public or aimed at disabled people).
schools or nurseries – except for the content the public need to use their services.
public sector broadcasters and their subsidiaries.
Help Understanding Accessibility Law
Depending on the nature of your business/organisation there is a number avenues you can take to get advice about the upcoming changes.
The Government Digital Service is researching what guidance and support that public sector organisations need to meet accessibility standards. If you’re interested in taking part in this research, contact accessibility-research@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk.
How TeamKinetic Can Help?
If you require any further information please click here for the full government regulations of what exactly the accessibility laws entail.
If you are looking for a volunteer management system that will be fully compliant with the accessibility law changes look no further than TeamKinetic. We have been working hard on our 1.3 release to improve the accessibility for our volunteers.
Visit Our website here https://teamkinetic.co.uk/ Or give us a call on 0161 914 5757 to find out more about how we can help you. You can also reach out to us on our social media channels:
I have been concentrating on accessibility improvements and changes for the upcoming 1.3 release of TeamKinetic and I thought I would give a little background into what accessibility means for websites and what TeamKinetic have been doing to solve some of the issues in a non-technical post.
It’s a long post but here’s a quick check list of what the focus has been for this release;
Clear focus effects so a keyboard users knows where they are at all times
Keyboard accessible menu and sub menu
Keyboard accessible help tips, activated by the return key and closed by switching focus
Proper use of ARIA tags for all content that is initially invisible (such as help tips, pop up windows etc) so that screen readers will correctly read out the revealed text at the correct time
Correctly labelled form elements so that screen readers can always associate an input (such as a text element) with its description
Grouping together of associated form elements using fieldsets and legends. For instance, a collection of checkboxs for a yes, no, maybe, definitely answer. using a fieldset ensures that a screen reader user knows what question the answers belong to.
Keyboard accessible skip to content links that enable keyboard users and screen reader users to skip the menu and header portion of a webpage and get straight to the important stuff. Can you imagine how tedious it is to have to listen or tab through every navigation element on a webpage before you can read its content!
Correct description tags (alt tags) for all images
Improvements to link and button text by providing additional screen reader only text to give context to the link or button.
Making sure all password fields are marked as ‘new’, ‘existing’ or ‘repeat’ as they are often just labelled password.
Ensuring all webpages are accurately and uniquely titled and described.
Accessibility is often low on developers priority list, its understandable, the number of customers using assistive technologies is likely low compared to the numbers that do not. However the impact on those user that do, is enormous and by ignoring accessibility issues you are effectively blocking those users from accessing your content.
Although being able to access your website is a right for assistive technology users, and it is illegal to discriminate against such users, its also a positive process and a way to learn new skills, engage with a new audience and improve the intrinsic worth and value of your product.
Keyboard Accessibility
Keyboard navigation is perhaps the most important aspect of accessibility for websites. Navigating via a keyboard or something similar is employed by many users with mobility issues that cannot hold, move or control a mouse and also by many visually impaired users.
Keyboard users navigate through a website using primarily the tab key which focuses on item to item in the web page in the order it is served or in a specific order set by the website itself. Whilst focused on any element they can use keys such as the return key to activate the actions of that element, say a button to submit a form or to follow a link.
TeamKinetic enables keyboard navigation and all elements are focusable by the keyboard. There is a clear visual clue to which element is currently focused by the keyboard.
Menus
Its almost entirely universal that a website or application has a menu to quickly access different parts of a system. Its also very normal for the menu to have sub menus that are revealed when the mouse is moved over the heading (this is called a HOVER). As you can see below on the TeamKinetic menu the mouse pointer has been hovered over the menu heading and the sub menu is revealed.
But when a keyboard is used to navigate to the menu item the event is called FOCUS, not hover. If the website does not include the specific code for what happens when a menu element is focused by a keyboard event the user will not see the sub menu or any change in colour/appearance to indicate where in the menu they are.
TeamKinetic’s menus are now fully accessible by the keyboard with visual indicators of where the current focus is. When the focus is on an element with a sub-menu available there is a clear colour change and by pressing return the menu can be toggled on and off. Importantly, if the menu is not activated with the return key the user does not have to navigate through all the items of the sub-menu in order to reach the next item in the current menu.
Skip Links
Skip links are a very important and hugely convenient addition for accessibility. They are hidden links or buttons that a screen reader or keyboard user will expose that enable them to skip past all the header and navigation elements that are the same on every page.
The skip to content link only appears when using the tab key to navigate or when using a screen reader
Help ToolTips
Tooltips are little bubbles that pop up to give the user more information or context about a feature or action. Traditionally these have activated when the mouse is hovered over the target and the tooltip disappears when the mouse is moved away from the target.
This is problematic for keyboard users that never fire the hover event, only the focus event (see above) that will never see the tooltip and also for users with reduced motor control. We have converted all our volunteer help tooltips into an accessible form that will fire when the question mark is clicked or when it is focused by a keyboard user. To dismiss the tooltip you move the focus either by pressing the tab key or clicking the mouse anywhere that is not the question mark icon.
importantly the new help tooltips are also labelled carefully with the appropriate ARIA tags so that screen readers are alerted to the presence of new information and are aware when they reach the question mark icon that this will reveal new information when activated and can map the
Improved form labelling
For screen reader users it is important that the context and purpose of all form elements, like text boxes, checkboxes and buttons is clear from the element itself. It is easy for a visual user to tell which question a form element belongs to as it will be group visually, or perhaps via certain colours, on the screen, but will not be apparent to a screen reader user.
Example form showing the correctly marked up labels for the form elements
We have redesigned all the volunteer forms to make sure that the extra context required for screen reader users is included. We achieve this through judicious use of the LABEL tag for describing form elements, by grouping associated elements in a fieldset with a legend and by improving the quality of link and button text by included hidden text that only screen readers see.
Extra Screen Reader Context
Using special styles, it is possible to hide text from visual users but expose it to screen reader users. This is great for adding additional context to buttons and actions that make sense visually but are indistinguishable for screen reader users.
Imagine a long list of say opportunities, each with a button/link that says ‘More Details’ that you might encounter on the search page. It’s easy for a visual user to match the same identical button or link with the context of the opportunity you are currently looking at but not for a screen reader that will just list a long set of identical buttons.
Identical buttons that are easy to associate with the opportunity visually, but not so for a screen reader
The addition of the contextual text means a screen reader user knows, in this case, which opportunity is linked to which button.
The appearance to a screen reader of the repeated buttons without and with added contextual text
What Next ?
Most of the work for this release has been focused on the volunteer’s portal, with some global changes, like the accessible menu applied across the application.
We will be auditing all the provider pages to perform the same changes as above and finally onto the administrator pages.
We envisage that we will be constantly improving accessibility as best practise evolves and we discover new areas that are not optimised for assistive technology users. If you are such a user we would love to hear your experiences and suggestions.
Hi there and welcome to the 1.3 release of TeamKinetic. We’ve got some great new time saving features this time round, the normal raft of small fixes and tweaks and a large dollop of accessibility improvement as we journey towards a fully accessible system for all users.
Headline Updates
Full screen layout for administrators and providers. We’ve removed the logo header bar to give more room for what matters
Brand new dashboard for administrators and providers
Universal search across volunteers, opportunities and providers is available right from the top menu on all pages
New mapping library which produces we think, better looking maps
Trusted status for providers
Upload your own custom areas for reporting and searching
Contextual help bar available anytime from the top menu
Keyboard accessible menus
Accessible forms
Accessible help tooltips
Accessibility layout improvements
Front page slider image controls improved
New application options
New POD functionality
Pause or end participation in a flexible opportunity without leaving the opportunity and losing hours.
New Dashboard
We’ve completely redesigned the dashboard for administrators and providers and it is now very much focused around helping you to get the tasks you need to do, done!
New administrator dashboard
Authorisations, latest chatter messages, logged hours since your last visit and lots more are displayed right there everytime you login. We’ve added some insight into your programme, like who is logging hours, which opportunities or providers are performing badly and suggested tasks to keep on top.
We think this new dashboard will be a real time saver.
Universal Search
From the top menu bar you now have access to a number of new areas including the universal search. It’s a stripped down lookup service that will find matching volunteers, opportunities and providers.
Universal search and lookup
Its obviously not as fully featured as the specific search pages for volunteers, opportunities and providers, but its fantastic for navigating quickly between different things. It also gives you a little visual clue as to the status of each entity, red for access denied when a volunteer, unauthorised when a provider and closed when an opportunity and green for access granted, authorised and open respectively.
New Mapping Service
We are switching to Open Streetmap for our mapping service. This is a fantastic open sourced effort to map the world without the propriety nature and vagaries of being in the Google ecosystem. It also has we think more natural looking maps.
Open StreetMap
Contextual Help
We have built a foundation for us to enable contextual help on every page. This will be accessible from the help icon in the top menu and will reveal all the help topics and tutorials for the page you are currently using. Both administrators and providers have access and we hope it will help new providers especially, get the most from TeamKinetic, and of course ask you less questions!
The slide out help menu available on every page
We are working hard to get help for as many pages as possible on launch but we’ll be adding them progressively and in response to questions that regularly arise. Let us know if there are any topics you’d like to see in the help menus to aid your users.
Accessibility
I’ve already blogged about the accessibility improvements we have coming in this release. This has been a really rewarding process and I’m looking forward to some feedback for how we can keep improving in this area. Most of the effort has been concentrated in the volunteer’s portal but there have been improvements throughout.
New Administrator Controls
Include the volunteer stats in the weekly email. We had some reports that volunteers that were interested in volunteering but hadn’t yet taken the plunge, we’re getting discouraged seeing zero stats every week!
Overlapping session booking option. Using this you can control if volunteers can join sessions which overlap or conflict. We are working on providing a further control to determine how close the sessions need to be in order to initiate the conflict. Volunteers are informed if they attempt to join sessions which overlap, on either the same or different opportunities. By default volunteers are not allowed to join overlapping sessions.
Require volunteers to upload a photo before they can join any opportunities.
Display nationally shared opportunities on your version of the native mobile applications. When enabled users will also be able to view and join nationally shared opportunities direct from their applications.
Ending Flexible Opportunity Attendance
For very long running flexible opportunities its useful to know if volunteers are finished. Previously this was only really possible by asking the volunteer to leave the opportunity but that meant there was now a hole in the audit trail and information for that opportunity.
Volunteers can now click a button when logging hours to say they won’t be logging any more hours and have effectively left the opportunity.
Volunteers can now say they have finished with a flexible opportunity
The same functionality is also available for administrators from the volunteer list on the opportunity management page. Just click the pause icon to flip the volunteer to the finished state and the play icon to flip the back. The volunteers that have finished are separated from the still active ones so you can easily keep track of your flexible volunteers.
Admin display separating finished and active volunteers on flexible opportunities
Launch Date
We’ve processed close to 200 issues for this release and there are many small improvements and bug fixes throughout the application and we are excited to be releasing 1.3 on March 31st.
The economic value of volunteering is at least worth £50 Billion to the British economy and has the scope to grow but that’s impossible if retention rates are low.
The figures may seem minuscule, but how can we measure volunteer activity if things stay fixed and static across the country. However, you’ll be happy to know that technology is allowing nonprofits the ability to maximise efforts in volunteer retention solutions.
Here are 4 ways that volunteer management software can aid organisations in volunteer retention.
Respond to Volunteers Quickly
Organisations that inform and respond volunteers quickly have a much a higher percentage of retaining them. It is key for volunteer managers to have regular communication in order to have a successful programme.
TeamKinetic make communication fast and simple through our feedback function that allows volunteers and opportunity providers to send each other feedback as well as opportunity chat rooms for that instant response! Our volunteer software also allows you to send out automated and customised notifications (Text, Email, Social) at a click of a button.
Utilise a Volunteer Database
Having a volunteer database can inform and guide you to make better organisational decisions that benefit everyone involved. The information can allow you to understand past and present volunteers making sure volunteers are placed into roles that suit them best.
Data can increase retention rates and allows you to understand the facts and figures not just what you think is right. Organisations that still manually input data into spreadsheets are at risk of losing historical data and also risk miss understanding key data due to the lack of visualisation.
A volunteer system makes interpreting data easy. It can allow you to group volunteers based on skill sets and demographics, highlights popular opportunities, and assists volunteers that need support. These are all contributing factors to understanding your volunteers better and making retention rates higher.
Volunteer Appreciation and Recognition
All humans need to be recognised in a meaningful way for their efforts. Volunteers give up their time to help organisations they are passionate and care about. So that same intention should be displayed by the volunteer manager.
A lack of incentive and appreciation for your volunteers is sure to make them lose motivation and belief in what you do. Organisations should be developing time and effort towards the happiness of their volunteers. How hard is it to say thank you? We have found that the most effective way to show appreciation towards volunteers is by incorporating a rewards and recognition system into your program.
TeamKinetic’s volunteer management software allows organisations to create a rewards and recognition scheme that will create a better impact on achieving goals and mission accomplishments. Administrators can track and edit recognition directly from TeamKinetic’s user interface.
Build Personal Relationships
Getting to know your volunteers on a personal level is a great way of making them part of your organisation’s community. Volunteers want to know who they are volunteering for. Building meaningful relationships isn’t easy when you have time constraints and project deadlines to meet, but it is one of the most important factors to consider when evaluating volunteer retention rates.
However, Volunteer Management Software can provide you with that much needed free time. A volunteer system allows administrators to communicate with registered volunteers through a number of functions such as opportunity chatroom, opportunity feedback, social media linking. Organisations we work with have saved hours by changing from manual procedures to a digital platform that allows them to carry out their daily tasks all in one place.
So if you’re having trouble with volunteer retention and feel like theres never enough time to get your long list of tasks complete, then maybe a volunteer management software is for you?
TeamKinetic helps to build better volunteer communities by providing great tools for volunteer managers that save time, make a better impact and improve insight. Our goal is to make volunteering easy for everyone no matter what. But don’t take our word for it, why not check out our customer reviews.
Mastering volunteer management can be a colossal task but it’s not impossible! A lot of people in the third sector encounter similar problems with each other.
Organising and communicating with volunteers, logging volunteer hours and consistently producing high-quality volunteer opportunities are all issues that volunteer teams face every day. We believe that this does not have to be the case.
A volunteer management system could be the key to unlocking your true potential as a volunteer manager and taking your programme to the next level.
TeamKinetic is an online platform that helps you recruit, manage and retain your volunteers. Making it easy for individuals to find the opportunities they want. Organisations can safely and effectively use volunteers across their business.
Our system allows your volunteers freedom and flexibility, using the very latest technology to give their time to the causes and activities that they love.
Volunteer Communication
In order to have an organised volunteer programme being in constant communication with your volunteers is a must. With TeamKinetic you will be able to give your volunteers reminders of events before so that they never forget and questions they have can be answered promptly. This can be done through email or if the volunteer provides you with a phone number you can also text them so that you can get hold of them whilst they’re on the go.
The system also offers you the ability to post on the news section. This is where you can keep your volunteers up to date with and important announcements.
Spreading The Word
TeamKinetic presents your organisation with the opportunity to share your opportunities with other systems to give you the maximum amount of people for your opportunities. Our system also speaks to Do-it.org which gives you access to 1000’s of volunteers all over the country.
How To Start Using TeamKinetic
If you are at all interested in making your volunteer programme the best it can possibly be with your own volunteer management software system please do not hesitate to get into contact with TeamKinetic. We are available weekdays from 9am – 5pm for any phone support or inquiries you may have on 0161 914 5757. Alternatively, you can email us: sales@teamkinetic.co.uk
We recently spoke with GB Taekwondo volunteer manager, James Johnson on his experience as a volunteer provider on the TeamKinetic volunteer management system.
The following case study is regarding how TeamKinetic’s volunteer management system has improved the volunteer management process for GB Taekwondo and how it is assiting with volunteer recruitment ahead of the World Taekwondo Championships 2019.
GB Taekwondo
GB Taekwondo is responsible for the preparation, management and performance of British Taekwondo Athletes. Based in Manchester, we manage the full time ‘World Class Performance’ programme and with the support of UK Sport and National Lottery funding.
With the further support of Sport England, we manage the national Talent Pathway programme, responsible for the development of cadet and junior athletes and their progression as members of the national squads. GB Taekwondo delivers an annual programme of major events which this year includes the World Taekwondo Championships 2019 at the Manchester Arena.
Tell us a little bit around your role at GB Taekwondo?
“I’m currently working as GB Taekwondo’s Volunteer Manager & Events Intern. This means that my primary role is to oversee the volunteer programme for the Manchester Taekwondo Grand Prix 2018 & World Taekwondo Championships 2019. All the recruitment and management of the volunteers for these events is my responsibility. To have a role like this during a university placement year is a fantastic opportunity and I’m really enjoying it.”
How have you found using TeamKinetic?
“We use the TeamKinetic system as an opportunity provider which means we register our volunteering opportunities on various TeamKinetic sites. The main one that we use is MCRVIP which is the main Manchester volunteer site.
Registering our opportunities on these systems is highly useful as it allows us to connect with volunteers from around Manchester. Manchester has a great volunteer network and using this system is a great way to advertise our opportunities to these volunteers.
During the Taekwondo Grand Prix, we had 107 volunteers in total across the week performing 15 different roles. The total number of hours that was completed by volunteers was 664, this was just over a course of a couple of days!”
Can you give a scope into the kind of opportunities and events created by GB Taekwondo?
“In addition to GB Taekwondo’s World Class Performance programme, GB Taekwondo delivers an annual programme of World Class Events. The next event GB Taekwondo will host is the Manchester 2019 World Taekwondo Championships. This is the first time that the World Championships will be held in the UK and provides a fantastic opportunity to get involved.”
“The Dan Clan will be an integral part of the World Championships as they will be the face of the competition. GB Taekwondo will be recruiting 250 – 280 volunteers to make up the Dan Clan. They will be seen across Manchester from the airport, to hotels to transport hubs and of course in Manchester Arena. This is your chance to get involved!”
2019 World Taekwondo Championships
What measurable benefits have you seen since recruiting through the TeamKinetic system?
“GB Taekwondo has been using TeamKinetic as a provider since 2011, the benefits provided by the TeamKinetic system is that it gives a base of volunteers that are easily connected with. Having volunteers able to see your opportunities with ease is a great promotion for any organisation that requires volunteers.
The system is easy to use, it doesn’t take long to post the opportunities and once they’re uploaded it is easy to see the volunteers and which sessions they’re signed up to.”
Thank you for time and answers James!
TeamKinetic helps to build better volunteer communities by providing great tools for volunteer managers that save time, increase impact and improve insight. Our goal is to make volunteering easy for everyone no matter what. But don’t take our word for it, why not check out our customer reviews.
For more information on how we can assist with your volunteer management and getting the best out of all your volunteers visit our website or contact us on – 0161 914 5757
TeamKinetic is an online platform that helps you recruit, onboard, manage, deploy, audit, recognise, reward and retain your volunteers.
Making it easy for individuals to find the opportunities they want and love. Organisations can safely and effectively use volunteers across their business.
TeamKinetic allows your volunteers freedom and flexibility, using the very latest technology to give their time to the causes and activities they love.
Why Do You Need Volunteer Management Software?
The days of using spreadsheets or that old access database to store volunteering information are well and truly numbered! Never has there been an easier more efficient way to manage your volunteers and track their progress.
Going for over 10 years, TeamKinetic has a host of clients who have left glowing testimonials about our service.
TeamKinetic software makes organising and searching for your opportunities, childs play, rich in data and insight about what exactly your volunteers are wanting to do and what they actually do!
We have made our system ‘Volunteer-centric’. What we mean by this is that we always put the volunteer at the heart of all our decisions. We never want a good volunteer to be sent to a bad opportunity or vice-versa. With built-in volunteer feedback and a range of features that offer insight to the volunteer experience we want you to be informed as volunteer managers.
We make it simple to identify your superstar volunteers and with a range of built-in reward and recognition fetaures, you can be confident those volunteers will feel appreciated.
Pricing!
We want every organisation, no matter what their size to benefit from TeamKinetic.
Start with our FREE to use TryVolunteering product. All the core features of TeamKinetic for small charities and clubs, For FREE.
TeamKinetic ADVANCED is designed for organisations that want more control of their volunteers, branding and support. Starting at £39 p/m for an advanced system.
TeamKinetic ENTERPRISE provides unparalleled levels of customisation, telephone support and access to our training and support team. Starting from £149 p/m.
If you would like to have a chat about how we can help you please call 0161 914 5757 or visit our web site https://teamkinetic.co.uk/
Who Can Benefit From Volunteer Management Software?
We work with a host of clients in numerous sectors and this is something that we are proud of. Here are examples of some of the sectors we operate in:
Universities/Education
NHS
National Governing Bodies and other Sporting Organisation
Major Events
Charities / Clubs
Parks/Museums
Local Authorities
Volunteer Centres
Hospice
Plus So Many More!
Request A Demo With Us
No matter what sector you are working in we would love to have a conversation with you. You can request a demo through our website or call us on the number below.
Many roles go unfilled… why is that?Do volunteer managers need to have a deeper understanding of volunteer demographics? Can we continue to assume that empty roles will fill up because they’re helping a good cause?
Unfilled volunteering roles
Having a good understanding of your volunteers and the roles you offer is key. Unfilled roles can have a negative impact on your volunteer management and make it difficult for tasks to be carried out.
Volunteers want to volunteer! Don’t make it difficult for them.
All volunteer managers need to prioritise roles that are crucial to the organisation because they involve tasks that drive long-term goals to be met. By prioritizing the most important roles it allows you to focus the energy and time on the areas that are most likely to have a greater impact on the organisation and its development.
Knowing your volunteer capacity and demographic
The one-size-fits-all is approach has long past its expiration date. Knowing who volunteers for you is crucial for developing relationships, providing opportunities and understanding who to target when recruiting volunteers. Volunteer trends are always changing and adapting, with volunteers being much more diverse. Here are some demographics to consider :
Age
The idea that only older people volunteer is diminishing. Today students in higher education regularly volunteer and are part of the most likely groups to volunteer. Different age groups will have a variety of skills they can utilise in their volunteer work.
Gender
The gender gap has become almost even with more men getting involved in volunteering than ever before. Women consistently volunteer in all areas, whereas men are typically more likely to volunteer in sport. It’s important to consider how your operations could be improved to create a more gender-inclusive environment for your volunteers.
Location
There are countless organisations offering ways to volunteer. This has created a great spread of opportunities contributing to better communities across the country. Within your organisation, you might consider mapping your volunteers to understand your key areas. Then you can ensure your opportunities are easily accessed by these areas.
Studies show higher levels of austerity among communities in the north of England and the local authority spending has fallen nationally by half since 2010. The lack of resources and inequalities mean many people are excluded from taking part in certain opportunities
Research conducted by our good friends at Jump highlight that a lower proportion of volunteers come from lower SEG (42%) compared to the representation of that group in the national population (50%).
Some of the barriers faced by lower SEG to volunteer include health barriers (illness or disability), caring responsibilities, and age constraints.
More information on Jump’s work and their report on “Why is volunteering biased towards higher socio-economic groups?” can be downloaded on their website.
So how can we help you fix these problems?
TeamKinetic is centralised around providing volunteer managers with resources to create accessible, easy-to-find opportunities for their volunteers.
Our volunteer management software works to eliminate issues such as filling roles and allows for a greater understanding of your volunteer base.
Advanced Search Functionality
Volunteers can search for opportunities with our search functionality which includes searching by location, opportunity name, and categories. This allows volunteers to find the nearest opportunities available to them without searching the whole internet.
Map Volunteers & Opportunities
Volunteer managers can view the number of opportunities and volunteers through a map format. This is useful in decision-making and creating opportunities according to your volunteer demographics.
Reports and Analysis
You can gain insight into the success of your volunteer programme by evaluating your volunteer sign-ups (including those who are active and repeating), the number of opportunities you have created and other demographic information.
These functions can help with providing suitable roles and ensure opportunities are filled.
Every year people all over the world set them selves new year’s resolutions. Many of which do not get fulfilled, in fact, 66% of resolutions don’t even last a month. What can you do that really makes a difference?
Volunteering is something that you can do all year round. This is a resolution that not only helps yourself but others as well.
DO – HELP SOMEONE ELSE
“We can’t help everyone but everyone can help someone”.
Former US President Ronald Reagan may not be everyone’s cup of tea but he certainly got this one right. Why not make your changes for 2019 ones that can help others. There are plenty of opportunities to volunteer all over the UK and worldwide, this year your help really could change a life. TeamKinetic is lucky enough to work with organisations who offer these amazing opportunities and we’d love to help you get started.
DON’T – BE A HASHTAG HALFWIT
Social media gives us an audience never before imagined in human history. It’s so easy to get caught up in what’s trending and follow the crowd. The cringy popular ones every year are ‘#NewYearNewMe’ and ‘#WatchOut2019’. As we’ve seen, less than half of new years resolutions stick, so now we are in February, revisit your new year’s hopes and aspirations. It is great to let people know what you’re planning on doing over the of course of the year. Just do not let it become embarrassing when come the end of the year you have not acted on your goals. Hashtags are easy, real change needs a little more effort!
DO – USE VOLUNTEERING TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
Helping out can make you so much more employable. Volunteering does not have to be at a charity or something ‘uncool’. There will likely be opportunities for you to get a voluntary role in your future profession. This will help you stand out from the crowd as people will see you have a genuine passion for your career. Almost every University will have a department that will be able to help, or your town will have a volunteer centre that will have be able to signpost you with volunteering opportunities. These life experiences can be worth it’s weight in gold in the long term.
DON’T – GIVE UP!
February is coming to an end and I’m sure that many of you have already given up, with most challenging tasks the easiest thing to do is to jack it in!
This is our biggest DON’T. It’s ok to give up, but don’t give up on trying again, you only need to succeed once to make that difference. If you don’t give up on your volunteering resolution, you will be making a difference to someone else and yourself. Volunteering can genuinely change lives – both yours and those your work supports.
Last year TeamKinetic joined Liverpool Football club to help with a disability football session. We got the chance to speak to volunteers first hand and see what volunteering meant to them and hopefully you can see the difference being involved with something you are passionate about can make to your life and others. Check out how Liverpool FC use TeamKinetic here.
TeamKinetic provides volunteer management software that can work for every organisation. We work with groups of all sizes who have had success with us in recruiting, retaining and realising the potential of their volunteer workforce.
Please visit our website to find out more about our work and how we can help you. Feel free to request a demo so we can show you around and tell you about how we can help you specifically. Alternatively, you can give us a call on 0161 914 5757.
We achieved a very reasonable 65% response rate, so thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our satisfaction survey last November, it is very much appreciated. Without your feedback we are unable to gauge our progress in making your TeamKinetic experience even better.
The take home message for us was that we need to do better in informing and providing help and context for new features as they become available.
TeamKinetic has been growing quickly over the last 18 months and we have definitely fallen behind in our goals to write tutorial and guide content for all the new stuff that has been going on in that 18 months. We now have renewed focus on this issue and will have some news soon about how we plan to present contextual information and help within TeamKinetic. We are also ramping up our online master classes and live sessions, so join our Facebook group to get early access to those resources.
We asked five questions concerning some of the most useful functions and terminology that we suspected were being under used or misunderstood;
I am aware of sharing opportunities outside of my website
I am aware that you can add volunteers to existing opportunities
I am aware that i can limit opportunities to groups and linked volunteers
I am aware of activity tags and how they are used in search
I am aware of flexible, repeating, non-repeating opportunities
I am aware of sharing opportunities outside of my website
Some 57% of respondents were not aware that there is potential to share opportunities outside of their application in order to extend the reach of their opportunities and gain more volunteer interest.
We can share your opportunities to Do-It, the largest volunteer opportunity signposting app in the UK, our own, more modest, national TryVolunteering site and via the API to SalesForce or other external systems such as Volunteer Scotland and Volunteer-wales.net.
This is a great feature that is clearly not being utilised enough. We will be dedicating one of our masterclasses and video tutorials to this topic soon.
I am aware that you can add volunteers to existing opportunities
Nearly 50% of respondents were not aware that administrators and providers can add volunteers directly to sessions, and the volunteer will receive an email notification so they can check their availability.
TeamKinetic is a self service application for volunteers, we do not demand that administrators and providers micro manage all aspects of the recruitment process. This saves valuable time for the managers and allows the volunteers to pick and choose the sessions that suit them without the sometimes long exchanges between managers and volunteers as they try to allocate volunteers to sessions.
However we fully understand that it maybe necessary to manage a particular opportunity that carefully and you want full control, or partial control over what volunteers join what sessions.
This is a useful and important set of features and we will definitely be adding some tutorials about this to the help guide and the masterclass sessions.
I am aware that I can limit opportunities to groups and linked volunteers
A third of our respondents did not know about the various restrictions you can place on opportunities, either when creating the opportunities or editing them at a later date.
Volunteer grouping is a very powerful feature that allows you to segment your volunteers. Groups are fully customisable and providers can have separate groups to administrators. Volunteers can be members of no, one or multiple groups and can be moved around at anytime.
As well as being able to restrict opportunities you can message particular groups, quickly update volunteer information and statuses for group members and create registration links so that people are automatically placed in the correct group when registering without any admin input required.
I am aware of activity tags and how they are used in search
We had a pretty even 50/50 split about this question. Its a little esoteric but important even so.
Most importantly tags are used during search as a way for volunteers to narrow down their search. Any text entered in a search is compared to tags and all opportunity tags for the matching opportunities are offered to the volunteer as filters so they can further refine their search.
Its super important to understand how they are used so you can get the best out of tag based searching so please take a look at our video tutorial on tags and super charge your opportunity tags.
I am aware of flexible, repeating, non-repeating opportunities
At TeamKinetic we discuss, alot, about what we should call these opportunity types and how they should be presented when creating opportunities. I’ll let you into a little secret, there is NO difference between repeating and non-repeating opportunities, you just get a different layout when adding your sessions.
The difference between flexible opportunities and the others is important and does have ramifications for the joining and logging process.
Fortunately we had a very positive 75% of respondents who were aware of the three types (unfortunately we didn’t think to add a follow up question asking if they were also aware of the reasons for choosing different types).
We are still discussing how we can adapt the opportunity creation page to make it clearer why you would choose one over the other and once we have that dialled in we will release a video explaining it all.
