Tag: TeamKinetic Page 21 of 35

Product Steering Group: 16/09/2020

By

On 17th September 2020

In TeamKinetic Features

That was our first ever product steering meeting and we would like to thank everyone for their feedback and comments, we think it went pretty well! 

This group was a chance for us to relay some ideas and details about possible updates to our system and get a feel for how our users felt about these updates. It was also a chance for us to listen to your ideas on future features which could be added to the system or at least were worth further exploration. 

So with that, let’s show you what was discussed at the product steering group 16/09/2020. 

Roadmap

The roadmap is what we are using to help with the potential new features being added to upcoming updates. We are developing this through the MoSCoW Project. These are the Must haves, Should haves, Could haves and Wish list. The MoSCoW project will allow a way of ordering potential features based on their feasibility, price, etc… This section is live on your systems and will be under the help menu and under the new entry ‘roadmap’.

The ‘must have’ section will be everything we plan on fixing for the next update. On each potential new feature will be a voting system so you can vote on which you definitely want and which you don’t. This will then bump up certain features which are popular. 

If you have any new features you want and we haven’t mentioned, you can open a support ticket and choose ‘new feature’, this will then be added to a certain part on the MoSCoW project. 

Rolf will be adding a comments section soon, so let us know what you like, what you hate and everything in between.

Watch the video below to see how to view the Roadmap and how to add a new feature. 

Community Tasks – Where next?

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. To test out the community tasks you need to enable from the super admin settings and you can try out creating tasks without publishing them to your volunteers. Watch the video below to see how to turn on community tasks. 

At the moment the way the community tasks work is they are separate from the opportunities volunteer page. We kept these separate at the beginning of this update to ensure volunteers wanting to help with COVID-19 tasks would just go straight to this site. However, we are now interested in knowing how we might integrate the two sites and features more effectively.   

We think Community Tasks are useful beyond COVID-19 but we open to where they will ‘live’ with in the application moving forwards. If you have any comments on this please get in touch with us or fill in the questionnaire we have sent our on the subject and let us know what you think.

Native Mobile Development

Our native mobile development unfortunately all but stopped during the height of COVID-19 because our developers have been furloughed and unable to work.

This would have been a new version of our Apps for iOS and Android with all features you would expect added in and some neat new customisation available.  We are committed to continuing to develop our apps but coronavirus forced us to make some difficult choices, one of which was to build our Community Task app using Progressive Web App technology. 

Using Progressive Web App (PWA) for the community tasks site was fast to build and was easy to roll out and it had almost all the same features of a native app however it just uses the web browser on your phone  instead of downloading the app store. 

There are pros and cons of both app types of app and we are keen to know what you think about using PWA more in the future!

Native Mobile Development

Pros – Available on both IOS and Andriod, gives the best overall experience and integration with the mobile device. 

Cons – Slow and significantly increases the lag for new feature incorporation.

Progressive Web App

Pros – Fast to build and implement.

Cons – Do not have access to all mobile capabilities, especially on iOS.

Focus – UI/UX

UI – User Interface 

UX – User Experience

Whilst looking at our set guidelines and rules for our interface we wanted to make sure it enabled a good workflow for our users and let them focus on the tasks they were doing, so we named it ‘focus’. 

Over the last 12 months we have been integrating this look across all the pages on the system. The new side bar gives access to extra features on that page and there is no restriction on sizing. Searching is much easier as the universal search bar is now at the top of every page along with the notification settings and help bar. The new alert messages will either be in red or green depending on urgency and the ones in yellow will be for standard messages. 

Please let us know once you notice these changes, what works well and what doesn’t. We are heading down the root of changing all pages to look like the one above, so if you see anything that can be changed, set up a support ticket to explain. 

Thank You!

We hope all of our clients enjoyed the Product Steering Group, there were some great comments and ideas being said which will enable us to create a clearer path for the future. 

So we can get some extra feedback from our Product Steering Group, please fill in the survey we have created. 

We can’t wait to hear more from you. And until next time…

Press Release: 13/08/2020 Rugby Football League

By

On 13th August 2020

In Press Releases, Sport

Rugby Football League Chooses TeamKinetic As Their Official Accreditation System

TeamKinetic creates an accreditation system to allow for access badges at every Rugby League match.

Since October 2019, TeamKinetic has been the supplier of the accreditation software for the Rugby Super league Grand Final. In 2020 TeamKinetic have now become the accreditation supplier for the whole of the Rugby Football League, providing an accreditation software for all matches. 

The Rugby League was put on hold in March 2020 due to the pandemic. For this to return safely the sport needed an accreditation system to allow matches to run again. 

Robbie Stott, Events Coordinator for the Rugby Football League said “We knew the pressure would be on when bringing the Super League games back and trying to safely manage everyone coming through the stadium doors. TeamKinetic have provided excellent support in a short-time frame, by creating a digital solution to allow for Rugby League to go ahead.”

The accreditation system allows for the safe management of personnel on game days, by recording identity and health checks of each person. 

Each person on the premises will have zones they can and cannot enter depending on the health checks they have had. These zones can be printed onto badges for any specific person for ease when going into their zones. 

Chris Martin, Managing Director of TeamKinetic said “We are proud to be providing a working accreditation system which will allow for the Rugby League to resume safely. Myself and everyone at TeamKinetic are excited to be working with the Rugby Football League and continuing to support them in the future.”  

If you are interested in an accreditation system for your organisation, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at TeamKinetic on the contact details below.

Ends

Contact Details:

For more information, please contact TeamKinetic on 0161 914 5757. 

Or email chris@teamkinetic.co.uk

International Youth Day 2020

By

On 12th August 2020

In Events and Conferences, News & Views

International Youth Day (IYD) is a time to celebrate young people and their contributions to the world. In 1999, the UN General Assembly marked August 12th as International Youth Day. It serves as an ‘opportunity to celebrate and mainstream young people’s voices, actions and initiatives.’

Each year, the United Nation of Youth create a theme for IYD. This year is: Youth Engagement for Global Action. This theme seeks to highlight how young people are engaging at local, national and global levels enrich themselves, institutions and processes. 

Youth Engagement to You

So, Youth Engagement for Global Action… what does this mean to you?

As a young person myself, this statement is important. Allowing young voices and opinions to be heard is crucial to making changes at all levels.

Whilst the world is stuck in a limbo-like situation, local, national and global action is needed to find new ways we can overcome this period. Change is needed now more than ever – having young voices at the forefront allows for fresh input into processes being made. Therefore ultimately paving the way for themselves and future generations. 

However, youth engagement to you may mean youth volunteering. This kind of engagement will be important to you and your organisation as it allows for fresh, new input. Giving your youth volunteers the chance to voice their opinions may help improve your future volunteering opportunities. 

Youth Statistics in Volunteering

Let’s take a look at some youth stats…

35% of 16-25 year olds volunteer once a year with young women more likely to volunteer than young men.

Education plays a vital part in getting young people to engage. 69% of 10 – 20 year olds get involved with volunteering through their school, college or university. With this, a survey found almost all of youth volunteers reported these opportunities had benefited them in some way. 

1.6 million people volunteer abroad yearly, with an astonishing 84% of millennials also saying they would travel abroad to participate in volunteering activities.

NfpSynergy recently posted a blog explaining how youths may be replacing the older generation as the key volunteering group. This interesting read explains how during the pandemic, volunteering roles relied on youth volunteering as the older generation fell into the ‘at risk’ category. 

Time to Engage

With the pandemic clearly showing an increase in youth volunteering, I’m sure you are wondering how you can start to engage this generation and use their ideas to help your organisation. 

How Can You Really Engage The Youth Of Today? This blog is a must read to help you and your organisation encourage young people join your volunteering opportunities. 

TeamKinetic is here to help as our research shows our software is extremely effective at recruiting younger volunteers. This could be down to our digital tools that let you share to social media or the fact the younger generation prefer that digital approach. 

You can trial our software for FREE to see how TeamKinetic can help you. Just head over to our website to learn more or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube for more tips and information about volunteers. 

International Youth Day allows us to celebrate all young people and their hard work, whether it be on a local, national or global level. Join us today in saying thank you to all of the young people in our lives! 

THANK YOU!

Reducing The Scare For Social Care

By

On 7th August 2020

In Charity, COVID-19, News & Views

How is COVID-19 affecting social care charities and what they can do to manage volunteers during and after the pandemic.

English and American notes with masks

COVID-19 has impacted us all in different ways. For charities, this impact has resulted in a significant loss of income with ‘only 60% of the public [saying] they’ve given to charity in the last 3 months, down from 69% in January this year’. Social care charities have been particularly hard hit. As not only have they seen a reduction in income but people are more reliant on their services during this pandemic.

Pandemic to TeamKinetic

As lockdown has started to ease many organisations are starting to explore how their volunteers can return to their roles. For social care organisations this comes with some specific risks that need to be carefully assessed and managed before volunteers can return fully. Here at TeamKinetic we have been looking at how our technology might be useful in managing and mitigating some of these risks. 

PPE

Many roles involve close personal contact for your volunteers so appropriate PPE is necessary. It is essential for volunteers to wear their PPE if their is a potential of working in close proximity or going to people’s houses. Although we cannot provide this, we can make it easier for you to make your volunteers aware of when to wear and how to wear. This can be done through training which can be made mandatory before a volunteer joins an opportunity. The training can include information on where volunteers would need to wear PPE and also demonstrations on how to wear them correctly. 

House visits may be a possibility for some of your volunteers, so risk assessments can also be uploaded on to each opportunity. 

Recruiting New Volunteers

64 – 75 year olds are the age group most likely to volunteer but since the pandemic started there has been a huge decrease in this number, with this age group more at risk if they catch the virus. Volunteers will be less likely to return to their volunteering roles because of this, meaning there will be less people available to undertake the essential work your organisation needs to do. 

You may be worried about recruiting new volunteers but with our software the on boarding process is simplified. Once a volunteer registers there profile will be available to view and they can begin to complete any training for join opportunities. This then allows you to track their training or provide additional online support, all of this done through the web. 

Our research also demonstrates TeamKinetic is more effecting at recruiting younger volunteers. This could be down to our digital tools that let you share to social media or the fact young volunteers like a digital approach. 

Spending Money More Effectively

At a time when there may be a shortage of cash, it’s important to invest it in technology that can offer significant return on investment. Volunteers have never been more important. So, investing in a good volunteer management software will increase your volunteer retention and should lead to significant efficiencies in how you deploy and manage your volunteers workforce. “This sounds expensive though” you say, but what if I told you there is a more affordable software? 

TeamKinetic Can Help

TeamKinetic volunteer management software is free for 30 days. Starting a free trial is easy, just go to our website to get started! Our system can help you create volunteering opportunities, recruit volunteers, and unite you with your community. 

For example, the introduction of our community task dashboard makes it even easier to create COVID-related volunteering opportunities to help the vulnerable people in your community.

Don’t hesitate to reach out on social media! You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. You’ll see examples of the features we have to offer and some of the people we already work with.

If you have any questions call us on 0161 914 5757 or visit our website to chat to us online.

How Can You Really Engage The Youth of Today?

By

On 8th July 2020

In News & Views, Volunteer Management

Can you afford to miss out on the enthusiasm and energy of the youth today? Although, this isn’t a one-way street, many teenagers and younger adults need volunteering experience to help them with future employment to broaden their social networks and develop key life skills. Volunteering in youth boosts academic achievements, health and well-being and teens who participate in an organization that strives to make a difference are more likely to say they will attend higher education. 

Despite the many benefits volunteering can clearly have on our young people, organisations still struggle to engage this audience. But hopefully, after reading this you might be able to capture some of that enthusiasm and energy for your organisation!

Be a Known Presence

Visibility for any organisation is always going to be a contributing factor for success, no matter how big or small your organisation is. So, getting on the radar of teens and young adults can help increase your reputation and volunteer numbers. Here are a few ways you can do this…

  • Attending or hosting events in further and higher education facilities will certainly heighten your visibility and will help get you talking to this youth demographic. Many universities have events and partnerships with 3rd sector and community businesses. For example, some universities will have connections with their city councils to help find students volunteering roles. 
  • Connect with social media managers at colleges and universities, as most universities have a large social following of past and present students, any posts on their socials are sure to get a loud response.
  • Getting current young volunteers to post their experiences with the organisation to help increase awareness. Using personalised hashtags (#) with your organisation’s name will help increase your popularity amongst the youth. 
  • Be prepared, post your opportunities well in advance. Post on to local volunteering sites, and with colleges and universities. Try to find where your audience’s presence is.
  • Be sure to state teenagers and young adults are welcome, they tend to like that!

Speak The Language of The Enigma

Don’t worry, we’re not going to be teaching you youth slang, ‘WYD’ and ‘LOL’ are firmly not on today’s agenda. However, social media is a major form of entertainment for young and old with ‘almost 4.57 billion active users globally in April 2020′. That’s ‘9 out of 10 teenagers aged 13-17 [who] use social media platforms’.

Social media is a huge way to keep in contact with this generation, here’s how…

  • Most young people, including myself, would much prefer to do everything via our phones, book a table, book tickets and sign up for volunteering roles. Giving teens this opportunity will increase your amount of volunteers. 
  • Reaching out on social media is one of the best ways to interact with teens. With Facebook being the highest used platform with 77.3% of 15 – 25-year-olds using it, to Twitter being the least-used platform with 48.6% using it. Create your social media pages on the most popular sites so you can reach out to the youth of today. 
  • Know your audience. Create events and opportunities specifically designed for teens and young adults. Having a role which is attractive to the younger crowd will give you that boost in numbers you need.

Stay Engaging

Getting the youth market to fixate on something is tricky. Most young people tend to lose interest when something becomes well… boring. So engaging is essential and can help retain younger volunteers and recruit new ones. Take a look below at ways you can do this.

  • Give young people a voice. Allow younger volunteers to be a part of the team when planning. This will help give your organisation a better insight into the mindset of your younger volunteers.
  • Teens and young adults tend to prefer working more creatively, so motivate them, let them develop new ideas and be supportive of the things they want to try. Always encourage, be open and create an environment where their ideas are respected.
  • Make events and opportunities fun! It’s simple. You could include music, time to socialise, creative activities and the chance to work with friends. Use your existing youth volunteers and imagination to help make your event or opportunity more fun.
  • Sell your opportunity or event as interesting and exciting. Gloss it up a little, identify key roles and outline the responsibilities that the volunteers will have and how it may help that volunteer develop that all-important experience they desire. 

Pulling Down The Barriers

Finding time to get to know your volunteers can be tricky especially when you have a million and one other things to do. getting to know your younger volunteers might seem a bit tricky, working out how you can relate, but here are some simple ideas you could try.

Youth volunteers
  • Get to know your volunteers. You can do this by saving 10 minutes to talk to one or two volunteers. Get to know what they like and don’t like, what interests them, and why they are there. 
  • Communication is key. Be available and be welcoming.
  • Update and make yourself a known social presence. Create a mailing list of youth volunteers who might want to be emailed, and send out a weekly email or blog sharing stories of success and great efforts. 

How TeamKinetic Can Help You!

So, I can only assume you are wondering how on earth you will be able to do all of this and still manage ALL other volunteers. Well, TeamKinetic is here to help. With TeamKinetic you will be able to manage all of your volunteers in one convenient space, giving you more time to focus on promoting to new volunteers. 

You can also:

  • Create and manage opportunities
  • Send bulk emails to certain groups
  • Gain unlimited volunteer registration (no cap)
  • Internal email communications
  • Volunteer opportunity feedback
  • DBS checks
  • Reward and recognise your volunteers

The software gives your volunteers the chance to sign up online to volunteer roles, log their own hours and leave feedback. They can also then post via socials the volunteering they have done which will attract more volunteers. 

You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram       Podcast

 

Have you enjoyed using TeamKinetic? If you could leave us a review on Capterra, we’d really appreciate it! We’ll even send you a little thank you.

A Year Well Spent

By

On 3rd July 2020

In News & Views

I’m writing this blog with three days left working at TeamKinetic. It’s been a year full of learning, personal growth, and questionable tea bag choices (Yorkshire is best, obviously). When I got the call back in March last year telling me that I’d gotten the job I was nervous but excited. I had no idea what to expect, but stepping into the office for the first time in July, my nerves were calmed by the friendly faces of the team! 

New Challenges = New Memories

Going from university, which is heavily theory based, into a full-time job was a challenge but I loved it! Now I sit here, exactly a year after my first day, it’s clear to me that anyone at university should strongly consider taking a placement year. The experience I’ve gained over the past 52 weeks is incredible. From volunteering at the LFC Foundation to visiting Nightstop Greater Manchester, I’ve also been introduced to a first-hand view of the tireless hard work that goes on in the third sector. 

I think my best experience while working at TeamKinetic was attending AVM’s National Conference in London. I got to talk to current and potential customers about what TeamKinetic has to offer – something that was a totally new experience for me. As someone who’s only been to London to watch Sheffield United lose at Wembley, it was nice to have a more positive memory to associate with the city!

Honourable mentions:

  • Those days when Steve would bring his VR headset into the office for us all to have a play with at lunch.

Here’s Milo having a fight with an invisible man… I think he’s winning. 

The ‘Team’ Behind TeamKinetic

A personal highlight has been working alongside Chris, Steve, and Rolf. Thanks for making work so enjoyable and supporting me and my professional growth this past year. Contributing towards the growth of TeamKinetic for the past year has been an absolute pleasure.

Also spending my placement year alongside someone else from the university made settling in that much easier, so I want to say a big thank you to Milo too. 

I’d like to wish the best of luck to Sammy and Chloe who will be taking over from myself and Milo, you can find out more about them by reading their introduction blogs below! 

Introducing TeamKinetic: Sammy Reid – Dropping the Poms

Introducing TeamKinetic: Chloe – All about creativity

If you’re ever in need of volunteer management software, I can’t recommend better people to get it from! 

A Strong Opportunity Can Increase Your Volunteer Retention Rates

By

On 23rd June 2020

In Application Features and Tutorials, Volunteer Management

Advertising an engaging volunteering opportunity is not always the simplest task. And often the clearest messages can become disfigured, resulting in your opportunity becoming less attractive to prospective volunteers. Below we’ve identified some examples of how to design and present a strong volunteering opportunity on your TeamKinetic platform. Each element has been streamlined to guide you through an on-brand TeamKinetic experience that is engaging and most importantly, eye appealing to your volunteers.

Where should your opportunity live

The most obvious place of all is your own website, for your prospective and current volunteers your website provides a safe and secure portal in which you can display your volunteering opportunities clearly for all to see. In turn, it will also allow you to easily collate data on the number of people viewing your opportunities page, by monitoring web analytics with Google Analytics.

Name your opportunity

Be clear and concise, over the years we’ve seen many volunteer managers fall victim to the mistake of over advertising their volunteering opportunity. The best practice would be describing the opportunity in its simplest form by using as few words as possible, for example ‘volunteer caretaker’. By over complicating simple roles with complex names will only off put your volunteers. You may also wish to add a location, contact email and phone number as these are the key details which your volunteer is likely to need straightaway.

Outline your opportunity

Now here’s your opportunity to say more, no pun intended… When writing your descriptions keep them short and sweet, whilst listing the main tasks the volunteers will be expected to do during the opportunity.

Why not offer an incentive? We’ve found from customer feedback that these make the opportunities more appealing to volunteers. For example, an incentive may be unlimited tea and biscuits or a free T-shirt. If we know anything about volunteers we know they love tea and biscuits.

Finally, summarise the benefits. In this part you will want to describe how this volunteering opportunity will bring your volunteer’s fulfilment. How will their volunteering efforts make a direct impact?

Be clear in your presentations of your opportunity, make key information stand out.

When and where?

These are the fundamental outlines which are absolutely necessary when creating your volunteering opportunity. Day, time and location will outline the commitment time frame in which your volunteers will have to make. Also if possible make clear what type of volunteering opportunity this is, event, ongoing or just a one-off.

Show off the good REVIEWS

Make your feedback visible, think of your feedback like your own personal catalogue of reviews. In a modern world filled with decisions, reviews offer simple and relevant guidance. Similarly to this, the feedback from previous volunteers will provide guidance to your potential volunteers, encouraging them to enjoy the same positive experience.

Call for action

Always leave some visible call to actions, these will encourage the volunteer to perform some form of action. Call to actions may be subtle but they are all nudging your volunteer to do one thing. And that’s registering on your opportunity.

Call actions can include

  • Social media sharing links
  • Document printing
  • Internal links (other opportunities, company website)
  • Register / Logging in options

 

Here at TeamKinetic we can help with all your volunteer management needs. Go to our website to create a demo site – it’s completely free! You can also call us on 0161 914 5757 with any questions.

Don’t hesitate to reach out on social media, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can also go to our YouTube channel to see some examples of the features we have to offer and some of the people we already work with.

Introducing TeamKinetic: Sammy Reid – Dropping the Poms

By

On 19th June 2020

In News & Views

Sammy Cheerleading (Middle)

Starting off in life my ultimate dream was to become a dancer. Training 6 days a week, performing once a week and competing twice a month was all I ever knew. The styles of dance I enjoyed ranged from ballet to tap to the latest cheerleading. Each has taught me different life skills and lessons along the way. Dancing has also helped me to grow as an individual, giving me experiences I would never take back, however, I soon came to realise my aching knees weren’t going to take it much longer and decided to drastically change my career path, cue the degree in events.

The Buzz Of Marketing

When starting my Events Management degree marketing was not something I considered as a career. Not until I studied a unit titled marketing an event did I realise this was my passion. From creating a website for a new, trendy (fake) festival to even turning a yellow Corsa into a giant bee to market a real-life event. Each of these projects pushed me creatively in ways I didn’t know possible!

Marketing is the art of revealing peoples emotions through just something as simple as a poster or video. It has amazed me as to how something so simple can impact 1000’s of people. This has inspired me to follow the marketing path as a career and to continue my learning within this industry.

Bee themed car for a marketing campaign.

Volunteer Times

Volunteering was not something I was very aware of, it wasn’t until University when my first volunteering role showed me just how important volunteers can be.

Some of my first roles were for small charities who rely on volunteers to survive. Having that experience changed my perception of volunteering and how much these organisations value their volunteers. Not only this but from working on sporting events and major festivals I have had unbelievable experiences. Being able to see bands and artists for free or watching the Rugby League Grand Final. These opportunities have allowed me to meet like-minded people and have some of the most amazing moments in my life, just from volunteering!

Seeing TeamKinetic create an easy to use volunteer management software for organisations instantly made me want to work for them. Knowing organisations rely heavily on volunteers and also having lived the exciting experiences as a volunteer, I knew this company were creating something incredible and I was keen to be involved.

Lockdown Hobby

During the lockdown, like most people, I decided to take up a new hobby to keep myself busy. I have always been into shoes and clothes, so I decided to start painting them. Each design has opened up my creative mind and has helped me relax, however, this hobby has quickly turned into quite the obsession and I find myself painting till 3 am!

Painted butterfly shoes.

Final Words

I am excited to start this new chapter in my life and am thankful for this opportunity to work with TeamKinetic who will help me to develop my skills in marketing and get some hands-on experience at the same time. I am looking forward to working with a motivated team who share the same values and drive as I do and meeting TeamKinetic’s customers, getting to know more about their organisations and what I can offer for them! I can’t wait to get stuck in!

Sammy Reid

sammy@teamkinetic.co.uk

For more information on volunteer management software visit our website or call 01619145747

Champions of Europe, Champions of Volunteer Management…

By

On 17th June 2020

In News & Views, Sport

…Champions of England?

All football fans are aware of the current quality of Liverpool FC – a team that won the Champions League earlier this year and looks well suited to win the Premier League now that football is returning.

But away from the pitch, they’re true champions of volunteering. The LFC Foundation has used TeamKinetic’s volunteer management system since May 2018, and we’ve seen first-hand how great the work they do is!

LFC Foundation, volunteers, volunteer management software, volunteer management system, volunteer management, TeamKinetic,

A bit of background info:

The LFC Foundation is the official charity of Liverpool Football Club. Building on the Club’s work in the community over the past 20 years, the charity was formed in 2010. The Foundation delivers 24 community programmes across their three impact areas; Wellbeing, Skills and Communities, every week.

We’ve loved helping the LFC Foundation recruit, retain, and manage their volunteers. We’ve even volunteered with them ourselves! You can find all our LFC Foundation blogs by going to this link.

LFC Foundation, volunteers, volunteer management software, volunteer management system, volunteer management, TeamKinetic,

Liverpool FC dedicating so much time and energy to their foundation volunteers is admirable. Now, of course, other clubs have foundations and recruit volunteers, but do they see it as a focus? It appears that most do not. The work done by the Liverpool FC Foundation gives people from all walks of life a chance to do what they love – play football. When we volunteered there in August, it was great to see how happy everyone was. That happiness was mostly made possible by the LFC Foundation staff and volunteers. We salute you!

A quick look into Premier League teams tells you that not many other clubs place such a focus in their volunteer programmes. In fact, LFC might be the only ones investing in a volunteer management system for their foundation. Is this because other clubs don’t see volunteering as a focus? We hope not! We prefer to believe they just aren’t aware of the benefits of having a volunteer management system yet.

Let me tell you about the benefits of a volunteer management system

Oh, here we go. Another company trying to sell something. While, yes I am trying to sell you something, I’m also trying to save you countless hours and effort you already waste on your current volunteer management processes.

First of all, volunteer management systems help you recruit volunteers more easily. When they sign up to your system, they’ll see all active volunteering opportunities instantly. Beats sending your contact details into an abyss, doesn’t it?

Secondly, a volunteer management system can aid volunteer retention rates. The system will display all ongoing volunteering opportunities, even allowing you to invite volunteers you think will be interested. Meaning that they won’t have to wait for you to contact them about the opportunities your club is hosting. This is likely to encourage your volunteers to keep on volunteering with you for a long time.

Finally, any good volunteer management system should make managing your volunteers a piece of cake. With the ability to communicate with all volunteers through a chat room, create groups, and analyse your volunteers through our reporting features, our volunteer management system should give you all the tools you need to become a champion volunteer manager – and make your life easier!

Want to become a champion too?

Here at TeamKinetic we can help with all your volunteer management needs. Go to our website to create a demo site – it’s completely free! You can also call us on 0161 914 5757 with any questions.

Don’t hesitate to reach out on social media, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can also go to our YouTube channel to see some examples of the features we have to offer and some of the people we already work with.

Responding to a Global Pandemic: The TeamKinetic Way

By

On 27th May 2020

In COVID-19, News & Views

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

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

Business as usual?

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

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

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

New Features Developed

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

New Hardware and Infrastructure

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

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

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

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

Creating awareness

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

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

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

What’s next?

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

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

Want to try it for yourself?

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

Page 21 of 35

← Previous

Next →

Search

Subscribe to our blog

Enter your email address to subscribe to the TeamKinetic blog and receive notifications of new posts and stories.

Join 1,713 other subscribers.

Contact Details

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén