Tag: Volunteer management system Page 14 of 34

Our Round Up Of The Year 2021

By

On 22nd December 2021

In Christmas, Community, News & Views

With t-minus 3 days until Christmas Day, we wanted to look back at our 2021 with a round up! It’s been another tough year for everyone, but we’ve managed to find some light in moments this year. From award shows to blossoming partnerships, 2021 has been a year of developments for TeamKinetic.

Let’s have a look at our year in numbers.

January – March

The year started very much as this one is finishing, much to everyone’s frustration.

Volunteering was still very much on the agenda as we saw vaccination programs in full swing across the country. We were really proud to support a whole range of organisations mobilising an amazing army of volunteers.

People talk about the Anti-Vax brigade but we can tell you first-hand the Pro-Vax crowd are amazing and were out in force at the start of the year, and we take our hats off to each and every one of them!

March brought some wonderful news when we were honoured to be awarded ‘The Partner Excellence’ and the ‘COVID-19 Response Recognition’ awards for our work with Halton and St Helens Voluntary Community Action at the iNetwork awards. It was a huge achievement for TeamKinetic and our partners and a milestone we won’t be forgetting – especially for the recognition of our efforts throughout COVID.

March round up

The key achievements from our work with Halton and St Helens saw 1,744 volunteers registered and together they offered 8,688 volunteering hours. Our volunteer support economic value offered £80,796 during the first six months of the programme. For those feeling lonely or isolated, we were able to support 16,161 telephone calls to make those feel a little less lonely during repeated lockdowns and restrictions. Overall, we were able to support 32,993 in such a short amount of time and we can’t be more proud of the project.

We can’t thank Halton and St Helens VCA and St Helens Council enough; along with every single amazing volunteer for your commitment and drive, you make it all worthwhile. If you haven’t seen their short video on how important volunteers were during COVID, spend a couple of minutes and check it out.

May and June

Moving onto May, we held our first online conference, focusing on COVID-19, and what happens next. We’d like to say thank you to all our speakers and to those 140 people who attended. With talks from the likes of Gethyn Williams, Dr Jurgen Grotz, Kathryn Palmer-Skillings and our own Chris Martin, the conference was a success!

We do have a quick wrap-up video that you can check out here.

In June we said some hellos! We welcomed Alex back into the fold. Having already completed her placement year at TeamKinetic, we welcomed back a familiar face. You can read her (re)introduction to TeamKinetic life, here. 

Coming back to TeamKinetic has been great! I’m grateful to the team for offering me this position straight out of university and I’m looking forward to what we can achieve next.

Alex

We also welcomed a fresh face to the team: Katie. Along with Alex, Katie also wrote an introductory blog post which you can read here.

It’s been a whirlwind of a time since I joined in June and I can’t wait to see what comes next in the next six months.

Katie

With new welcomes, we said some goodbyes at the start of July. We said goodbye to Chloe and Sammy, who were our 2020/21 placement students. They took charge of the TeamKinetic conference and supplied you with dog pictures on our Twitter. Alex and Katie are more cat people, and so our pet content has changed significantly over the past couple of months (much to Chloe and Sammy’s dismay).

Both Chloe and Sammy are well underway with their final year at university. We’re wishing them the best of luck seeing out the rest of their degree.

July and August

Rolf, Steve and Chris on the Razzle

July saw us return to the office full-time as we thought the world was getting back to normal.  It also saw the return of the legendary TeamKinetic staff night out, I must apologise to Chloe, Sammy, Katie and Alex as the night was so messy this appears to be the only surviving picture of these 3 ugly mugs!

August saw the launch of TeamKinetic 2.0 the latest all-singing and dancing version of TeamKinetic. Unlike previous updates, this one was a monster with more new features and controls than anything we had done before. Not only that we had updated and replaced all the old legacy code with a new and improved code base.  Steve and Rolf worked day and night to get it ready and after it launched to find and fix those pesky bugs.

This new code base has set us up to be able to continue to improve the service quicker and hopefully will ensure you guys have the very best technology available for the next few years. 

September

In September, we were so proud to announce our partnership with the Association of Volunteer Managers. Founder, Chris Martin, detailed our hopes for the next 12 months, some of which we’ve started on already… 

Over the next 12 months, we will be working with the team at AVM to develop some accessible resources and materials that you might find useful if you are thinking about how you might use digital. We will be exploring what type of member offers and benefits you might like from us to make it easy and affordable for you to look at digital volunteer management and most importantly we hope to get to know you all a little bit better.

Chris

You can watch Chris and Ruth at AVM discuss the new partnership below. We’re excited to see what can become of this partnership with AVM heading into 2022.

We also worked with the guys in Scotland to help them launch their first ever cross-sector heritage volunteer campaign called Make your Mark. The ambition of the campaign was fantastic, how can they recruit a new generation of heritage volunteers and how can they broaden inclusion and accessibility to a whole group of new people. We were really happy to be part of the program and that TeamKinetic was to be used to drive the recruitment campaign. You can watch their launch video here, it’s pretty cool.

 October

October brought Halloween and our sponsorship of AVM’s annual conference. The two-day conference opened up insightful conversations with speakers that really got us thinking! It was our first time sponsoring the event and it was really nice to support something we have attended for so long.

It was also really lovely to catch up with people and see a number of faces we hadn’t seen in a while, even if it was just over Zoom, who knows what next year might look like but fingers crossed for catching up over the buffet or a glass of wine.

October also brought the first of our talks regarding digital volunteer management with the Charity Retail Association. We really wanted 2021 to be the year we looked at how we could better support the wider sector and working with both Charity Retail and AVM were key decisions that would enable us to share our knowledge and support the wider sector.

If you were there, I hope our 30/40 minute talk was insightful for those attending, and we hope we will be doing more of these in the new year.

November Talks:

November round up

We had a quick start to November with the Local Government Chronicle Awards. Once again, we were nominated in two categories, for our work over the past year with Halton and St Helens. The categories were Campaign of the Year and Technology. While we didn’t win, it was an honour to be nominated. We have to thank everyone at Halton and St Helens and the volunteers for creating such a successful project.
(Chris also enjoyed a night away in London maybe a little too much if his hangover was anything to go by!) 

We also were honoured to be asked to talk at COP26. The invitation came from the team running Make Your Mark in Scotland. We also heard from the likes of Chester Zoo, the National History Museum and Rob Jackson. It was another insightful day, which Katie personally enjoyed live tweeting her way through.

Volunteering, like every sphere of human life, needs to look at its role in climate change and it was really inspiring to hear what is happening and what you can do to make a change.

If you missed it why not check it out here:

The middle of November meant it was time to head down south for the day. Jumping on the train to London, we met up with the Charity Retail Association for their People Management Group – a successful hybrid event we spoke at. This was the first hybrid event we’ve attended, and we wanted to highlight the work put in by the team to make sure everything ran smoothly. While half of the attendees weren’t in the room, it never felt like they were anywhere else (apart from the leftover lunches!) We want to thank the CRA for including us in multiple of their events over 2021, and we hope to be continuing this into 2022.

Being back in person at an event was great and it felt like it was all going to be plain sailing moving into 2022, little did we know what was about to change everything!

December Celebrations:

In December, the Health Innovation Network (HIN) on behalf of NHSX released an evaluation into the value of micro-volunteering applications during the global pandemic. We were really excited to be a key contributor to the findings. The findings were also positive towards TeamKinetic and our approach to localised Micro-volunteering community response.

Through the use of these applications, over 100,000 individuals carried out 1.5 million tasks for the vulnerable during the global pandemic. Evidence suggests that micro-volunteering engages a willing volunteer force and addresses unmet community needs. It was also clear that the pandemic drove interest into the value of these platforms.

You can access the full evaluation summary report by clicking here.

We also managed to squeeze in our Christmas party and our annual Christmas jumper day which was fun.

December has not quite turned out as we would have liked. There are refreshed calls for Volunteers to support the booster campaign. It’s all starting to feel a little like Groundhog Day as we find ourselves back in a COVID-induced crisis.

It’s been an uncertain year at times. While we’re still waiting for the days we can ‘go back to normal’, we think we’ve managed to have another successful year and that we have helped to make volunteering that little bit easier and more accessible.

If we have learned anything from 2021, it’s that you can’t plan too far in advance. You should enjoy the simple things in life and take the small victories where you can find them. You just can’t be sure what’s around the corner.

All that’s left to say is Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to those that celebrate. And, finally, have a Happy New Year – we’ll see you in 2022! 

New Features: Emailing and Expenses

By

On 13th December 2021

In Application Features and Tutorials, TeamKinetic Features

We’ve recently released TeamKinetic version 2.09 and you may have noticed a few new features. We’ve added new emailing and expenses features in our latest update.

New Email Features

The video above lays out all the new features.

When creating bulk emails you can now select any number of opportunities to be included in the email. You have the option of including the events that week and if you want to show the volunteer’s statistics across the top. These are all displayed in exactly the same way as within the newsletter so its now possible to send a newsletter type email to any of your volunteers, for any of your opportunities, whenever you like!

We have also rearranged and refactored the preview and draft buttons so you can now send a preview email to your email instantly and save a draft copy without leaving the page. We also now update the saved draft each time you hit the save draft button, rather than creating a new draft.

New Expenses Feature

The video above lays out information needed when adding/processing an Expense.

This is an Enterprise only feature. Administrators will have to switch this module on and off via the
Super Admin Menu → Options → Opportunities → ‘Use the in app managed expenses module’.

Opportunities can now either be marked as ‘Managed Expenses’ and/or ‘Expenses Paid’.

Expenses Paid simply means that volunteers will be reimbursed. In this case, you should add details about what expenses are paid and if there’s a cap on the amount. This is useful for providers to specify that their opportunity pays expenses.
Managed Expenses means that volunteers will be able upload expense claims which can then be managed by administrators. Managed expenses are always also marked as expenses paid.

If enabled, volunteers can select applicable opportunities from their dashboard, upload a receipt, an explanation of what the expense is for, and the amount they are claiming. Admins will get an alert when a new claim is submitted by a volunteer and can manage them all from a simple interface.
The admin can view the receipt, adjust the claim amount, and update the claim status. A full history of changes and notes is maintained and viewable underneath the main claim.

Any issues?

New updates can create small problems elsewhere in the site (despite rigorous testing!)
If you run into any issues on your site, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. You can either use the live chat feature, or raise a support ticket.

You can also visit our website and find us on social media:

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram

How to Effectively Reward Charity Retail Volunteers

By

On 8th December 2021

In Charity, Volunteer Management

As an act that is entirely selfless, rewarding volunteers may seem like an impossible task – surely the work is rewarding enough? While, yes, the work is rewarding. It doesn’t keep a volunteer motivated to keep volunteering for you. So how do we reward charity retail volunteers?

In this blog we’ll go through a variety of ways, because not every volunteer will respond to the same methods.

First, why do they volunteer?

Understanding the reasoning behind your volunteer’s commitment can help you tailor recognition and rewards to them personally. Here are some common reasons:

  • Because they care about the cause/have been personally impacted by the organisation.
  • As a good way to fill their time.
  • To join friends and family who volunteer.
  • Because it’s a good networking opportunity.
  • Because it contributes to something wider – e.g. the Duke of Edinburgh award.

So how do we reward charity retail volunteers?

This is where it starts to feel complicated: formal vs informal, intrinsic vs extrinsic, physical v digital, etc. But don’t worry! We’ll lay it all out for you so you just have to worry about picking the right method for your volunteers.

Formal v Informal Rewards

Formal rewards are usually regarded as those you plan ahead of time. This could include things like award ceremonies, volunteer of the month awards, and certificates.

In contrast, informal rewards are the smaller things you would use on a day-to-day basis. Instead, it focuses on improving the experience for volunteers. You might reward volunteers in this way through bringing them refreshments while they work, having conversations about how their experience could be improved. A great benefit of informal rewards is their low cost and significant ongoing impact.

Intrinsic v Extrinsic Motivation

Volunteering can be personally rewarding to many people and this good feeling is often a big motivator. Intrinsic motivation is all about helping your volunteers continually feel good about the work they’re doing and the difference they’re making, rather than working towards one particular reward. It follows the same premise as informal rewards – you want to reward volunteers by continually improving the state of your volunteer programme.

On the other hand, extrinsic motivation involves volunteering because of outside factors, such as receiving a reward. This isn’t always a negative thing, as mentioned above, people often volunteer as part of something else. For example, a student may volunteer in a charity shop in order to fulfil one of the requirements of the Duke of Edinburgh Award.

There’s always potential to retain this kind of volunteer through intrinsic motivation. If they become motivated by the way volunteering makes them feel, rather than fulfilling a requirement, they’ll be more likely to keep volunteering for you.

Physical v Digital

Now we know about the different types of motivation and rewards, we can start thinking how to deliver them. Those of you who are not yet fully engaging with digital may feel more comfortable delivering purely physical rewards (such as thank you cards and teas/coffee).
One Welsh charity even decided to help the local community beyond their existing efforts. The Gellideg Foundation Group gave their volunteers gift cards to small local businesses as a reward, helping boost the local economy and keep local shops open!

However, there are a whole host more options available to you via digital means. And you never have to stick to purely digital or physical rewards – there’s room for both to be used effectively.

How can I reward volunteers with TeamKinetic?

TeamKinetic can facilitate a range of options when it comes to rewarding your hard-working volunteers.

First of all, after every opportunity, volunteers and opportunity providers are asked to leave feedback. This feedback serves as a way to praise the volunteer but can also be used to improve internally. If any volunteers have issues, these will be sent to you and you can deal with them. Giving volunteers a great place to work is a great step to help them feel appreciated.



Furthermore, the system offers HourTrades. These are rewards for reaching a certain number of volunteering hours logged. This can be set to anything you desire, offering a wide range of incentives to your charity retail volunteers.

We also have Opportunity and Achievement Badges.
Opportunity badges can identify opportunities that will contribute to an award, such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Achievement Badges are awarded over time – the more hours a volunteer logs, the better badge they receive! These are saved digitally but for an added touch you could create physical badges to match!

Try it for yourself

You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website, giving you access to everything the system has to offer for 30 days.

If you want to find out more about the system, or have any questions you can use the chat feature on our website, email us, phone us on 0161 914 5757, or find us on social media:

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.

Why Analysing Your Volunteer Programme is so Important

By

On 1st December 2021

In Charity, Volunteer Management

If your organisation has an established volunteer programme, you’ll have your volunteers up and running with good quality opportunities, but now it’s time to evaluate. Maybe you’re already analysing your volunteer programme, but is it enough?

Analysing your volunteer programme can provide key insight into the impact of your programme. This could include how you’ve improved the lives of people in the local community and key demographics of your volunteers. So let’s dive right in…

The Fundamentals

Let’s start with your goals. Do you have them and are you achieving them?

Simple reporting tools can help you recognise whether you’re hitting these goals. If you are, it can inform how you go about setting new goals. If not, it’ll give you an idea of how to adjust your operations in order to achieve them. And if you’re yet to set any goals, key KPIs can help you draw some up.

What are KPIs?

Key Performance Indicators: a set of quantifiable measurements used to gauge a company’s overall long-term performance. This could include things like:

  • Total number of active volunteers
  • Volunteer retention rate
  • Total number of hours logged
  • Volunteer demographics (gender, age, ethnicity, location, etc.)
  • The monetary value of services rendered by volunteer support
  • Number of people in the community served by volunteers

So Why Is It Important?

Analysing your volunteer programme is a pathway to discovering a whole host of things.

Volunteer retention rate can suggest the happiness of your volunteers or quality of your opportunities. If volunteers aren’t happy and don’t have access to good opportunities, they won’t keep coming back. You can read more on how to fix this issue in our ‘How to Increase Volunteer Retention (and keep it!)‘ blog.
Just remember: a happy volunteer is a loyal volunteer!

Furthermore, volunteer demographics can be compared to demographics in your area to see whether your programme is attracting an expected variety of people. If not, why not?
For example, demographics showing a very high proportion of white volunteers in a very ethnically diverse area could suggest there are barriers to people in your community who want to volunteer. Our recent post ‘Is Your Pool of Volunteers Diverse and Inclusive?‘ provides valuable tips on how to improve this within your own organisation.

However, data isn’t just about spotting areas for improvement. It could also be used to identify those who are going above and beyond for your organisation. With tools like hour logging and feedback, you can see which volunteers are giving their time the most and receiving praise for their work.

How can I get started?

There’s a good chance you’re already managing your volunteers digitally, but are you using volunteer management software? Software can put everything in one place for you, allowing you to manage, communicate, and analyse your volunteers in a few clicks. You can read more about implementing volunteer management software in this blog.

While it’s possible to analyse your volunteers using spreadsheets and other software, it’s definitely much easier to have everything in one place. Instantly have everything you need to manage your volunteers all in one place, leaving you more time to focus on the important stuff.

Why not try TeamKinetic?

You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website. This will let you check out all our features for 30 days. This includes features such as volunteer-owned profiles, the ability to log hours completed, and reporting tools. If you like what you see, contact us to book a demo and see how we can help your organisation manage your volunteers and start analysing your volunteer programme!

Contact us:
– Email: alex@teamkinetic.co.uk
– Phone: 0161 914 5757
– Social media:

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram

Is Your Pool of Volunteers Diverse and Inclusive?

By

On 24th November 2021

In Charity, News & Views, Volunteer Management

Organisations should be diverse and inclusive to the communities they serve, and your volunteers should mirror that. So, how do organisations achieve this? A recent agenda consulting survey gives us some more detail into how volunteering organisations value diversity.

Agenda Consulting undertook a survey as part of their ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the UK Third Sector’ report. The report looks to understand people’s views and experiences of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within the organisations they work with. The survey covers 8 sectors: Gender, Gender different to that originally assigned at birth; Ethnicity, Disability, Religion, Sexual Orientation and Age.

Agenda Consulting Survey:

The overall view from survey results states the average positivity for DEI is 72%, with neutrality being 21%. The average negativity is 7%. What is most surprising is that the highest level of negativity is regarding age: at 12% negativity overall. 

It’s clear that while there are mostly positive results, there’s still work to be done: 67% of respondents feel the leadership groups display their commitment to DEI. However, just 48% of people feel their organisation is committed to promoting the representation of diverse groups. By recruiting and retaining a workforce that is diverse, you can work towards building stronger perceptions. 

Sector Results:

The results show for gender little difference between men’s and women’s perception, yet statistics from Agenda’s People Count, show that gender balance shifts as we move through levels of seniority. There may be an imbalance in results. 76% of the survey sample are female, fitting with Volunteers Count of 70% of all volunteers being female. For more information, we have a blog post which dives into the reasons why women volunteer more than men. 

For those whose gender is different to that originally assigned at birth: results suggest there needs to be education within the sector. Only 50% believe that, regardless of gender reassignment, people are treated equally. By increasing the education or knowledge of volunteers surrounding DEI, it becomes an organisation-wide initiative, instead of being held to within one department. 

There is a strong perception that there is equal treatment regarding ethnicity, with 73% of people feeling like everyone is treated equally irrespective of race/ ethnicity: but 10% disagree. Perceptions of equal treatment are considerably lower for those respondents from an ethnic minority. More awareness is needed throughout organisations: and this should be done by the very people who it directly affects. We’ve looked deeper into the socio-economic status surrounding volunteers and whether volunteering is too white and wealthy… 

Disability, Religion, Sexual Orientation and Age:

The results from disability-related questions show that 67% feel people are treated equally, with 24% neutral and 9% feel negatively. This use of ‘neutral’ suggests that volunteers don’t have enough insight. This is possibly due to the fact that just 4% of volunteers are disabled (according to Volunteers Count). If we remove those barriers, we open volunteering up to a wider community with fresh ideas and skills, representing wider society as a whole.

74% feel that people are treated equally despite a person’s religious beliefs, with 22% of people feeling neutral and 4% opposing the statement. There are several groups who are the least positive. Agenda’s report outlines those who identify in another way and ethnic minorities as standouts for those who aren’t as positive. It can be suggested that this is down to wider societal stereotypes, which are translating into the volunteering sector. 

Overall, only 1% of those who identify as Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual (LGB) felt they weren’t treated equally due to their sexual orientation, whereas 84% of people did. During the survey, it was LGB groups who thought less positively about the statements being asked of them. This possibly suggests that they are more aware than others about the inequalities minorities face.

As mentioned above, it is age that has the greatest discrepancy when it comes to being treated equally. Out of the 3% of under 25s who took part in the survey, only 59% felt positively, with 18% negative. As age increases, the negativity does too. This suggests a divide within organisations among age groups on whether certain groups of people are treated equally.

So Why Should We Increase the Diversity of Volunteer Programmes?

Harvard Business Review confirms that when a team member shares the ethnicity of their client, the entire team is 152% more likely to fully understand the client. This ability is crucial for volunteer programmes. By increasing the diversity of your organisation you receive new ideas and approaches to your work; with new volunteers, you gain people from different educational backgrounds with different soft skills, like communication. 

All of this helps your organisation, but it also helps those you volunteer for: your volunteers can be role models. Those who can see themselves within volunteers can inspire and increase their aspirations. They may also want to volunteer in some capacity too! Organisations should be looking towards becoming inclusive for all, for a stronger future.

So How Do We Increase the Diversity of Volunteer programmes?

There are a number of strategies to ensure your volunteer programme can become inclusive for all. Starting with your language. Switching up your language to attract certain groups of people can help you gain a wider audience.

Start to build relationships! Building up relationships with communities means you can speak freely and they can too! It’s important to identify those communities you want to engage with: it’s important you’re authentic. 

The policies that your organisation has may need rewriting. What you have written down versus the culture surrounding your volunteer programme can be drastically different.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are so important for volunteer programmes who want to move forward. It’s simple, organisations must be inclusive for all. Your pool of volunteers should mirror the community you work in. With a diverse pool of volunteers, you have an opportunity. Team bonding exercises can bring people together. 

AVM’s Making an Inclusive and Accessible Recruitment and Onboarding Experience

Save the Date! Wednesday the 27th April, 9:30am- 12:30pm, AVM are hosting an event helping you to create an inclusive and accessible recruitment and onboarding experience! Straight from AVM, at this event you will…

  • Hear ideas on how you could adapt your recruitment and onboarding process to be more inclusive
  • Learn how organisations have overcome some of the barriers to inclusive recruitment
  • Reasonable adjustments that can be made to ensure your recruitment process is accessible to all
  • How to attract a diverse range of volunteers and what you might need to consider
  • Have an opportunity to plan your next steps, in small groups with your peers

Learn more about the event and how you get your tickets here! 

Manage Your Volunteers:

We now know how important diversity and inclusion are to volunteer organisations and volunteer management. An efficient and effective management system is needed to help you help your volunteers and the community. TeamKinetic can help you recruit, retain and realise the potential of your 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.

How TeamKinetic Transforms Volunteer Management For Good…

By

On 17th November 2021

In Case Study, Charity, Hospice, Volunteer Management

Willowbrook Hospice provides care for patients with life limiting diseases living in St Helens, Knowsley and the surrounding areas. They rely on their fundraising methods and their dedicated volunteers. After realising they needed a volunteer management system, they came across us, TeamKinetic.

Why TeamKinetic?

For Willowbrook hospice, their previous system was archaic- there was no way to engage with their volunteers. We know the importance of interacting with volunteers we have already, so this was a concern for Willowbrook. They needed a system that allowed for this interaction. Willowbrook also wanted a web-based programme which would allow everyone to access the site from anywhere.

Benefits of using TeamKinetic:

One of the biggest benefits for Willowbrook, as mentioned above, is the ability to access the system anywhere. It’s critical for volunteer managers in each of Willowbrook’s nine shops to have access to the system. This way each shop manager can see who’s coming in to volunteer, and has all the information they need in one place. 

In Willowbrook’s case, their current contact details for volunteers was through paper, which we all know isn’t the most effective. With TeamKinetic’s data protection and GDPR compliance, Willowbrook Hospice are able to see necessary contact information on volunteers profiles. If there is an emergency, managers know exactly where to go to find an email address or a phone number. 

Having this information at hand means that they’re able to be more present in volunteers’ lives, through emails and messages. Since using our system, Willowbrook’s volunteers have noticed the change- they feel as if they’re more involved with the Hospice due to the update emails they receive. Willowbrook has learnt the importance of communication and engagement between themselves and volunteers along with the importance of volunteers talking with each other too.

Willowbrook Hospice’s communication:

For Willowbrook, they’ve created a befriending team between their volunteers. They’ve brought their volunteers together to support each other- especially through-out the pandemic. TeamKinetic hosts a private notes function, so Willowbrook can update when they’ve spoken to a volunteer. 

All this communication has meant that volunteers feel more involved than ever with the happenings around Willowbrook Hospice and their nine shops. By involving volunteer managers and volunteers, it becomes much more likely that they will spread Willowbrook out into the world further. You’ll be attracting new volunteers whilst building and retaining the volunteers you already have. In Bev Neilson’s (a volunteer manager at Willowbrook) words, “if you want efficient communication, then you’re going to get it with TeamKinetic, definitely”. 

Willowbrook also outlined the quick response rates you can get with the TeamKinetic system;

“We’ve had small events that have come up now and again. We had an event that came up where we could sell things in a local Garden Centre. It’s something we had to implement quite quickly because it was over Christmas. So, I created it on TeamKinetic and had it emailed out to all the volunteers. I would say within the hour, we filled up all the slots for two weeks worth of people volunteering for it. I think that raised over £2,000; without TeamKinetic that would never have happened.”

The ease of creating an opportunity online, and advertising it out to volunteers meant that they’re unexpected fundraising occasion was a success! Our advertising options aren’t limited to just emails, you can automatically send out a post on social media when you’ve created an opportunity, or bulk text your volunteers to let them know!

Willowbrook Hospice advice:

You’ve heard a lot from us, so here’s Willowbrook’s advice for those looking to manage their volunteers more efficiently; 

“I think having this system in place helps because everything is in one place. Before it all felt a bit jumbled, we were going from system to system to try and run everything, and engage volunteers while still trying to keep in touch with them. Whereas now, we’ve got one system that we can use and as it’s web-based, like I said before, we can access it anywhere.”

What’s Next For Willowbrook Hospice?

What is happening for Willowbrook at the moment? They’ve recently celebrated World Hospice and Palliative Care Day on the 9th October. Willowbrook have decided to incorporate a Reaching Out Focus into their 2019-2022 Strategy and Organisational Work in line with this year’s theme: ‘Leave no-one behind- equity in access to palliative care.’ There objectives are as follows: 

  • All the members of the community we serve are aware of our services, have equal access and feel comfortable to do so. 
  • To see more people from across the communities we serve.

Thank you to Bev Neilson and Willowbrook Hospice for letting us in behind the curtain! 

Find out more:

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.

How To Get The Best Out Of Micro-Volunteering

By

On 10th November 2021

In Charity, Volunteer Management

Over the past 20 months we have seen organisations transform and adapt in order to continue helping those they serve. One way they have adapted is through micro-volunteering. We’ll be covering just what micro-volunteering is and how you can really get the best out of it! 

What is micro-volunteering?

Micro-volunteering consists of people taking small amounts of time out of their day to volunteer; we’re looking at up to 30 minutes on a particular task, maximum. These tasks can be broken down into small parts, in which one volunteer can complete just one component. It’s convenient and low commitment actions appeal a lot to potential volunteers who may only have limited free time. Micro-volunteering takes numerous small contributions and accumulates them together to make a difference.

While the majority of micro-volunteering takes place online, through signing petitions and sharing/retweeting to spread awareness- it doesn’t have to be. You could be taking part in a run, sorting through recycling or baking for an event.

Micro-volunteering is good for organisations and it doesn’t take away from traditional volunteering. Volunteering long-term, micro-volunteers aren’t who you should be looking at. They cannot be deemed as reliable. So, if your organisation is looking at micro-volunteering, make sure that your opportunities fit the micro-volunteering mould; don’t change a traditional opportunity for the sake of it- you’ll find more often than not, it simply won’t work.

Plan Correctly…

If your organisation is thinking of using micro-volunteering, they have the chance to save themselves time and money, if planned correctly. 

Start Planning. What’s the opportunity? Who’s going to manage this within the organisation? 

Get Advertising. Use various websites and social media to promote your micro-volunteering opportunity. 

Quick Management. Find your volunteers, get them started and confirm they know what it is they’ll be doing (there still needs to be some management even if the opportunity is small). 

Recognise and Reward. Send volunteers some feedback on their completed opportunity and tell them about their impact. 

The Pandemic Effect on Micro-volunteering…

As organisations rethought their volunteer programmes throughout the pandemic, micro-volunteering and the digital opportunities it provided was the gateway organisations needed to carry on. Organisation’s now face whether they keep micro-volunteering up now we return back to ‘normality’. 

At AVM’s annual conference, it was mentioned that micro-volunteering should have as little bureaucracy as possible. These aren’t the volunteers you so much rely on, but they can massively make an impact within your organisation. Relationships with micro-volunteers are different from your traditional ones (mainly because you can have hundreds of micro-volunteers, so personal relationships will be hard to maintain!) 

Benefits and Considerations

As we’ve hinted at, micro-volunteering does have some benefits for organisations. Currently the biggest barrier to volunteering is time. The world we live in now is fast paced, and people find that they don’t have enough time to get everything done; micro-volunteering is perfect. The flexibility of smaller tasks is appealing to many, but remember, new volunteers may be worried that they have to pledge a long-term commitment of some sort. With micro-volunteering they don’t have to.

Micro-volunteering opens you up to have a wider range of skills at your disposal (so to speak.) As volunteers are only engaged for a small amount of time, you might find that you have a group of volunteers with the same skill. Opportunities can now be split and completed quickly and efficiently: it’s a win-win. Your organisation will be getting the help it’s looking for, while volunteers haven’t lost too much of their free time.

A challenge with volunteers from an organisation’s perspective is making sure that you reach the micro-volunteering demand, especially because you’re dealing with quick opportunities. Along with this you’ll also need some sort of support for these volunteers. While they aren’t directly linked to your organisation, they’ll still need some support and direction from you. To do this, having a support tool kit you can send to your micro-volunteers with all the information they might need will set them on their way and means you can focus on other aspects of your organisation.

While your relationship with micro-volunteers is different from your traditional volunteers, you should still collect feedback (from them and from you!) As we know, micro-volunteering can be set at an arm’s length, especially for those opportunities completed online so volunteers may never know the impact they’ve made within an organisation – so make sure to let them know!

How do you know whether your organisation can use micro-volunteering?

Despite what the title says, not every organisation will work well with micro-volunteers (sadly). If you’re struggling to figure out whether your organisation would benefit, we might be able to help. Micro-volunteering is good for organisations that: 

  • Have the potential to attract a large pool of diverse volunteers; especially those who may not have a lot of time on their hands. 
  • Have a strong path for potential micro-volunteers to transfer into a traditional volunteer role (this may be letting micro-volunteers know where they can register their interest etc.) 
  • Have ideas around building motivation for micro-volunteers to keep them interested in the progression of your organisation, whether it be to volunteer or just to keep in touch. 
  • Offer new micro-volunteering opportunities to existing volunteers. This is really important now that we’re coming out of the pandemic, because volunteers’ perceptions and safety concerns have changed.

Hopefully those bullet points can give you some insight into whether, or how your organisation can start to introduce micro-volunteering into its daily process. It’s clear to see how this kind of volunteering has become popular in recent times, especially as the past 18 months have transitioned onto online platforms. If you’re thinking that micro-volunteering is something you should be adapting into your company, you might need a good volunteer management system…

Need a good volunteer management system? Look no further. 

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.

Why Charities Should Be Using Technology To Manage Volunteers…

By

On 3rd November 2021

In Charity, News & Views, Volunteer Management

Having a strong pool of volunteers is absolutely crucial for charities; and technology can be the solution to effectively recruit new volunteers. We’ve seen recently just how much technology has connected us, bringing people together – exactly what charities are looking for.

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) have recommended that charity organisations move to digital outputs in order to become as accommodating for potential volunteers as possible. We want to cut through current barriers stopping people from volunteering.

Managing volunteers on a digital platform builds a community, and improves communication, not just between organisations and volunteers, but between volunteers themselves too! You’ll find that everyone will be more focused on your organisation’s cause.

Richard Cooper, Director of Programmes at the Technology expresses that one of the biggest issues in charities is the lack of understanding on how technology can help. Well, we can help with that!

Why Technology/Digital?

So, why digital? You can find the right volunteers for you. With constantly changing volunteer pools, digitally advertising your opportunities gives you new options. When you promote your opportunities, you’re able to tailor your language to the volunteers you’re looking for. If you already have a good volunteer pool, you can use them as a reference… How would you promote them? What tone would you use? 

By having a digital sign up/application process, you have all the information you need on a volunteer’s profile, in one centralised system. By registering online, volunteers can instantly gain access to your opportunities, and start volunteering as soon as possible! 

If your charity has an onboarding or training process that volunteers have to complete, you can transfer this onto volunteer management systems too. Your processes are now streamlined and you can attract more people than ever; a digital initiative by Age UK a has amassed a 50% increase in their sign up conversions.

Perfect your Two-way Communication:

You might think that it’s all well and good having volunteers sign up, but for charities human connection and having that relationship between one another is crucial. So how do we achieve that online? 

Communication between a volunteer and organisation should always go two ways: it’ll help you keep attracting and retaining volunteers. With digital systems, that communication is always open. You can build a relationship through email, chat box, or even SMS text all from one place. 

This not only shows your support but can also be used to recognise volunteers. For example, within TeamKinetic’s system you can leave feedback (on both a volunteer and organisation side) thanking the volunteer in question for completing the opportunity. The Charity Retail Association (CRA) has expressed how showing appreciation can really motivate a volunteer – and we agree! 

Digital systems also offer new ways to recognise and reward your volunteers too! To come back to TeamKinetic, you can create custom achievement badges such as ‘volunteer of the month’ or enable ‘HourTrades.’ HourTrades are vouchers that volunteers can swap their logged hours for. This gives them a reward (the reward is up to you!)

Has the Pandemic moved technology forward?

It doesn’t seem a surprise that the pandemic has thrown volunteering into a more digital design. Using digital platforms throughout the pandemic to work and volunteer have doubled compared to pre-pandemic rates (82%). This has meant that volunteering through the pandemic was able to continue, with new digital systems improving service accessibility by 45%. Technology has been able to improve the ease of access towards volunteering over the past 18 months, and if we look more into the future, digital platforms are here to stay.

One of the concerns surrounding moving to digital, is the lack of skills paid staff had. Yet over the past 18 months to 2 years, there’s been an increase of 73% of required staff increasing their level of digital skills. It seems the pandemic has only increased the rate at which charities are moving online and taking a more technology based approach. This is reminiscent of the work towards Volunteer Passporting, which we wrote a blog all about too!

The processes of time-consuming and complex processes are a thing of the past, streamlining your volunteer management digitally offers a comprehensive service, for your managers and your volunteers.

Want To Know More?

Here at TeamKinetic we can get you set up quickly and efficiently, so you can start to recruit, retain and realise the potential of your volunteers… 

Start a free trial with TeamKinetic here. Or alternatively email chris@teamkinetic.co.uk or call on 0160 914 5757.

How to Increase Volunteer Retention (and keep it!)

By

On 28th October 2021

In Charity, News & Views, Volunteer Management

Now that life is returning to normal – or as normal as it can be – you might be wondering the best practice when it comes to volunteer retention.

Over lockdown you might have lost volunteers. Research suggests the number of volunteers in charity shops fell by 20% as a result of the pandemic. These people might have moved into full-time work, they might not feel comfortable coming back due to health/personal reasons, or maybe they just no longer have time to give anymore. 

But don’t worry! There are many ways to recruit new volunteers and make sure you retain them too.

Here are our top tips when it comes to solving the issue of poor volunteer retention rates.

Keep Volunteers Happy

A happy volunteer is a motivated and loyal volunteer. But what makes them happy? Well that’s a hard question to answer. Everyone is different but the key fundamentals should give you a good start: 

Good Communication

If you consider volunteers to be essential to your organisation, remember to check in with them regularly. Their opinions matter and can help you improve your volunteer programme, leading to increased recruitment and better retention rates.
Many might communicate with volunteers through things like WhatsApp and Facebook groups, but have you considered alternatives? Any good volunteer management system will allow you to communicate with your volunteers in a range of ways all through one medium. For example; emails, SMS Texting, Social Media sharing, and opportunity chat rooms are all possible in TeamKinetic.

Be Flexible

These options are available when creating an opportunity on the TeamKinetic system

If you’re experiencing a lot of absences from your volunteers, maybe it’s a sign of unhappiness and/or stress. Giving them flexibility (i.e. multiple shift times & dates and/or an option to work from home) could be a way to improve this. Giving volunteers a range of ways to help out can make them feel valued. You’re not just trying to fill a position – you actually appreciate the work they’re doing for you. Which brings us to our next point…

Show Appreciation

Even though they’re giving their time for free, it’s still nice to be acknowledged every so often. Showing appreciation doesn’t just stop at sending them a thank you card, it can also involve how they’re treated on the job. Ensure volunteers feel valued in their positions, give them good quality training materials and empower them.

Access to Good Quality Opportunities

An example of an opportunity on the TeamKinetic system

Firstly, make sure all information about your opportunities (and ways to apply) is easy to access for your prospective volunteers. Making opportunities easy to find means that you’re increasing the amount of people you could reach. This could in-turn increase the quantity and diversity of people who want to volunteer for you.

Secondly, making the opportunities you’re offering of a good quality. Giving volunteers good work means they’ll actively want to keep giving you their time and you’ll both get much more out of the whole experience. However, not only do your opportunities have to be worthwhile, but the way you describe them does too. Provide as much information as possible, including all the key details (times, dates, location, etc.) as well as highlighting the skills they can develop.

Upgrading Your Volunteer Management Solution

Perhaps you’ve read these tips and want to use them, but implementing them may seem like a mammoth task. Well, have you thought about volunteer management software? It may seem like an extra expense you don’t need, but the tools you’ll receive access to will improve your volunteer programme and save you massive amounts of time! 

With features that fulfil everything mentioned in this article, why not give it a try? You can start a free trial with TeamKinetic now. Once you’re up and running with a trial site, we’ll contact you to ask if you’d like a demo with Chris. This will give you a personalised, in-depth look at the system and all its capabilities.

With no obligation to pay anything until you’re sure our system is right for you it seems like a no-brainer.

Should you still be working with online volunteers post-covid?

By

On 13th October 2021

In COVID-19, Volunteer Management

Now we’re heading back to ‘normal’, should you still be working with online volunteers? YES! By recruiting online volunteers from quite literally anywhere you’re expanding your reach. When it comes to volunteering: the bigger your reach, the better! Virtual volunteering slots here perfectly. 

In today’s blog post, we’re outlining the ways you can make sure your virtual opportunities stand out from the rest. 

Making Your Opportunity Stand Out

Your Opportunity Title. When creating your opportunity, make sure your title is compelling and attractive. A volunteer is more likely to join an opportunity that instantly excites them, so having a strong title is key. It’s also worth mentioning somewhere in the title that the opportunity is remote. 

Opportunity Description. Simply, don’t post the full list of details. Searching volunteers are likely to be leading with emotion – and a long description of there duties isn’t going to entice them. We suggest giving snippets of their duties but focus on explaining the impact they’ll be making.

Jargon. For a number of volunteers, this is their first time volunteering. Any specific language or acronyms should be left out. It’s most likely going to confuse potential volunteers, so keeping it as simple as possible will get more interest from new volunteers.

Calls To Action. Give potential volunteers the ‘next steps’ for joining an opportunity. Your opportunity should always have contact details too, for any other questions or support they might require. 

Image Use.  The use of imagery taps into volunteers’ emotions. Using the right image can trigger mirror neurons in the brain, so the volunteer feels the emotions portrayed in an image. Your images can also show that your organisation is inclusive to all. It’s important that your imagery is right, and sends the right signals to those browsing. 

Checking Your Posting. Once your post is complete, make sure to double check it. Go through and check that all the information is correct as well as looking out for any spelling/grammatical errors. It’s also worth, once posted, looking at the opportunity through a potential volunteer’s eyes – do they have everything they need to join? 

Are You Screening Your Volunteers?

Now that you’ve perfected your opportunity listing, and you have a set of virtual volunteers, the screening process can begin! What should you be considering when it comes to your volunteering screening process? 

At the outset, you need to find out where your volunteer will be working. Are they going to be in a pace that’s quiet and private, or will they be in a busy environment? The key thing is that they are able to volunteer effectively in the place they’ve set up. 

To ensure your volunteer is working effectively, are their any supplies or training required? Ensure that your volunteer has completed their training steps, and can access everything they need to start volunteering; this check makes sure there can be a smooth process into the opportunity, because there’s no stop/starting as a volunteer doesn’t have access to something important. 

Volunteers will be interacting with a number of different people – let them know the basic information on how they should interact. This can help build up a volunteer’s confidence, so they interact with the organisation and those it helps more. 

Make sure that you’re frequently staying in touch with those who virtually volunteer, over email, chat or video call. You can touch base weekly or monthly, building up a relationship that keeps them returning to volunteer. Establishing this relationship is important, volunteers want to feel seen and heard, like they aren’t just on the outskirts of the organisation. 

Volunteer Motivations

You can also match volunteers with other opportunities you think they might be interested in. One way you can do this is through understanding your volunteers motives. VolunteerPro teaches a lot about a set of motivations a volunteer is likely to have, and how they can be applied by volunteer managers. Their motivations are: 

  • Values: Where in which volunteers take something meaningful from the hours they spend volunteering. 
  • Careers: Opportunities open doors for volunteers to advance in their careers or network with likeminded people from their industry. 
  • Social: Volunteers can find themselves in emotional and supportive environments which they can also benefit from. 
  • Enhancement: Volunteering gives leadership development to volunteers and changes their perception of power to some extent. 

Volunteers that are open and motivated are most likely to have more than one goal in mind, rather than running on one single purpose. For some, they might not yet realise what those goals or motivations are, but they want to help in any capacity. 

Think it’s time to invest in volunteer management software?

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!

Page 14 of 34

← 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 1,712 other subscribers.

Contact Details

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén