TeamKinetic are excited to announce that they will be the first official corporate partner of the Association of Volunteer Managers (AVM.) Since discovering their work 5 years ago, they have been a passionate advocate for the importance of the AVM. TeamKinetic welcomes this formal partnership.
Both organisations share the same passion and desire to progress the professionalism of those who involve volunteers. AVM’s goal as an independent membership body is one that supports, represents and champions people in volunteer management in the UK regardless of field, discipline or sector. As an organisation primarily run by volunteers TeamKinetic is proud to be able to directly support their work as a partner as they offer training, campaign on key issues and provide peer to peer support to volunteer managers.
The partnership is hoping to offer the membership added value and over the next few months will be looking to announce a number of special offers only available to AVM members and supporters. TeamKinetic have spent the last 13 years on the edge of customer-led innovation surrounding digital volunteering and will be continuing to support the campaigns undertaken by AVM. They are looking forward to sharing their experience and knowledge with the AVM members.
Sales Director, Chris Martin has expressed his gratitude towards Jo Gibney and Ruth Leonard “for all their hard work in helping to make this a reality and I sincerely hope we can continue to support the wonderful work and development of AVM for a long time to come.”
Chair of AVM, Ruth Leonard says “this is a really exciting next step for the organisation and will enable us to think about how we can offer more to volunteer managers. AVM is proud of our heritage of being run by and for our members and want to be able to remain relevant into the future. TeamKinetic’s enthusiasm and support for AVM has been clear throughout our shared working and I’m looking forward to develop this further.”
For any organisations or individuals who work with Volunteers, that are not already aware of the AVM and their work, you can visit their site to learn more on becoming a member.
Get in Touch…
If you’d like to know more about AVM, you can access their website here.
You can contact the team here at TeamKinetic through our website, or call on 0161 914 5757.
The following round-up blog post comes from a research report commissioned by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), on Volunteer Passports that TeamKinetic helped to support.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were reminded of just how important volunteering is to communities. It’s suggested that around 12.4 million adults volunteered during the pandemic, 4.6 million of those for the first time! The pandemic has made waves within volunteering and with more and more organisations coming together to find a collaborative approach to recruitment and onboarding; there have been movements to introduce volunteer passports into organisations.
What is a Volunteer Passport?
If you aren’t familiar, a volunteer passport can hold all the verified credentials a volunteer might need in order to volunteer, which can serve as credentials to a pool of organisations. This can be called volunteer portability; this concept refers to the easing of movement across different organisations and roles. Volunteer passports can be a quicker way to apply as a volunteer as any references or training needed has already been completed and verified!
Passporting Aims…
The initiative aims to address key issues regarding volunteer recruitment, management and development…
In certain contexts, such as emergency response volunteering, volunteer passports can be a mechanism to recruit and onboard large numbers of volunteers to opportunities locally and at speed. With passporting, the aim is also to improve the effectiveness of matching volunteers to opportunities tailored to what they’re interested in, or want to take part in. It also means that volunteers can be ‘re-deployed’ onto different tasks where they may be needed. This also ensures that micro, ad hoc and event-based volunteering opportunities are supported, also known as volunteer portability.
Reducing volunteer vetting can save time and money for all parties, through the standardisation of volunteer training and management. In the past, there have been previous initiatives that have explored this locally or within a particular sector, improving the consistency of trained volunteers.
What about alternative practices?
Here’s a quick run-through of the practices that could be integrated into volunteer passports:
A number of volunteering organisations already match volunteers with volunteering opportunities they find may be a good fit, based on previous opportunities or through a skill-based match. Many volunteers started volunteering through word of mouth therefore, online volunteer passports may be deemed unnecessary. Any passporting system would have to consider how the offline side could be integrated successfully.
Volunteer profiles have also been in previous initiatives, numerous management platforms have offered volunteers a facility where they can develop and build their ‘profile.’ This can be used as an alternative to CVs or LinkedIn, which volunteers involved in the report have emphasised. Volunteer passporting could mean it addresses an aim that has already been met.
Other related schemes have been surrounding rewarding volunteers. Just like within the TeamKinetic system, schemes can provide rewards through ‘time banks’ or ‘time credits’, where a volunteer’s time is recorded, which they can then use to redeem a reward of some sort. The reward would depend on the organisation they are working with. We know how important recognising and rewarding volunteers are, so volunteer passporting has to include this, or something similar.
Key Areas of Demand
In order for volunteering-involved organisations to support volunteer passports there are some key areas of demand. The report consistently highlights that portable IDs, and DBS checks are deemed to be a core element of potential volunteer passports. This is because they benefit volunteers, organisations and stakeholders from different voluntary sectors. The introduction of portable IDs and DBS checks is welcomed by organisations as a way to reduce the admin burden that comes with mass onboarding. For volunteers, it reduces the barriers they may find when wanting to volunteer in a different sector.
Allowing organisations to have a shared pool of volunteers would help particular types of volunteering such as emergency, event-based, and micro-volunteering. This element is a way of always having volunteers on hand to offer opportunities to.
From the suggestion for portable IDs, the standardisation of volunteer training is also of interest. Standardising training will be beneficial through local volunteer portability and regarding specialist skills with individual sectors. Not only can volunteers help across different organisations in their local area, those volunteers with specialist skills, are enabled to complete certain tasks for a number of organisations within the sector.
Another element was found that there needs to be some sort of validation of volunteers’ experiences and skills. For some volunteer groups, this would be incredibly beneficial, where volunteering could become a potential route to employment, the validation of skills can be added to a CV etc. This aspect was also thought to offer benefits in terms of supporting social integration and the well-being of different marginalised groups.
What Does Each Sector Think?
The research for the report presented some experiences and views from each sector regarding the introduction of volunteer passports and how they might be used.
The health sector has seen a rise in volunteer passporting over the past couple of months, and the expectation is for the demand to grow. The sector has found that passporting ensures agile and efficient emergency responses along with the integration of statutory and non-statutory services. The demand has also increased in the community action sector; portability at local level of training and skills has already been introduced, so there is potential to build on existing initiatives to deliver a comprehensive passporting system in local areas.
Regarding the culture sector, museums and heritage sites perceived passporting as beneficial. Specifically highlighting the portability.
Portability allows for volunteer learning and skill exchange, reducing administrative burden. There has been interest in developing a shared volunteer training standard within the sector.
In some areas, the sector has found they have been oversubscribed with volunteers. Therefore, standardising training and easy portability means volunteers can be moved into new routes while staying in the sector they’re interested in.
While there is strong demand in certain sectors, the sporting sector has seen very little demand for a passporting system, with the exception of portable DBS checks. The report shows that demand is low as volunteer recruitment is mostly organic, so there’s little interest in the digital brokerage of volunteer passports. Along with this, for individual sports, qualifications are already there in terms of training, and therefore the standardisation of training has been met and recognised.
So How Will it Work?
How might volunteer passports work moving forward?
Commonality: Volunteer portability is more likely to work when there is a common denominator between organisations whether this be locally or sector-based. This commonality between organisations may be essential to building a ‘federation of trust’ aligning volunteer standards and processes.
Sustainable? Stakeholders have concerns that passport initiatives may not be sustainable. This is due to the temporary nature of funding, and a lack of resources. To overcome these issues, volunteer-involved organisations have stressed the need for passporting initiatives to be developed in a realistic way, building this into a long-term strategy for volunteering.
Credibility: The Credibility of passport schemes is incredibly important for volunteer engagement and organisations. Some examples of the ways individual volunteer passporting schemes have been credible have included: endorsements from national councils of volunteer organisations and local authority and government institutions.
Data Standards: This is a strong requirement from digital platform providers and organisations who explain that any volunteer passport system would only work if it was developed with open data standards.
Control? Various organisations have emphasised how important it is for volunteers to be the ones controlling their data. For example, in previous initiatives, there have been options for volunteers to pause notifications at times when they were busy or wanted to stop volunteering for the moment.
Access: There is an element of exclusion and barriers for small organisations due to a lack of digital infrastructure and skills to join in on volunteer passporting for those who work for their organisation. Where are smaller organisations going to find and retain their volunteers?
Expectations of Government Support…
There are areas where central and local governments can support volunteering in the context of volunteer passporting, including:
Raising awareness of current possibilities to make DBS checks portable and improving their portability.
Providing legal clarity over certain issues curtailing volunteer portability or any other elements of passporting.
Working with the voluntary sector to support greater standardisation where appropriate through funding for resources and infrastructure.
Encouraging volunteering by making sure other government policies do not pose barriers to volunteering.
Where Does TeamKinetic Fit In?
As mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, TeamKinetic helped support this report we’d like to thank the DMCS for inviting us to help! We’re intrigued to see how volunteer passports and passporting develop in the next couple of years. We’re currently looking at ways we could introduce volunteer passporting, or elements of passporting, into our system.
If you’d like to know more about us here at TeamKinetic, you can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website. This will let you check out all our features for 30 days. If you like what you see, contact us to book a demo and see how we can help your organisation manage your volunteers!
You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:
Coronavirus has introduced so many new challenges for communities over the past 18 months, but it’s also presented foundations to build a stronger community. Moving out of the pandemic means the focus is now on building the relationships between volunteers and organisations; along with renewing that drive to volunteer in the first place. This could mean we have to rethink the roles within volunteering moving forward.
Remote Volunteering?
The use of remote volunteering over the pandemic has been phenomenal in helping those who’ve really needed it. Due to this, there is a larger market for this kind of volunteering, as so many people have volunteered in this way lately. In order for virtual volunteering to continue, volunteers must be attracted to your organisation’s missions as the social aspect towards volunteering has been stripped back. Communicating that their small contribution will make a difference will keep them involved and feeling positive for helping the community.
The pandemic has also increased the amount of online recruitment. So how have organisations found and kept in touch with their volunteers? It feels inevitable that recruiting volunteers online is something that will carry on far into the future. For organisations, their next steps may be to solidify their presence online. This is where a volunteer management system would come in handy; with TeamKinetic you can recruit more volunteers than ever before, and have constant contact to keep them informed.
Flexibility…
To create a more accessible volunteering route, there needs to be flexibility. For those who cannot commit to certain dates and times: flexibility allows for no obligation to return. It also means that volunteers can now access the risks beforehand (because they haven’t committed to a continuous role). Despite saying we’re coming out of the pandemic, people still have to assess the risks before going out (coronavirus included)! While it becomes more of a challenge for organisations to be flexible, breaking down roles into smaller opportunities is a way to include more flexibility.
Looking towards the future
There is a feeling that volunteering has taken a strong leap forward over the past 18 months. There is a renewed purpose to help those who really need it: we’re more aware of our communities’ vulnerabilities. Volunteering has increased massively over the pandemic and as a result we have to focus on preserving the positive changes that we have seen.
Interested in TeamKinetic?
Why not come and try our system for free! You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website. This will let you check out all our features for 30 days. If you like what you see, contact us to book a demo and see how we can help your organisation manage your volunteers.
TeamKinetic are always here to make sure their clients and any volunteers are protected. We ensure the highest security as we know many organisations may work with young and vulnerable people. TeamKinetic have created a system which allows for safe volunteering and volunteer management. Take a look for yourself below.
Criminal Checks
TeamKinetic understand that many organisations work with young and vulnerable people, so we know that criminal checks need to be completed before volunteers are accepted. With our system you can fully customise volunteer registrations by allowing criminal checks before they can be accepted.
If you only have specific opportunities which need these criminal checks you can customise the opportunity to do these checks when a volunteer joins. This makes the process easier for you when criminal checks need to be done on your volunteers.
Roles
Roles have been created to allow organisations to enable a prescribed on-boarding process for volunteers. Roles are a great feature for organisations that have regular opportunities that are undertaken under the same set of compliance, training, or on-boarding rules.
Community Tasks
Community tasks were set up in response to the COVID-19 crisis. They are small tasks designed to provide community support to people who are unable to leave their homes. These tasks differ from the usual volunteer opportunities where the opportunities might have set hours etc… With community tasks it is usually one volunteer helping someone in the community who cannot go shopping, or pick up their medication and so on.
These tasks are secure that whenever a volunteer signs up for a task they must be full approved before they can get any personal details of the task. Any personal information will be hidden and only available to the task manager until a volunteer is approved for the task.
Community tasks have been able to help many during the pandemic and have allowed communities to provide support for one another in a safe environment. Don’t believe us, read our case study from COVID-19 Kenilworth Support who have been using our community tasks since the beginning of the pandemic.
Accreditation System
TeamKinetic created an accreditation system for the Rugby Super League Grand Final in 2019 and more recently have set up the same system again for the Rugby League this year.
Mainly this is used for major events and sporting events and will allow for the safe management of any person at the venue on the day. The system records the identity and health checks of every personnel. They can then be given badges which include the zones they can and cannot enter to ensure security in each zone.
It is a great piece of software which helps to keep venues secure and personnel who arrive will have to show there ID to ensure entry.
Want to Try for FREE?
Why not come and try our system for free! You can try out all of the above and so much more which will help safely organise and manage volunteers. You can also get in touch with us via our website or call on 0161 914 5757.
Visit our social media pages to find out more information about TeamKinetic and some tips on how to use the software. You can find us on: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
At the start of 2020, The Whitworth made the leap to take on TeamKinetic as their volunteer management software provider. They made this change just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning working from home gave them the perfect opportunity to understand and implement the system.
The Whitworth Gallery is described as historic, contemporary, academic, and playful. Founded in 1889, the first English gallery in a park has been transformed by a £15 million development in 2015. As part of their volunteer programme, volunteers are able to contribute across the gallery. This includes supporting artists, textile care, art gardening, digitising their collection, cataloguing their library, assisting in the delivery of workshops, and much more.
Fiona Cariss, volunteer manager at The Whitworth says,
“We chose TeamKinetic as they’re a local organisation to our gallery and already supply the volunteer system for Manchester City Councils Volunteering opportunities.
The Whitworth is in partnership with Manchester Art Gallery, along with Manchester Museum too, so it means in the future we could look at sharing our volunteers and opportunities across the partnership through the system.
In a way the past 18 months has been a perfect time to implement the new system with TeamKinetic, as we’ve managed to test it with our volunteers whilst everyone has been at home- it helped us reach out further to our locality making it easier for them to register their interest and hear about the volunteering opportunities straight away. The data and reporting aspects of the system has and will definitely help in combining everything we need when we’re evaluating the programme and reporting back to various funders.
So far all our volunteers have found it easy to register and it’s a very usable system, in which you get a lot of support from TeamKinetic too. The Whitworth Volunteer Programme is looking forward to working with TeamKinetic further in the future when we have more volunteering opportunities coming up.”
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
We’d like to thank everyone who joined the steering group session- it’s been really helpful to us to hear your comments and feedback on the areas we discussed.
The group was able to talk through the main areas of our system answering polls we’d set up to get a basic feel of how you, as users, felt using our system and its features. We also got to listen to any ideas you had, which we could explore deeper into for the future. This process has been really insightful for us, and something we aim to complete multiple times a year: we’re here to help, so any and all feedback is welcome.
Based on some of the feedback, we’re starting the process of creating helpful ‘how to’ videos/blog posts on our features and how you can use them effectively, so keep an eye out for those, coming soon!
We’ll be recapping the poll questions and the responses from the Steering Group held on 22/06/2021 below. If you find that you’d like to make any comments regarding changes or new features to add- feel free to open up a support ticket on the system.
To start the session off we delved into the system regarding ‘Setup.’ We wanted to know if our system suited your needs for configuration and whether the training provided was everything you needed to be!
Poll 1: How did you find configuring your system to suit your needs? We wanted to understand if there were any areas in particular that you struggled with, or that the settings were clear enough for you. During the session, we found that sometimes our system updates or some things change slightly and you aren’t aware. This is something we should be letting you all know about, no matter how small it might be. We’ll be making sure everyone receives updates so you never miss a change.
Poll 2: How did you find the training? The second question focused on the training we provide, and whether or not you felt that you could move forward using the system once training was completed. A number of those on the call gave feedback about having to give extra training themselves to their providers; we pride ourselves on giving you the best quality training, so incorporating more training aimed at providers is something we’ll be having discussions about.
After setup we looked at ‘General.’ This was about the general use of the system and the type of language we use there.
Poll 3: How did you find the user interface? This poll focused on the running of the system, do you find that everything is where you thought it should be? We received feedback that some found the process hard and would like some more guidance, we have videos that can help you out with our system on our YouTube channel which you can have a look at over here. We are in the early stages of getting more of these videos out to all to explain some of the features that you may not know about so watch this space!
Poll 4: Do you understand the language used on the system? Focusing on the way aspects of the system might be labelled, do you think that we’re being clear enough, or is there anything do you think we could change to be clearer? After discussions we found that the term ‘Flexible’ was confusing for some. We were given some suggestions such as ‘Long-Term’ or ‘On-going’ opportunities which we’ve taken onboard to talk about whether a change like this is needed.
Poll 5: How did you find setting up your onboarding process? This single poll regarded whether or not you were able to understand how to use the setup settings to replicate your requirements for your onboarding process for your volunteers. Some have expressed that they have had recruitment processes with providers outside of us here at Team Kinetic: this again may link to our training sessions we currently hold, and focusing in on a more clearer way to show what providers can do is something we’re now looking to include.
Next up we spoke about communications within the system.
Poll 6: How do you find communication with volunteers and providers? We wanted to grasp how you felt using the emailing system, and how easy and effectively you could email recipients. On the session, more customisation was an idea floated through- which makes sense, allowing you access to a wider range of fonts/colours/branding. It’s something that we’ll be looking into and seeing what the best routes are for getting these types of features into the system.
Poll 7: Do you use notifications? It is interesting for us to know whether you use the notifications and the news features. We have had talks about combining together news and notifications so this Steering Group was useful to know if that was something you might want. The terms news and notifications are similar but they do have differences, we found that some might not know these differences. In response, we’re getting a blog post written to show the differences and let you know how to use these features efficiently and effectively.
Polls 8 & 9 were on the subject of ‘Users.’ We wanted to know:
Poll 8: Should we allow admins to alter privilege of what a provider can do? This could mean that you can customise the elements that providers can and can’t do on the system. There was a suggestion of a possible phasing in of providers, so that they may be restricted at the beginning and grow into the system- this is something we’ll definitely explore in the future and other customisation options on privileging providers.
Poll 9: Should we differentiate internal and external providers? Internal providers are those who work for you, so we would be differentiating between providers that work for you and providers who have come from other organisations. While on the discussion of providers, there was a suggestion of letting providers know when their opportunities are about to end, so that they can promote them if there are still available spaces for volunteers. It will be something we’ll spend time looking into if there is an effective way to do this!
We followed this up with a question surrounding searching.
Poll 10: Is there any group of volunteers which you find it hard to identify? We wanted to understand whether or not our filters work, are they in the right place for you? and whether or not we were missing any filters that you feel are important. There were some mixed reactions to moving all of the filters into one list, with some in favour and others not. Despite the mix we will still have a look around, just to see if the system will be cleaner to navigate if filters are all on one list.
We then moved onto ‘Logging Hours and Feedback.’
Poll 11: How do you find logging hours and feedback? We found that clients were struggling at times to get volunteers to log their hours; we suggest giving them an incentive to get them logging hours, this could be through our achievement badges or adding your own customisable ones! We currently have a blog post being written that goes into more detail about how you can get your volunteers logging hours.
Poll 12: Should users be able to update or add new feedback on an opportunity? It was a nice discussion to have on whether this would be a beneficial feature, it’s something we have thought of before, so it was interesting to see how you would feel about it. We did get some suggestions for bulk feedback to become a feature. This sounds like something that would be beneficial to those who have a lot of volunteers that need hours and feedback logging, so we’ll have a talk with our developers to see if this is a feature we can add in future updates!
From logging hours to Criminal Record Checks (CRC), we wanted to gather some more feedback when it comes to our system and CRCs.
Poll 13: Would it be useful to allow admins to submit a DBS/PVG directly through the system? When we were discussing this on the group we concluded that this would be a way to save time and duplication for all parties, we’ll be looking more into this over the next few updates.
Poll 14: Should we allow providers to add criminal checks to volunteers? How would this work? For this poll we wanted to understand whether or not allowing providers to do this was a feature that was wanted and if we would have to look at implementing something in order for that to work smoothly. As you can see by the poll the answers were a little mixed! If this is something that you think might be beneficial- let us know.
Carrying on with features, Polls 15&16 spoke about Creating/Managing Opportunities.
Poll 15: How do you find creating opportunities? We want to make it as clear and simple as possible for you to create an opportunity for your volunteers, so this question was to see if there was anything we could possibly add to aid that experience. Again the concept of ‘Flexible’ opportunities came up. To make sure that everyone can understand flexible and session based opportunities, and the differences between them, we’ll write up a blog post or explain on one of our YouTube videos so you can better understand them.
Poll 16 broke this down a little further by asking: How do you find managing opportunities using the controls? From the polls you can see that those on the session found that managing opportunities easy. If you do find that there is anything that could be made clearer, then you can send us a support ticket on our system or get in touch through our email!
We also wanted some feedback on Events and setting those up.
Poll 17 asked: How do you find setting up an Event? We found that when we spoke in a little more detail, some of you needed reminding on exactly how to do this, in response, we’re currently in the process of setting up some videos and blog posts on how to use our features effectively.
Poll 18 & 19 focused on CSVs (Comma-Separated Values.)
Poll 18: Does the use of CSV confuse anyone? We found during the session some weren’t aware of what CSV is or stands for, simply, CSVs are where you can download a spreadsheet text file of information from our system.
Poll 19 simply asks: Is there anything which you can’t currently download which you would like to? If you believe there’s something, please raise it on a support ticket and we’ll get onto exploring that for you.
Poll 20 focused on our courses feature. Currently the course feature is just to promote any courses you may want to introduce your volunteers to.
Poll 20: How do you find promoting courses? In the session an idea was to allow them to book onto those courses through the system and whether this was possible: It’ll be something we’ll have a look into for future updates.
Poll 21 homed in on the help here at TeamKinetic and how do you find accessing help on TeamKinetic? If you ever find yourself stuck somewhere on our system there are a number of ways to get help, you can open up a support ticket, click the help option along the top in the right corner.
Our polls then moved onto the super admin settings.
Poll 22: Do you understand the wording used in the super admin settings? The group found that it does take some time to remember where everything is, and under what heading, but it does become routine once they’ve been using the system frequently. We are on hand to support you, so if you do find you need some helping finding out where certain features are, and how to use them, have a look on our YouTube and blog pages, we should have the answers over there.
Poll 23 expanded on this, asking: Do you find the way options are grouped together to be logical? This is essentially asking if you think everything is where it’s supposed to be. We found by the poll that most people thought our system was logical, which is good! We’d like to think everyone can move around the system easily and freely.
Our final 2 polls were questions on referencing and references.
Poll 24: How do you find adding referencing? With this poll, we did get some feedback expressing the need for a preview option. This is something we will be having a look at and exploring as an option for the system. This would mean you would be able to see the referencing form beforehand to check everything is how you want it.
The final poll of the session centred around providers setting up their own reference forms. Poll 25: Should providers be able to set up reference forms for themselves? Again this poll had a range of answers, so it may be something that we try and get some more wider opinions and information on before we take a look at getting this into the system.
The Steering Group has helped us understand more about how you use our system and where we can start to build a clearer path towards the future.
We once again want to thank everyone who attended and took part in the session. We’ve received some really good feedback and ideas about our system and its features which we can explore further.
Roles are a brand new feature for version 2, they sit above opportunities and enable a prescribed on-boarding process for volunteers. Roles are a great feature for organisations that have regular opportunities that are undertaken under the same set of compliance, training, or on-boarding rules.
An opportunity can belong to one or no role and once a volunteer has successfully completed the steps for a role, they can subsequently join any opportunity that belongs to that role; the role authorisation is valid across any opportunity in that role.
Creating Roles
Creating role is only possible for super admins and is accessible via the super admin menu in the SETUP section.
Click the add button to create a new role. You’ll be presented with a split screen form with the role name and description on the left, and the default four stages on the right.
Start by filling in the role name and its description to help volunteers decide if they want to apply for the role.
When you are ready to start adding tasks to your stages click the add button. This will open up a sheet with the task name and notes for that task. Additionally you will see a checkbox labelled ‘Volunteer can complete’. If this box is checked then the applying volunteer will be able to mark this task as complete without any admin oversight. This is great if you just want to check a volunteer has read a document or get an auditable confirmation that some step has been carried out.
You do not have to add tasks to every stage, the tasks do not need to be completed in order, and a stage can have no tasks at all if you prefer to put all the tasks in one stage.
Once created you can edit, archive or restore a role and the setup page shows you a brief summary of the role and its current status. When editing a role you can add or remove tasks and update the role name and description. Be aware that adding tasks will not affect those volunteers that have already been accepted on the role.
Managing Role Applications
All admins can manage volunteer role applications and outstanding role applications will appear on the admin dashboard for attention.
Just hit the manage button and the full status and history of the application will be shown. This is a pretty comprehensive screen but super easy to use.
You can move the status of any task forwards or backwards, from pending to started and finally complete. You can add notes that other administrators can read and update the overall status of the role application to approve or deny.
We have the intermediate status of STARTED for a task so that if a task takes time to process for an admin, another admin doesn’t repeat any work whilst the first admin is completing the task.
Importantly all steps taken are logged and viewable in the application log window. You can see here when tasks were started, completed or reverted back a stage, when people left notes, or when a volunteer has completed a task.
A volunteer will see their role applications on their dashboard. By clicking the more details link they will get a full breakdown of the current role and from here will be able to complete any suitable tasks.
Adding a Role to an Opportunity
It’s a simple task to add a role to an opportunity. If any active roles exist, they will appear in a drop down when creating a new opportunity.
If you update an existing opportunity and add a role requirement it will only affect volunteers that join after that point; existing volunteers will not be affected.
If you read my goodbye blog last year, you’ll have to pretend you didn’t. I just can’t stay away!
I’m back again and excited to get (re)started – this time as TeamKinetic’s Marketing Manager. It’s a role that I’m excited to get stuck into and continue to grow in.
My Journey
Back in 2017 I started university with no idea where it would take me. My biggest concerns were making friends, exploring Manchester (aka finding the best cheapest pubs), playing football, and whether I’d enjoy my course or not.
In my second year it was time to start looking for a work placement – as someone who lacked confidence, this was a daunting task! One day the Social Media and Marketing intern role at TeamKinetic popped up and the rest is history.
My placement year was full of personal and professional development. It gave me good quality real-world experience of marketing and helped me build confidence amongst other important life skills.
I went into my final year of university ready to finish those assignments and get back into the world of work. What I didn’t expect was to be offered a full-time position at TeamKinetic. But what I was certain of was that I had to grab the opportunity with both hands.
From passing my responsibilities over to Sammy and Chloe in 2020 to taking over from them in 2021 – the circle of Marketing!
So who am I?
In short:
Hi, I’m Alex, I’m 22 and I’m from Sheffield!
But if you want something deeper I could tell you that Taylor Swift has been my Spotify top artist for three years in a row. Or that I’ve been a Sheffield United season ticket holder for as long as I can remember. But if that isn’t enough, you can read my original introductory blog here.
All you really need to know is that I’m incredibly happy to work for TeamKinetic, a team full of good people doing great work. It’s time to put all the things I learned at university into practice and help this company grow!
New Faces and Farewells
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Chloe and Sammy for all their hard work over the past year. They’ve done some great stuff and have been a real asset to the team.
However, now it’s time to welcome the newest member of the TeamKinetic family – Katie. She’ll be completing her placement year with us and I hope she gets as much out of it as I did. You join us in welcoming her by reading her introductory blog here.
You Can Join The Family Too
If your organisation is in need of a quick, easy, and reliable way to manage your volunteers look no further! No matter how big or small, we can help you. We’ll work around your budget to get you building better volunteer communities with our volunteer management software.
Best of all, you can go to our website to set up your very own demo site free of cost to see how our system can work for you!
The 2021 Q2 major release for TeamKinetic is now approaching our beta test phase where we invite and encourage all our users to have a poke around!
It’s a full jump to Version 2 as we have totally updated the volunteer application with the latest .NET platform (admin and provider to come), have introduced some new features and done some major work to align the design and feel across the whole application. We’ve also got some brand new native apps for android and iOS that will be out a few weeks after the desktop release.
Here are some of the highlights for this major release milestone.
Volunteer Roles
Many of our larger customers, and those with greater governance requirements will get alot from this new feature. It’s a bit like super charged APPLY FIRST feature!
A role is a set of steps that must be completed before a volunteer is approved on an opportunity. Super admins define the role, which is organised around four steps, each with as many (or no) tasks as you require. Each role has its own name, description, and a spot to add some information that is emailed to the volunteer when they first apply for a role.
Roles are applied to one or more opportunities, and once a volunteer has completed all steps on a role they can join any opportunity which requires that matching role, once they have satisfied any other pre-requisites to joining.
For example; if a volunteer joins a litter picking opportunity which has a role called ‘basic role’ then they will be required to jump through a number of onboarding steps as defined by the ROLE. But once they have done this they can go onto join any other opportunity which is also linked to the ‘basic role steps’ and it will not require them to go through the steps again (as they have already completed those role steps).
Each task can be flagged as actionable by the volunteer or administrator, they can complete that task from their dashboard when they have satisfied the requirements.
Administrators are alerted when a volunteer joins an opportunity requiring a ROLE, they are alerted via the actions tab on their main landing page.
The administrator can then monitor and record the volunteers progress through each of the steps within the ROLE, through to completion.
Each role task can be started by an admin, then completed and a full history log is maintained and visible at all times.
An application can be approved once all the tasks have been completed, but there is no enforced order to task completion.
When a volunteer is approved on the ROLE they are emailed (custom emails available of course) and shown a list of corresponding opportunities that they are now eligible to join.
Additionally, if a opportunity has its own APPLY FIRST status and a role requirement, then once the volunteer is approved for the role they are automatically placed in the applicants queue for that opportunity, they wont have to do anything else.
New Scheduling Features
We’ve added a brand new feature for adding volunteers to sessions. You can now select any number of volunteers and add or remove them from any number of sessions in one hit!
You can select from the current joined volunteer list, or search for new volunteers.
It’s super simple but much quicker than moving them individually (still available).
We’ve also re-designed our day schedule report so it’s much easier to see what is going on day by day.
You can still view any period and restrict it to certain opportunities or events, but now you’ll see every day in that period in a calendar like display.
You get the day, all the opps that have sessions on that day, how full the session is (full sessions are highlighted) and can click through to view a list of volunteers on that session.
You’ll be able to see empty days and poorly subscribed sessions really easily, then click through and start adding volunteers using the new multi-add feature we just introduced!
Re-Designed Applicants Dashboard
Applicants are now clearly divided into new, successful, and denied. You can instantly approve or deny a new applicant and then revert that decision and mark them as newly approved. This was something that proved popular in the roadmap voting.
The on-screen messaging and alerts have been improved and standardised so you’ll always know what’s happening.
Modern Front Page
Although our existing front page allows for a lot of customisation, many of our customers have been asking for a simpler cleaner look to their front page.
So we’ve have added a new modern layout that will be the default for all new customers. It’s got much simpler settings, just a single image and a message box, to worry about, looks great on all screen sizes, and gets right to the point so volunteers can login and register quickly.
Multiple Provider Accounts
This is a useful little feature for when there are multiple individuals at an organisation that all need to login as providers as manage their opportunities, but dont want to share login details.
Providers can now create and manage their own user list without any intervention required from the admins or super admins. Just add a name, email address and password and they can go ahead and login.
Multiple Meetings and New Meeting Features
Previously a volunteer could only have one active meeting at a time, now you can book and manage as many meetings as you like for volunteers.
Additionally we have added the ability to specify if the meeting is to be virtual, and if so, to add the link to the virtual meeting, or if not the location of a face to face meeting. You can also add a custom message which gets sent along with the normal custom email for new meetings, so you can let them know any extra information they need.
We’ve also tidied up the induction section of a volunteer manage dashboard and added the meeting details there. From here you get a link back to manage meetings and can also add a new meeting for the volunteer right from their dashboard.
Opportunity Badges
These are linked to opportunities showing that the opportunity is linked to a specific award scheme.
Example: If logged hours on the opportunity can go towards a volunteers Duke of Edinburgh Award, then they might attach it to the ‘DofE Opportunity Badge’.
Just add a name, description, and a badge image to create your opportunity badges. These can then be added to your opportunities, filtered on in the search and are displayed to the volunteers.
Great for quickly indicating to your volunteers what sort of opportunity its likely to be.
Gender List Editable in Alt Language
For those of you that take advantage of our alt language feature and translations (and if you don’t..why not?!) you can now view and edit your gender lists in your chosen alt language.
These are instantly reflected on the registration pages..which brings us to…
New Volunteer Registration
Volunteers begin their registration either by providing an email address, or by registering with Google or Facebook.
If they use and email address they will receive an email with a special link to confirm their email address and continue with their registration.
This will cut down drastically the number of bogus registrations and also reduces the initial inertia for registration. This first step of registration is recorded and we’ll be able to get some great insight into what is preventing volunteers from completing their registration.
We have also worked on the registration page itself; made it shorter, improved the location section, and added more on-screen help.
We think it’s a definite improvement and will hopefully lead to a higher rate of successful registrations.
New Search Page
The public search page is now more compact and the events have been moved to the right so they don’t obscure the results.
When viewed on smaller screens the layout adjusts accordingly so events are still visible.
Opportunity Images
You might have noticed in the screenshot for the search page that we now support adding images to opportunities!
We know from our experience that this has to be quick and painless or providers just don’t bother. So we’ve put in place a number of features to try to make this easy for providers.
Images are mandatory for opportunities, you cant add your first opportunity without uploading at least one image
You can select from your previous images, so once you have one you don’t have to keep uploading
When creating an opp, it will default to your last used image
ABOVE: Admin/Providers view when creating opportunityABOVE: Volunteer view of opportunity with image
It really couldn’t be easier! These images are responsive and will adjust in height and width to cope with any sized screen.
Everything Else
Multiple groups are selectable from the bulk email screens
Can add files to the private notes section
Course management improved
More admin options available
More opportunity sharing data available along with suggestions of other organisations you might want to join forces with
Volunteers can see how many slots are available in each session before they join
Induction questions are now sortable
New report showing the ethnicity breakdown of active volunteers
Urgh spam. No, not the canned meat. The inconvenient annoyance that seems to find its way to my email every day! It’s a human thing to receive spam/junk but why do we get it and how can we spot spam? These are the questions that come to mind when I’m staring at an email asking me to click a link to pay for something I swear I never bought! Well, here at TeamKinetic we are going to explain how we protect you against spam, why we get spam and how to spot it…
Protecting against spam
At TeamKinetic, we don’t want our customers being bombarded with spam emails. So, to help with this we first used Google Captcha, a method which tries to distinguish between robots and humans. But, the robots got smarter! There were signs that the system was getting easily defeated by the bots… Don’t worry it isn’t an i, Robot situation!
Now, we have found a better way to detect and remove as much spam as possible, we use a multifaceted approach which includes:
A non human visible honeypot which forms elements that bots love to fill in.
Testing to see if JavaScript had been run.
Timing how long it takes to complete and submit a form (robots are much faster than humans)!
Why do we get spam?
Its practically impossible to stop all spam. If you are too strict you lose valid emails but if you are not strict enough, too much spam will get through the cracks. It is difficult to find the perfect balance but we feel we have have hit the nail on the head. I can tell you that we get 98% less spam using the combination methods above than when the contact us form is left without protections. Sounds great, but what about that 2% that gets through, how can you spot those types of emails? Keep reading to find out…
How to spot spam emails
Most of the phishing and spam messages we get contain dire messages about your domain name and or the search engine optimisation (SEO) for your website. Your domain, if its is managed by us, is automatically renewed, there is no danger of it being de-registered and neither do you need to pay to keep it registered. The same goes for SSL certificates. Others talk about errors on the website and offer to fix them if you download a program; DONT! As a general rule don’t follow any links in any unsolicited email or message. There are some useful tips for how to spot phishing messages on the IT governance website.
What we advise…
If you get any emails which seem suspicious or you seem to be receiving many at once, never click on a link or send personal information. Open a support ticket or head to our website to start a live chat and we will gladly look into this for you.
Chair of AVM, Ruth Leonard says “this is a really exciting next step for the organisation and will enable us to think about how we can offer more to volunteer managers. AVM is proud of our heritage of being run by and for our members and want to be able to remain relevant into the future. TeamKinetic’s enthusiasm and support for AVM has been clear throughout our shared working and I’m looking forward to develop this further.” 
Fiona Cariss, volunteer manager at The Whitworth says,
