In April, we released a fantastic new update to the TeamKinetic volunteer management system that included three features we’re really excited about: Flows, Multi-Location Opportunities, and volunteer Find a Friend.
We’ve already covered the first two in other content, now it’s time for us to shine a light on the feature that we think will really boost community amongst your volunteers…
What is ‘Find a Friend’ in TeamKinetic?
Find a Friend does what it says on the tin – it allows volunteers to see other volunteers who have signed up to an opportunity. And now you’re probably thinking: “Hold on, what if I don’t want to share those details? What if my volunteers don’t want to share their details?”
Well don’t worry! There are plenty of settings to restrict this in a way that works for you, whether you turn it off completely or limit what is seen, and your volunteers have to opt-in too. You can also toggle sharing in every individual opportunity, so its very flexible.
Ultimately, Find a Friend aims to boost your volunteering community and build stronger bonds between your volunteers.
What are the restrictions?
If you’re a Super Admin user, you can head on over to Settings – Options – Opportunities and scroll all the way to the bottom. There, you’ll see a set of options around this feature, and you can control it to fit your organisation.
You can choose:
- whether it’s on at all and showing the volunteer photo and name
- whether to enable messaging between volunteers
- whether to share volunteers’ mobile numbers
- when volunteers can see this information
Once the overall setting has been turned on, the usage is decided on an opportunity-by-opportunity basis. When creating an opportunity, you can choose whether it is switched on or off.
By default, all volunteers are opted out of allowing their details to be shared. When a volunteer joins an opportunity that has this feature enabled, they’ll receive an email asking them to opt in.
Volunteers can update their choice at any time from their dashboard in the Notifications and Permissions section.
Why use Find a Friend?
Using this feature can encourage group volunteering and foster a greater sense of community amongst your volunteers.
Many people new to volunteering may want to volunteer alongside their friends to begin with. This enables them to find out which sessions their friends are on and book onto the same sessions.
Alternatively, a volunteer may make friends while volunteering for you and want to stay connected with these friends, continuing to volunteer alongside them.
We understand that not everyone will want to share data, and that some organisations will want to share more data than others. That’s why we’ve developed a variety of settings in relation to the Find a Friend feature.
However, if you think there’s still room for improvement, please let us know. This is a new feature after all, and we’re always looking for ways to keep developing TeamKinetic! You can send feedback directly to our development team via Support Tickets. Or you can send an email to any of the team, or pop into the live chat to let us know your thoughts.
We’re also hosting a masterclass all about the volunteer Find a Friend feature for all TeamKinetic users. You can book onto that now for free via Help & Support → Masterclasses & Training.
To find out more about other new features, you can check out our blog on Flows and Multiple Location Opportunities.
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