This year, the annual TeamKinetic conference theme was Volunteering to 2030: What might the future look like? We had a variety of incredible speakers discuss their thoughts on the future of volunteering. 

Day One

Day One of the TeamKinetic Conference involved sharing some exciting new updates to the TeamKinetic system, sessions on how to onboard volunteers and providers, available reporting tools on the system, how to create and use roles and other topics covered in a series of breakout sessions.

New To TeamKinetic

Rolf started off by taking us through the next major release. New opportunity creation system, better sharing options when sharing your opportunities, scheduling bulk emails, reporting improvements, and more! You can learn more about the 2.20 version here.

Watch Rolf’s session to get to grips with our exciting new update. If you’re a TeamKinetic Admin user, you can even test it for yourself over at https://beta.teamkinetic.co.uk/vk/admin
(Just use your usual admin login details!)

Reporting With TeamKinetic

Steve gave his session on reporting with TeamKinetic and later spoke to us about onboarding volunteers and providers and opportunity restrictions. He touched on the different types of reports, maintenance, general awareness of activity, how you can measure the success of your volunteer programme and other areas of how to report with the TeamKinetic system. 

Watch the session below to find out how reports can help you uncover various things about your volunteers and opportunities.

Onboarding Providers and Volunteers

In Rolf’s breakout session he spoke to us about onboarding volunteers and providers. He started off by talking about the new onboarding/help screens that will be available to new volunteers when they register. These will be available for admins to customise in the upcoming 2.2 release.
Rolf then discussed how to find and customise the emails that are sent to new volunteers and providers. These emails are the first communications your new volunteers and providers get from your organisation and they are a great place to set out your stall and set the tone for your programme. Finally, we took a look at how to keep your recently onboarded users engaged using the weekly newsletters, bulk emails and search filters to extract those users that are not interacted since registering. 

Super Admin Options and Customising Emails

Another breakout session was run by Steve. This was a fun and busy session with lots of questions regarding customised emails and custom areas.  Steve also touched on which functions are limited to organisations with providers who work for them, and what functionality can be used by all organisations including volunteer centres.  Lots of interesting points and suggestions from attendees, and overall it was a very useful session. In case you missed it or would like to re-watch Steve’s session, it can be found here.

Why use Roles? And How to Create Them

Roles are still a relatively new addition to TeamKinetic. We know they could help a lot of customers but appear to be significantly underused. This is why Chris decided to base his breakout session on this feature. He talked us through how to create roles within your system, how they can be used effectively on your opportunities, and the differences between roles and restrictions. 

Are You Taking Advantage Of Opportunity Restrictions?

In our final session of day one, Steve took everyone through the different opportunity restrictions available within TeamKinetic. These restrictions are important to ensure you get the right volunteers for your opportunities every time!

There are a number of ways to restrict your opportunities in TeamKinetic to ensure you get the right volunteer for the job, but are you using them correctly? Watch the session to find out:

Day Two

Day Two of the TeamKinetic conference saw some impactful guest speakers join us. They all covered a range of topics such as expenses, volunteer retention/impact, criminal checks, and more.

Guest speakers included Rob Jackson, Ruth Leonard from AVM, Randa Bennett from vHelp, Simon Dickinson from Digital Gaps, Dan McManus from Time Tempo Credits, Felicity Adrian from General Practise Alliance, Scott Jones from 123 Internet, and Allan Merrifield from First Advantage.

Rob Jackson

Rob Jackson was the keynote speaker at the 2022 TeamKinetic Conference. He shared ideas of what the future might hold for volunteering. Rob had some powerful points which we think are worth sharing. 

Since the pandemic and now the cost of living crisis, people’s mental health has worsened. The pandemic has caused people to be burnout and have a lack of motivation. According to a brief by the World Health Organization, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25% in the first year of the pandemic. This could imply that in the future, volunteers may need increased support from volunteer managers due to poor mental health and lack of energy to put their time into volunteering. 

The cost of living crisis could also cause an increase in stress and anxiety in people’s lives. Individuals may not have the spare time to volunteer as they have to work multiple jobs to support themselves through the cost of living crisis. The cost of living crisis also means the reimbursement of expenses needs to be prioritised. People may be reluctant to volunteer as they worry that it might leave them out of pocket as expenses are taking too long to be reimbursed.

After Rob Jackson, we then had a session choice between Simon Dickinson from Digital Gaps and Dan McManus from Time Tempo Credits discussing volunteer retention and impact in 2030. 

Digital Gaps 

Simon delivered a great session on providing verified volunteers for digital services. Digital Gaps’ mission is to help the public and third sector realise the financial, customer experience and improved well-being outcomes that data solutions deliver.

He talked about the work they have done with us to put in place a digital passport. Simon showed us the process that would verify a volunteer, using Yoti to verify your identity which then allows you to have a digital identity wallet which can be used when recruiting volunteers.

Tempo Time Credits 

Dan McManus from Tempo Time Credits then took us through how to build and sustain a volunteer workforce in his session. Tempo Time Credits allows you to earn a time credit for each hour of volunteering.

Dan talked through some future plans for Tempo including an improved facility to donate to groups. Some thoughts Dan had on the future of volunteering was that the pandemic has had a large impact on older and vulnerable volunteers which has made it difficult for organisations to recruit volunteers. 

vHelp

Randa Bennett from vHelp gave her session on how we should be handling expenses in the future. Randa has been in the technology sector for over 20 years and came across this problem around reimbursing volunteers and that’s where vHelp was born.   

One key point she touched on in her session was the importance of inclusivity. If organisations aren’t reimbursing volunteers quickly, it could be excluding the less fortunate people who can’t afford to be left out of pocket, leaving only wealthier people being able to volunteer. Transparency is also a key aspect for the future of volunteering. In the future, organisations need to ensure they inform their volunteers about expenses in the early stages of recruitment.

123 Internet and General Practice Alliance 

In the next session, we were joined by Felicity Adrian from General Practice Alliance. Felicity is a project manager and she helps put together the volunteer passport online platform for Northamptonshire.

Scott Jones from 123 Internet talked us through how he made their volunteer passport homepage. They gave us an overview of the concept behind the volunteer passport and discussed why the re-design was needed. To decide why the re-design was needed they held a workshop to help them understand what their key vision was for volunteering across Northamptonshire and how it could be shared through the volunteer passport.  

First Advantage 

Allan Merrifield from First Advantage spoke to us about Digital ID DBS. First Advantage are a global technology background screening company delivering innovative solutions and insights that help their clients manage risk and hire the best talent quickly and efficiently.

Their aim is to automate DBS checks to make it as easy as possible. During Allan’s session, he spoke to us about what services are available through the partnership that is in place between TeamKinetic and First Advantage. Allan also took us through the journey of creating a digital ID and how to use one.

A Big Thank You!

We’d just like to say a massive thank you to everyone who attended the 2022 TeamKinetic Conference and all our great speakers for their informative sessions. We hope you had a good time with us.

If you have any suggestions of things you’d like to hear about – or people you’d like to hear from – please tell us by emailing alex@teamkinetic.co.uk

We look forward to next year’s conference! 

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