Age UK Gateshead was one of the very first charities to use Volunteero. Like many charities, Age UK Gateshead have faced an increasing demand for their services such as telephone befriending. The staff were already at capacity in terms of the amount of befriending matches they could safely manage. Below we summarise the key problems they faced:
- Volunteer activity - The simple question of “who is doing what” is not always that simple to answer
- Matching volunteers to tasks - Matching a volunteer to a client involves staff time that they just didn’t have going spare
- Safeguarding - As the capacity increases, oversight can become more difficult
In the first 3 months of working with Volunteero, their volunteers have completed over 500 calls equating to over 350 hours of call time. As a result the Age UK Gateshead staff have seen:
- 4 times increase in volunteer productivity
- 75% increase in the number of monthly active volunteers
- 300 man hours saved across the team
Volunteer Activity
Age UK Gateshead like many charities had many registered volunteers but how many were actually active and helping deliver impact was another question. Unfortunately it was not an easy question to answer without a centralised system and without needing to periodically check in with them.
By moving on to Volunteero, this problem was solved. The platform tracks volunteer activity so at any time charities can see who is active, what they have been doing and their feedback. These are the building blocks of building a productive and impactful volunteering program.
"We really didn't have a great picture of what our volunteers were doing at all times, how our members were doing and where we could improve. Now with Volunteero we are able to see everything in realtime”
Matching volunteers to tasks
With befriending, Age UK Gateshead had previously matched volunteers with clients manually. This would involve running various reports from different systems and then highlighting a potential volunteer to match a client with. Even then often it would take asking a few volunteers before a match could be successfully made. That match had no guarantee of creating a successful ongoing relationship.
Using Volunteero, staff create befriending missions with a short bio of the client. Now the volunteers themselves can decide who to match with. After making initial calls and reports all through the app. Volunteers can then always leave a mission if the match isn’t working and this frees that mission up for another volunteer. All of this happens with limited intervention required from staff. This also meant that the average number of people a volunteer would befriend rose from 1 to 3. Who doesn’t love a 3x increase in capacity and impact!
"We had many volunteers wanting to do more, but we just didn't have the capacity to make it happen while ensuring sufficient oversight and safeguarding for our members. Volunteero means volunteers can claim as many missions as they can handle"
Safeguarding
The more befriending matches, the harder it is to maintain the highest safeguarding standards. Volunteero allows volunteers to flag safeguarding concerns with the press of a button. These can then generate email notifications to the relevant staff members meaning staff can focus on more impactful work and react immediately to any issues raise.
“We now know what volunteers are doing at all times and we are able to get instant notification of any health concerns or actions for us to take”
All of this is great but were the volunteers happy with the new system? Well we will let them do the talking for us.
"The app has made my volunteering much easier, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys helping out in the community"
"The Volunteero app is so simple to use, you don't have to be a tech wizard, which is great"
“I thought it was very easy to use... I have nothing but praise for the simplistic nature of it and the fact that every base was covered"
If you would like to learn how Volunteero can help your volunteering program, please go ahead and book a demo. We would love to hear from you.
