Tag: volunteering Page 10 of 19

Will Volunteering Come Out Stronger After Covid?

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On 2nd September 2021

In COVID-19, News & Views

Coronavirus has introduced so many new challenges for communities over the past 18 months, but it’s also presented foundations to build a stronger community. Moving out of the pandemic means the focus is now on building the relationships between volunteers and organisations; along with renewing that drive to volunteer in the first place. This could mean we have to rethink the roles within volunteering moving forward.

Remote Volunteering? 

The use of remote volunteering over the pandemic has been phenomenal in helping those who’ve really needed it. Due to this, there is a larger market for this kind of volunteering, as so many people have volunteered in this way lately. In order for virtual volunteering to continue, volunteers must be attracted to your organisation’s missions as the social aspect towards volunteering has been stripped back. Communicating that their small contribution will make a difference will keep them involved and feeling positive for helping the community.

The pandemic has also increased the amount of online recruitment. So how have organisations found and kept in touch with their volunteers? It feels inevitable that recruiting volunteers online is something that will carry on far into the future. For organisations, their next steps may be to solidify their presence online. This is where a volunteer management system would come in handy; with TeamKinetic you can recruit more volunteers than ever before, and have constant contact to keep them informed. 

Flexibility…

To create a more accessible volunteering route, there needs to be flexibility. For those who cannot commit to certain dates and times: flexibility allows for no obligation to return. It also means that volunteers can now access the risks beforehand (because they haven’t committed to a continuous role). Despite saying we’re coming out of the pandemic, people still have to assess the risks before going out (coronavirus included)! While it becomes more of a challenge for organisations to be flexible, breaking down roles into smaller opportunities is a way to include more flexibility.

Looking towards the future

There is a feeling that volunteering has taken a strong leap forward over the past 18 months. There is a renewed purpose to help those who really need it: we’re more aware of our communities’ vulnerabilities. Volunteering has increased massively over the pandemic and as a result we have to focus on preserving the positive changes that we have seen.

Interested in TeamKinetic? 

Why not come and try our system for free! You can start a free trial of TeamKinetic on our website. This will let you check out all our features for 30 days. If you like what you see, contact us to book a demo and see how we can help your organisation manage your volunteers.

You can also follow our social media pages: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Volunteering made safe with TeamKinetic

By

On 25th August 2021

In TeamKinetic Features

TeamKinetic are always here to make sure their clients and any volunteers are protected. We ensure the highest security as we know many organisations may work with young and vulnerable people. TeamKinetic have created a system which allows for safe volunteering and volunteer management. Take a look for yourself below.

Criminal Checks

TeamKinetic understand that many organisations work with young and vulnerable people, so we know that criminal checks need to be completed before volunteers are accepted. With our system you can fully customise volunteer registrations by allowing criminal checks before they can be accepted. 

If you only have specific opportunities which need these criminal checks you can customise the opportunity to do these checks when a volunteer joins. This makes the process easier for you when criminal checks need to be done on your volunteers. 

Roles

Roles have been created to allow organisations to enable a prescribed on-boarding process for volunteers. Roles are a great feature for organisations that have regular opportunities that are undertaken under the same set of compliance, training, or on-boarding rules.

Community Tasks

Community tasks were set up in response to the COVID-19 crisis. They are small tasks designed to provide community support to people who are unable to leave their homes. These tasks differ from the usual volunteer opportunities where the opportunities might have set hours etc… With community tasks it is usually one volunteer helping someone in the community who cannot go shopping, or pick up their medication and so on.

These tasks are secure that whenever a volunteer signs up for a task they must be full approved before they can get any personal details of the task. Any personal information will be hidden and only available to the task manager until a volunteer is approved for the task.

Community tasks have been able to help many during the pandemic and have allowed communities to provide support for one another in a safe environment. Don’t believe us, read our case study from COVID-19 Kenilworth Support who have been using our community tasks since the beginning of the pandemic. 

Accreditation System

TeamKinetic created an accreditation system for the Rugby Super League Grand Final in 2019 and more recently have set up the same system again for the Rugby League this year.

Mainly this is used for major events and sporting events and will allow for the safe management of any person at the venue on the day. The system records the identity and health checks of every personnel. They can then be given badges which include the zones they can and cannot enter to ensure security in each zone. 

It is a great piece of software which helps to keep venues secure and personnel who arrive will have to show there ID to ensure entry. 

Want to Try for FREE?

Why not come and try our system for free! You can try out all of the above and so much more which will help safely organise and manage volunteers. You can also get in touch with us via our website or call on 0161 914 5757. 

Visit our social media pages to find out more information about TeamKinetic and some tips on how to use the software. You can find us on: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. 

How To Spend Your Underspend

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On 18th August 2021

In TeamKinetic Features

You might find at this point of the year, there’s an excess budget underspend you need to decide what to do with. You might be wondering, what should I do with it? Should I spend it? Save it? Invest it? Well, we are here to inspire you with different ways you can use your underspend to make the most out of your TeamKinetic system and to invest back into your volunteers…

1) Purchase SMS Text Messages

The perfect way to communicate with your volunteers, alongside emails of course, is text messaging. One of our volunteer managers, Claire from Halton & St Helens, even said ‘between texts and emails, we can have more of an impact in communicating straight away with volunteers’.

In fact, we even did a full blog on the benefits of using SMS text messages, but, to summarise:

  • Quicker and more efficient communication 
  • A easy way to identify volunteers
  • A way to recruit any volunteers if a volunteer drops out at the last second
  • A proactive way to get feedback from volunteers
  • A way to send nice ‘thank you’ messages to your volunteers to show your appreciation for their hard work
  • An easy way to cancel an event if disaster strikes ( e.g the unpredictable UK weather)

And to make it even easier for you, you can watch a video on how to buy SMS text messages through our system following the hyperlink here. 

2) Training

You can always save your money and keep your eyes peeled for some TeamKinetic training. We have recently started extra training showing you how to set up and customise your site and how to use your TeamKinetic site to manage your volunteers. This training is perfect for any admin as a refresher, or for new admins who need to learn the ropes!

3) Upgrade Your Plan

Whether you are on the Free plan or the Advanced Plan, there is still a bigger and better plan for you!

The Advanced plan offers you 1 Admin user, your own sub-domain, support tickets answered in 24 hours, online workbooks teaching admins the core features, the use of the TeamKinetic IOS and Android native app, 100 MB document hub storage and more.

The Advanced + plan offers up to 3 Admin users, implementation support of 2.5 hours, telephone support, online training, your own sub-domain, support tickets answered in 24 hours, pre-recorded training materials, the use of the TeamKinetic app, 1GB document hub storage and more.

The Enterprize plan, our biggest plan, offers unlimited admins (1 admin user included), detailed consultancy and fully supported implementation manager,  telephone support, support chat, online training, your own custom URL, access to the TeamKinetic app, access to the TeamKinetic customer steering group, access to live online training events, unlimited document hub storage, community tasks and many more.

To find out more about upgrading your plan, email chris@teamkinetic.co.uk.

What Are You Waiting For?

You have so many options of how you can spend your underspend, what are you waiting for? Are you going to upgrade your plan? Purchase extra training? Or Purchase some handy SMS texts? Something else? Whichever you choose, you will be spending your money wisely and investing in your volunteers. That sounds like a win to me!

Can Local Authorities afford to not have Volunteer Management Software?

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On 11th August 2021

In Local Authority

Local authorities undeniably manage many volunteers, am I right?

Well, statistics show that approximately 71% of people volunteered at least once in 2019 and many of these people volunteer through their local government or organisations closely linked.  

To make it even harder for those who manage and track volunteers in the public sector, these volunteers fall into many different roles in very separate parts of your organisation. Volunteers pop up in libraries, galleries, museums, parks, neighbourhoods, adult social care, sports development, environment, public health, community engagement and more. To say it’s a complicated picture is to massively understate the difficulties we know you face. 

Some of the questions we know you get asked: 

  • Is it even possible to safely support and govern volunteers across the whole organisation? 
  • How do you report on volunteering as a council? 
  • What’s it worth to us as an organisation, what’s the business case?  

Those in charge of managing services for the council and those managing volunteers in those services undoubtedly have a lot on their hands. But if the pandemic has highlighted anything over the past 18 months, it’s the essential role volunteers can play. We have seen massive public support to volunteer during these unprecedented times. In fact, the volumes of people who wanted to volunteer were overwhelming for many organisations as they did not have the infrastructure in place to cope with such an influx of new volunteers.

On top of all these complications, Local Government needs to work hand in hand with local voluntary sector partners to ensure a coherent approach to volunteering across their communities. This is a dynamic and complicated problem and we think our volunteer management software would certainly help. 

What We Can Offer You…

1. Your Own Customisable Application

Yes, you read that right, with us you get to create a fully customisable, and accessible application to suit your organisation’s needs, check out the example below. You can develop an identifiable brand around your amazing volunteers and the work they do. You can set standards and rules as to what opportunities are seen via your site. You can track activity by volunteer, group, venue, by the department or service area. You can use some of our advanced mapping tools to track where volunteers are making a difference and what impact they are making at a ward-by-ward level. We provide you with the tools to empower your communities to thrive.

2. Easily Create New Opportunities 

Our software enables you to create your volunteer opportunities in minutes. Not only can you create singular opportunities, but you can also calendar schedule your opportunities on a weekly or monthly basis.  

It is also easier for volunteers to sign up for opportunities. With TeamKinetic available as both a native app and as a responsive design, it allows volunteers to easily access all opportunities from whichever device they choose. They can also easily filter their opportunities based upon what they are interested in i.e. museum volunteering.

We also provide ‘how-to’ videos to make it even easier for you!

That is why our software also provides you with customisable Key Performance Indicators on your volunteers. This reporting enables you to tell the story of your volunteers achievements and impact, and it lets you make informed decisions about where and who to invest in and what type of return you will get on that investment.

These reports include all the vital information you need, including:

  • Pie charts on ethnicity, employment status, gender, and age of volunteers.
  • The geographical spread of volunteers and opportunities.
  • Web usage.
  • Number of hours logged.
  • Volunteer registrations (on a day to day basis.)
  • The number of opportunities available. 

From this, you can understand more about who volunteers most under different areas (i.e. museums, parks, libraries etc). This allows you to understand which area of volunteering is more popular to certain ages, genders and more…

 

4. Efficiently Communicate With Your Volunteers

With us, communication with volunteers has never been easier. No longer do you have to spend your time fumbling through spreadsheets and documents to find your volunteer contact information. You can now email or text all (or just one) of your volunteers with one click. And, to make it even better, you can send text messages scheduled for a certain time, potentially to remind volunteers about their opportunities and improve attendance.

5. Offer Rewards And Incentives

You can encourage and engage your volunteers like never before, all from using TeamKinetic. You have to option to reward volunteers with achievement badges, hour trades, and award badges; all of which are fully customisable. You can also create your very own achievement badges for your volunteers too. You can then provide volunteers with feedback, and the volunteers can give feedback on the opportunities.

So, What Are You Waiting For?

For as little as £19 a month you can have all of this and more. Perfect for managing all your volunteers in libraries, galleries, museums, parks, and everywhere else! 

Book your demo tour today by emailing chris@teamkinetic.co.uk or start your free trial here.

As simple as that. 

The Whitworth Gallery, in partnership with TeamKinetic

By

On 4th August 2021

In Case Study, Heritage & Culture, News & Views

At the start of 2020, The Whitworth made the leap to take on TeamKinetic as their volunteer management software provider. They made this change just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning working from home gave them the perfect opportunity to understand and implement the system.

The Whitworth Gallery is described as historic, contemporary, academic, and playful. Founded in 1889, the first English gallery in a park has been transformed by a £15 million development in 2015. As part of their volunteer programme, volunteers are able to contribute across the gallery. This includes supporting artists, textile care, art gardening, digitising their collection, cataloguing their library, assisting in the delivery of workshops, and much more.

Fiona Cariss, volunteer manager at The Whitworth says,

“We chose TeamKinetic as they’re a local organisation to our gallery and already supply the volunteer system for Manchester City Councils Volunteering opportunities.

The Whitworth is in partnership with Manchester Art Gallery, along with Manchester Museum too, so it means in the future we could look at sharing our volunteers and opportunities across the partnership through the system.

In a way the past 18 months has been a perfect time to implement the new system with TeamKinetic, as we’ve managed to test it with our volunteers whilst everyone has been at home-  it helped us reach out further to our locality making it easier for them to register their interest and hear about the volunteering opportunities straight away. The data and reporting aspects of the system has and will definitely help in combining everything we need when we’re evaluating the programme and reporting back to various funders.

So far all our volunteers have found it easy to register and it’s a very usable system, in which you get a lot of support from TeamKinetic too. The Whitworth Volunteer Programme is looking forward to working with TeamKinetic further in the future when we have more volunteering opportunities coming up.”

Find Out More…

If you’d like to volunteer with the Whitworth, you can check out their opportunities here.

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

Celebrities That Do Great Charity Work…Part Two

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On 28th July 2021

In Charity, News & Views

In our last ‘Celebrities That Do Good Charity Work‘ blog, we only mentioned a few celebrities that do charitable work. But there were (and are) so many more we wanted to let you know about. So here you have it, a part two showcasing celebrities that use their time and money towards charitable causes. And maybe, this might encourage you to take up some volunteering opportunities…. 

Ashton Kutcher

Ashton Kutcher also donated $4 million to Ellen Degeneres’ Wildlife Fund.
  • Alongside Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher founded Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children. The charity works mainly to address the role of technology in the sexual exploitation of children. So far the organisation has helped to identify over 20,000 children in danger since 2014.
    Furthermore, their Spotlight feature (a data-analytics program) has assisted the authorities, reducing agents’ investigation time by over 55% in 2020. 
  • Ashton also helped in the set up of The Native Fund. The foundation is committed to raising funds and organising volunteer efforts to assist the people and communities of Iowa in times of need.
  • In April 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis started making their own wine for charity! It’s called ‘Quarantine Pinot Noir’ and 100% of the profits go towards charities providing Covid-19 relief.

Taylor Swift

Swift donated $4 million to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville for the education centre – their biggest ever donation!

Taylor Swift is known for her deeply personal lyrical storytelling, but between all that love and heartache she finds time to give to causes that mean a lot to her personally and to her fans. 

  • In 2007, she launched a campaign called Delete Online Predators to fight internet crime against children.
  • She held a “Speak Now Help Now” benefit concert in 2011 for victims of tornadoes in the United States Southeast region. The concert raised more than $750,000. 
  • During Kesha’s much publicised legal battle with producer DJ Luke, she supported her fellow artist by giving $250,000 to help pay her legal fees. After this, she faced her own legal battle against David Mueller for sexual harassment in 2017. She won the case for a statement $1 and vowed to help organisations that aid victims of sexual harassment/assault. She has done so, making “generous” donations to both the Joyful Heart Foundation (for survivors of sexual assault) and RAINN (an anti-sexual assault organization).
  • She also gives back to her fans directly, supporting them in a number of ways. For example, she donated $50,000 to a fan battling cancer on GoFundMe, helping pay her medical bills.

Jackie Chan

Many of us know Jackie Chan for his work as an actor, as a stuntman, a producer, film director, or even for his martial arts. But we can now add ‘big charity giver’ to his list of achievements…

  • In 1988, he founded the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation. A foundation that aides Hong Kong’s residents by offering scholarships, medical services, and assisting in natural disasters and illnesses. 
  • Then in 2002, he founded The Dragon Heart Foundation. This foundation is driven to fulfil the needs of the less fortunate populations in China.
  • Jackie Chan has also stated that he plans to leave his estimated $370 million fortune to charity, rather than his son, Jaycee.

Feel inspired?

Are you feeling more inspired thanks to our quick rundown of charitable superstars? Check out our website as a starting point to see the clients we work with, and what new volunteering opportunities they have available for you today.

How to get your volunteers to log hours

By

On 19th July 2021

In News & Views, TeamKinetic Features, Volunteer Management

Volunteering at its core is an entirely selfless activity completed by people with no expectation of acknowledgement. Despite this, we believe volunteers deserve to be rewarded for their hard work. But how do you do this without them logging hours? 

Why is logging hours so important?

In short, data. This data is key to your organisation to:

  • Measure success. Logged hours can represent the amount of work your volunteers are doing for their community or particular cause. 
  • Track your audience. Knowing which volunteers are continually volunteering and which ones aren’t could be incredibly insightful. Is there a particular demographic volunteering more than others? Is there a demographic that is hard to retain? This data could uncover aspects that need to change, leading onto our next point…
  • Make improvements. No volunteering programmes are perfect, but the best ones regularly review and make changes to improve. If there’s a particular demographic that isn’t returning, why?

So how do I persuade volunteers to log their hours?

  • Show them how easy it is. Showing volunteers how quickly they can log hours might help them 
  • Incentivise! Offering rewards can be a great way to get volunteers logging their hours. However, the best way to do this is to offer low-value rewards as often as possible. 
  • Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Imagine this: you offer one big prize (e.g. a hoodie), after a volunteer has logged 100 hours. They log hours as a way of reaching that prize, but once they reach those 100 hours they lose motivation to log future hours – or worse, return at all. (Extrinsic motivation)
    However, if you offer small rewards such as thank you messages they will be consistently motivated by the positive way the act makes them feel. (Intrinsic motivation)

Intrinsic motivation is all about making your volunteers continually feel good about the work they’re doing and the difference they’re making, rather than working towards one particular reward. 

So how do you keep up this motivation? Giving them nice feedback is a great place to start! This will show how much you value them and will mean more to them than you may think. 

Utilising TeamKinetic to Incentivise Volunteers

Leaving Feedback

TeamKinetic allows you to leave feedback when logging a volunteer’s hours. If you forget or don’t have time to personally thank your volunteer at the end of their session, this section gives you the chance to do so. It also lets the volunteer log their own hours and leave feedback about the opportunity they joined.

Ask anyone who has volunteered – receiving feedback is a great feeling and can push volunteers to return and continue volunteering for you.

Achievement Badges

This incentive is a great way to push your volunteers to log more hours. Once a volunteer logs their hours, they will add together to create their total volunteer hours. A small way to help increase volunteers’ hours is to have achievement badges when they reach certain hour milestones.

TeamKinetic has achievement badges automatically built into the system. The achievement badge pictures and names can be customised. These badges are a great way to incentivise volunteers and get them to keep on volunteering so they can reach the next milestone.

Custom Badges

Have you ever thought about starting a ‘volunteer of the month’ award? To give your volunteers an extra incentive to volunteer more or make them feel appreciated? Yes? Keep reading, you may like what you see…

TeamKinetic allows you to create custom award badges for your volunteers. These could be ‘volunteer of the month’ or ‘volunteer of the year’. They can be absolutely anything you want and look however you want, with the fully customisable option! Once you have assigned the award to a volunteer, they will receive an email with the award in it to congratulate them. Again, this recognises the efforts your volunteers put in, helping you to retain more volunteers and hopefully gain more.

Logging hours with TeamKinetic

Logging hours with TeamKinetic is easy – as it should be on any volunteer management system. See below for the full process laid out in less than 25 seconds!

And if that’s not clear enough you can check out our full tutorial videos on logging hours as an opportunity provider and logging hours as a volunteer! 

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!

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.

Training Module: Setup and Configuration

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On 5th February 2021

In TeamKinetic Features, Training

TeamKinetic is a powerful volunteer management tool with a huge amount of functionality to suit every type of organisation. The key to maximising its impact on your volunteer programme is the configuration options. This training session covers a basic introduction to the different types of users and how to set up your TeamKinetic system to work specifically with your organisation. Do you want external organisations to be inducted before they can create opportunities? Do you want external organisations to be able to register at all? All these types of settings will be explained in detail during this extensive configuration training session.

Who Should Attend?

Either new administrators OR existing administrators who would like a full refresher on the configuration options available within TeamKinetic.

What does it cover?

Introduction

  • Key benefits
  • User types explained

First Steps

  • Organisation profile page
  • Changing the About Us page and T&Cs
  • Linking to social media accounts
  • Customising the look and feel of your site
  • Customising registration & volunteer profile fields
  • Configuring opportunities
  • Setting up electronic reference Forms

Users and Administrators

  • Configuring user access to your system
  • About trusted providers
  • Creating admin accounts

Communication and Information

  • Auto SMS & email communications
  • Customising emails
  • Document hub (Adding files for access by other users)

Reporting and Data

  • Setting up custom geographical areas for reporting
  • APIs and Widgets
  • Customising achievement badges & award badges

Other general settings

All the other settings that are available and what they mean for your organisation and programme.

Questions and Workshops

Any questions will be answered and workshopped in the final segment, helping you to apply what you have learnt to your own unique programme.

How do I sign up?

You can access this training from your HELP > EXTRA TRAINING menu. Purchase the number of credits you need and then click on the BOOK button and select your dates.

You can check the latest training dates from within your system. Just go to ‘Help & Support’ → ‘Extra Training’

Save Your Mutual Aid Groups!

By

On 25th January 2021

In Local Authority

Lockdown 3! How did we get here? 

Flashback to 10 months ago…

March 23rd 2020, Boris Johnson addressed the nation to declare the first Lockdown in the UK. At this moment many people, myself included, believed this lockdown would only last a few weeks and we would be back to normal before we know it. Little did we know, 10 months later we would be 3 weeks into our 3rd Lockdown. 

The Evolution of Lockdowns

Let’s start from the beginning. Lockdown 1 begins on the 23rd March. People are told not to go to work and others are told to start shielding. Here begins the volunteering boom! The vulnerable are having to shield to protect themselves from the virus but are unable to go shopping, collect prescriptions or get any other essentials. This is where the efforts of locals began to show, people took charge creating mutual aid groups to protect and help the shielding. Irene Cree from Glasgow Life agreed that ”Mutual aid groups reacted really quickly, in many respects much quicker than the public sector did.” They reacted so quick in fact that according to the report Communities Vs Coronavirus: The Rise of Mutual Aid, in July it was recorded 4,000 of these groups were formed since the beginning of the pandemic, with as many as three million participants.

The solidarity of our country showed the support we had for one another, but when another lockdown hit us in the midst of winter, there were the initial signs of burnout to be seen!

Lockdown 2 was hard, a month of rain and cold in the lead up to the busiest time of the year. This lockdown I know for myself was a struggle and like many, the urge to volunteer was decreasing. Mutual aid groups were still doing their thing, but with limited support from stake holders like local authorities, their efforts were struggling.  It cetrianly felt harder to protect those they had up to this point.

Technology has played a signifcant role and for some mutual said groups has been a main ingredient to their success in the pandemic, however many mutual aid groups were trapped in a non-digital hell hole trying to manage all of their volunteers and tasks from spreadsheets and whats app. 

Fast forward to today and we are 3 weeks into lockdown 3. Fatigue is very real and obvious and we can only image how hard it must be for mutual aid groups this time round.

Technology still offers real opportunity for many mutual aid groups. Many have survived through the strength of will and chacter of their main participants but to keep on going they will need to use technology to ensure the organisational resliance and data security are in place to enable them to carry on. They also need lots of support from their local stakeholders in health, local government and the community if they are  to keep this community solidarity going. 

Can you Help Mutual Aid Groups?

So, how can you help? Back in August 2020 we spoke with Nivvi Morales, a member of COVID-19 Kenilworth Support, about their time using TeamKinetic to manage their volunteers. Their need for “a volunteer management system where we could communicate efficiently, assign tasks, track tasks, and keep our data safe.” was met, as we were able to provide the support and security they required. 

But for many they do not have the experiance, skill set or knowledge to adopt a digital system to keep their data secure and volunteers enagaged.  ‘Local authorities can help make mutual aid a positive legacy of COVID-19‘ offers some useful advice:

“Mutual aid groups are based on volunteers acting on their own free will. Local authorities must encourage and promote mutual aid groups for what they are – the social capital of a neighbourhood. A strategy that promotes mutual aid should be light touch, work with existing community partners, and focus on facilitating rather than directing activity. Mutual aid groups should always retain the ability to decide what they do and how they work.”

Being able to support these groups is crucial and a way to do this is through technical guidance. Helping them find a secure and manageable system will keep them in control of their volunteers and opportunityies and tasks whilst ensuring individuals feel safe, valued and enaged.

TeamKinetic

Improves communication, creates easy reports automatically, keeps sensitive data secure, options for DBS checks and provides more opportunities to recognise volunteers’ efforts. Sound like the ideal features these groups need? Well, we have you covered. TeamKinetic allows for all of these and can provide impeccable support as seen with COVID-19 Kenilworth support “the ability to raise a ticket if they had an issue with the system, which would then be supported straight away.”

Our community task function was specifically designed with mutual aid groups in mind. These allow for volunteers to pick up tasks such as, picking up shopping, collecting prescriptions and delivering these to the shielding person. Claire Redford-Kerr from St Helens and Halton VCA has spoke about how they have used the the community tasks dashboard and how “our volunteers [can] very quickly pick up tasks on there [and] they can chat to one another on there. So being able to text them or email them as a group or a specific cohort of volunteers, it’s really important for us and helps us to manage the way, when and who gets involved.”

If you would like more information about our system please visit our website or call on 0161 914 5757. You can also set up a 30 day free trial to test out all of our features!

Stay Safe!

 

Managing Coronavirus Vaccine Volunteers

By

On 20th January 2021

In COVID-19

Three types of coronavirus vaccine (Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna), have been approved in the UK for use on the NHS.

So far, over 3,639,309 people have been vaccinated in the UK. Additionally to this, the government have planned to have every over 18 UK citizen vaccinated by this Autumn. But until then, the government plan to have 15 million vulnerable people vaccinated by mid February. And in November it was realised the NHS would need 30,000 volunteers to help deliver the programme.

After speaking to our clients, it came to our attention that many will be simply using spreadsheets to managing their volunteers for the coronavirus vaccine, unaware of the software they could be using to help. This is where TeamKinetic can help. We offer an easy to use online system that makes managing your volunteers safe and easier.

How can we help? 

Saving Time…

When using spreadsheets to find volunteers and their contact information, it can take a lot of scrolling….and time. With TeamKinetic, it couldn’t be simpler. Our system allows you to search for a volunteer and find all their information in just a few clicks. Easy right? You can even email or text them or even set up rotas straight from the app; saving you time.

Easy Access…

Volunteers have access to their own profile in your TeamKinetic powered app. Self-service means less work for you, so if they forget any details about where they need to be and what time, they can simply log in to their profile and everything will be there with easy access. This all supported by automatic reminders about their shifts or any other requirements you may have. Saving you loads of time to support those who need a little more help.

Safety First…

Best yet, TeamKinetic is fully protected and encrypted with the most up to date security. We adhere to all GDPR regulations so you don’t need to worry about it.  Excel Spreadsheets are unsafe and are easily deleted and corrupted, what happens if your data is then stolen? TeamKinetic ensures your personal data is safe and secure and meets all legal requirements.

Hear It From Someone Else…

We recently spoke to one of our clients, Claire from Halton & St Helens Volunteer Centre. We spoke to Claire about how TeamKinetic has helped them since the start of the pandemic, to managing volunteers at their vaccination centre at St Helen’s Ruby Stadium. Here’s what she had to say about our recruitment process and communication tools…

‘I have found that the TeamKinetic support they give and app they have built to be the best way to recruit our pandemic volunteers. Since the covid-19 pandemic, it’s been a godsend really. We have noticed that other organisations have not had the ability to recruit like we can, as quickly and safely, as they don’t have this kind of support.

We have had 1500 volunteers register since the beginning of the pandemic as it is easy to get volunteers to register.

The way that TeamKinetic excels for me is the communication tools, the ability to get in touch with volunteers very quickly. We are an avid user of the community task dashboard, our volunteers very quickly pick up tasks on there, and they can chat to one another on there. So being able to text them or email them as a group or a specific cohort of volunteers is really important for us, and helps us to manage the way, when and who gets involved.

When we knew we had to ramp up for the Vaccine, it was straightforward to promote, recruit, track training and deploy the volunteers as all the volunteers and the managment tools were right there in the app’

The Community Action Network that covers Bournemouth, Dorset and Pool, started using TeamKinetic in the break between Christmas and New Year and went live with over 1200 volunteers on the 7th of January. TeamKinetic have specialised in rapid deployment so you can get on with focusing on the important job of getting people vaccinated.

Join The TeamKinetic Family Today…

To find out more about TeamKinetic, feel free to call us on 0161 914 5757 or email our Director of Sales at chris@teamkinetic.co.uk. 

Alternatively, take a look at our website to find out more and start your FREE trial today! Or, read through our social media pages for more tips and tricks – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. 

We hope you enjoy our system!

 

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