This post was written by Gethyn Williams

What role can digital play in effective volunteer management in 2024? 

That’s the question under consideration by TeamKinetic and the Association of Volunteer Managers as they embark on an exciting initiative – the creation of a new Toolkit for Digital in Volunteering – helping Volunteer-Involving Organisations to adopt the digital tools and approaches that are right for them.

Digital technology has for many years played an integral role in volunteering, whether through scaling up how we advertise our opportunities online, streamlining the onboarding process or improving how we communicate with our volunteers.

Sometimes a new advance in technology comes along and has a dramatic, instant impact, revolutionising our approach and unlocking fresh value that we couldn’t have previously imagined.

However, at other times it can feel as if digital evolves under its own agenda, developing functionality that may or may not address the challenges we face in real-world volunteer management. 

Helping volunteer-involving organisations to ask the right questions and adopt the digital technologies that best meet their needs, on their own terms, is the purpose of this new Toolkit.

Why now?

No-one steps in the same river twice

Heraclitus, 500 BCE

That change is our only constant may be a well-understood idea, but in recent years the volunteering landscape seems to have changed more rapidly and dramatically than at any point in recent history. 

The impact of the Covid era has deeply affected both who volunteers and their expectations, perhaps permanently. Initiatives such as the Vision for Volunteering encourage us to recognise this and adapt our approaches, or risk losing more volunteers as these trends continue.

Coupled with this, we are living through a period of huge social change, impacting further on people’s propensity and willingness to volunteer, testing well-founded but increasingly outdated approaches to recruitment and retention.

So what role can digital technology play in helping us cope with these transitions? 

You’ve probably looked at digital options for your programmes many times in the past – but given that technological development also moves at pace perhaps now, given the change we’re experiencing on all fronts, is a great time to look again at the role digital plays in your operation.

What’s in the Toolkit?

TeamKinetic’s mission has always been to enable volunteer-involving organisations to make the most of digital’s potential, so the questions this Toolkit need to answer should come from you – the leaders in volunteering.

And whilst we can anticipate some of the big areas we should probably include, such as:

• How do we prepare for the impact of AI? 
• How can digital help us be more inclusive? or 
• What exactly is open data and its potential?  

…there’s no better way of getting to the heart of an issue than by listening to our customers and the challenges they are facing, in their own words. 

After all, a question well-stated is a problem half-solved.

How can I get involved?

So if you’d like to help shape the Toolkit, or there’s a particular digital angle you’d like it to address, we’d love to hear from you. You can:

Complete our poll – four short, multiple-choice questions that will help us understand your priorities better. You can access the poll here: https://forms.gle/8qJDzbyxuLuSTEHp6

Send us a message telling us what you’d like to see, in your own words.

Or, if you’re a member of the AVM there’s an opportunity to join a roundtable to explore the Toolkit’s structure and content, currently scheduled for the 21st of November. Stand by your inboxes for further details.

Thanks for reading 🙏

Notes and Further Links 

The Digital Toolkit will be a resource owned by and developed for the Association of Volunteer Managers and its members. 

Its creation is sponsored by TeamKinetic and will be built by Gethyn Williams, an independent volunteering strategist, working closely with partners and taking input from AVM members and wider stakeholders. 

We anticipate the release of the Toolkit in Spring 2024.