Age UK Reading is an independent local charity. Part of the Age UK Federation they’ve been working in the local community to help older people since 1976 (Formerly as Age Concern Reading). With 20 dedicated staff and over 80 volunteers helping them deliver services and activities for older people in Reading.
1.2 million people in the UK are chronically lonely which can have detrimental effects on mental and physical wellbeing, so services like Age UK Reading’s befriending scheme are essential.
Highlights
- Volunteers onboarded 2 weeks faster
- End-of-month reporting cut from 10 hours to just 30 minutes
- 96% volunteer app engagement, 1000 reports submitted in just 7 months
Challenges faced
- Time-consuming and unnecessary admin
- Management of multiple processes
- Dis-jointed Volunteer onboarding experience
- Difficulties tracking impact and logging of volunteer reporting
Centralising systems
Before Volunteero, Age UK Reading’s Befriending team used a variety of systems and workflows including Excel spreadsheets, Charity Log and individual checklists. The team found this to be extremely admin-heavy and resulted in duplication of information that quickly became outdated if one system was not updated. All of these solutions lacked the ability to engage directly with their volunteers leaving them to establish connections via email and other solutions.
They knew they had to find a dedicated volunteer management solution that would reduce administrative burden and allow them the time to fully connect and engage with their volunteers. In came Volunteero in late 2023 and the rest is history!
Streamlining onboarding
Age UK Reading had grappled with admin-heavy and time-consuming processes when recruiting and onboarding new volunteers. Each new application needed to be logged and have a folder created in SharePoint before their onboarding journey started. Their details were then manually copied from their application forms into multiple spreadsheets. Split across two volunteer coordinators, the team then had to work through individual checklists for each volunteer to ensure everyone had completed the mandatory training, references and checks before they were matched with a befriending client. It’s safe to say that this process was time-consuming and difficult to maintain with The Befriending Co-ordinator reflecting that typically it would take a volunteer around six weeks to be fully onboarded at Age UK Reading.
By implementing Volunteero, the team have been able to make use of our referrals and registration features, allowing a seamless volunteer experience from the point of applying for an opportunity, connecting with volunteers via application tracking and managing workflows with customised process trackers.
“Email traffic to and from volunteers has substantially reduced giving us more time to review and support the business better instead of being buried in spreadsheets and other admin”
The stand-out feature for Age UK Reading has to be Volunteero’s automated reference collection tool. Gone are the days of manually sending off reference requests as Volunteero captures this all seamlessly within the application and even sends off reminders for incomplete reference checks. Across all Volunteero clients it takes on average just 3 days to receive a completed reference using this feature. These time-saving features have cut each onboarding journey by two weeks each.
Matching Volunteers
The Befriending Team previously spent around a day of their working week matching volunteers with a suitable client. Now volunteer availability, interests, motivations and experience is all captured by a customised volunteer application form. Additional information can be gleaned through references and informal interviews, meaning that matching volunteers with a client is done seamlessly as part of the onboarding journey.
“Volunteero has re-imagined my work tremendously, I am no longer buried in admin and can now focus on what I enjoy more which is supporting volunteers and creating a better experience for them”
Age UK Reading assigns and matches all of their befriending relationships within Volunteero and boasts an impressive 96% app engagement from their volunteers.
Improved Reporting
A crucial pain point was volunteer reporting which came into the team in different formats and it was time-consuming to transcribe these into client files and consolidate them into monthly reporting.
Since going live in January 2024, Age UK Reading’s cohort of befriending volunteers have submitted over 1000 reports, all of which log volunteering time and offer a dedicated channel for the volunteers to feedback on the highlights and challenges of their roles. Any pertinent information can then be evaluated and responded to appropriately by the befriending staff team.
“Being able to create bespoke reporting templates has had a positive impact in reporting which has increased hugely as these are easy to complete for our volunteers. The push notification reminders are a nice touch and no doubt helps!”
Instilling safeguarding processes is a vitally important part of any befriending program. Volunteero allows alerts to be triggered from answers in the volunteer reports. This allows volunteers to raise a concern in seconds and we have often found this leads to volunteers feeling more comfortable raising concerns. These alerts can notify the relevant staff members via email and resolution can be logged within Volunteero to maintain a full audit.
“ The Action required alert is a useful feature to have on the dashboard and provides visibility to escalated concerns, these are no longer lost in a sea of emails.”
Any charitable organisation knows the importance of being able to compile insights around the impact of their mission for leadership, trustee boards, funding streams and other stakeholders, this can often be a time-consuming task when data and information is split across various systems. Age UK Reading estimated that this would take them around 10 hours of admin time every month, which thankfully has been drastically reduced to just 30 minutes with Volunteero in place as their primary source of truth.
The Befriending Co-ordinator told us the relief she felt now that all reporting and insights have been centralised into Volunteero.
“ With Volunteero our Insights are available immediately once reports are submitted. I can easily compare trends from one month to the next.”
Befriending volunteers have contributed nearly 1000 hours of volunteering time to their clients this year in Reading, and show no intent of slowing down! The Befriending team intend to continue to make use of Volunteero’s feature base including more dedicated channels in the chat feature.
“Signing up to Volunteero was the best decision we have made last year!”
If your organisation is struggling with managing volunteers, get in touch and book a demo with one of our friendly team today!
