RSPCA Chesterfield and North Derbyshire are an independent and self-funded branch of the RSPCA and they work to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome hundreds of animals each year.
As a self funded branch, RSPCA Chesterfield rely heavily on the support of volunteers who donate their time to help animals in need. Volunteer and Operations Coordinator Gracie Muse shares “ We are so privileged to work with such an amazing group of people who give their time for free to help animals in need. Volunteers are crucial to our branch and in fact, we couldn’t do what we do without them.”
Across the organisation, the volunteer team support various areas of their work, including Fundraising, Retail, Maintenance, Animal Care, Cleaning and Administration to name a few.
Gracie and her team long battled with a mostly paper based approach to their volunteer management, they did progress into spreadsheets and a CRM to store data, but they lacked a centralised view of their volunteers and all activities. Managing such a varied team, keeping track of who was doing what, where and when was fraught with issues.
Volunteer onboarding
Gracie and her team previously held all new volunteer applications within a CRM system, these details would then have to be exported into a spreadsheet so she could match volunteers with tasks on her rota. This would typically take her around 30 minutes per application, but since moving to Volunteero Gracie can create a new volunteer profile from an application within Volunteero with just a few clicks. RSPCA Chesterfield have received around 50 new volunteer applications during their time using Volunteero which would equate to around 25 hours of admin time saved, which Gracie can utlise better in other areas of her role.
“With Volunteero, everything is consolidated. We use Volunteero from the very beginning of the volunteer’s experience; to advertise the roles, take applications, get confirmation that they’re okay to volunteer, through to arranging training and inductions; and then once they have become an official volunteer, we use Volunteero for giving tasks for volunteers to complete, communication with volunteers and tracking their time.”
Shifts
Managing a busy site, with a variety of animals in need of volunteer support meant carefully curating a roster of shifts which was time consuming and fractous.
Now Volunteers self manage their time with the shift functions. Everything from the kennels, cattery, retail locations, admin team and content creators have their own shift schedules available within the Volunteero app where volunteers can claim any shifts they want to take on “I love the shift feature. It allows our volunteers to self manage their time and the shifts appear automatically on the calendar, so I can see a full overview of all the volunteering each day”
Where needed Gracie can make use of Volunteero’s instant chat feature to request urgent or last minute support from volunteers.
Chat
Gracie and her team make the most out of volunteero’s in house instant messenger feature, all of the volunteers have a dedicated 1:1 chat with their volunteer co-ordinator where they can raise feedback and discuss tasks. RSPCA Chesterfield have also set up multiple smaller group chats specific to roles within the organisation and a wider annoucment chats. Having access to a feature like this has allowed Gracie and her team to foster greater relationships with their volunteers, something that their previous systems lacked.
“The chat function is fantastic to communicate with our volunteers. It has allowed me to create group chats to send relevant notices to certain groups; like our dog walkers for example when the temperature is expected to be higher than usual“
Badges
Continuing her streak as a Volunteero super-user, Gracie utlisies Volunteero’s badges feature to recognise the contributions that her volunteers give to the organisation. Animal themed badges such as “Top Dog” and “Cool Cat” are awarded to their volunteers when time spent volunteering milestones are reached and can all be automated within the software. Where special mentions are required, Gracie curates unique bagdes that are awarded to volunteers who give their time at special events or go above and beyond in the roles.
“I love awarding badges to our volunteers, and they love receiving them. We’ve been able to get creative with them and they’re a great tool to appreciate and recognise volunteers for their work.”
Volunteer impact
Before Volunteero, RSPCA Chesterfield and North Derbyshire had no means for creating volunteer reports or tracking impact. This is now all automated with Volunteero’s insights section and is a reflection of their customised volunteer report templates.
The team boast an impressive 96% engagement rate with the Volunteero app, which reflects the efforts that Gracie and her team put into creating supportive and rewarding roles for their volunteers. Each and every volunteer that has signed up for a volunteering task with RSPCA Chesterfield and North Derbyshire has made a difference to the welfare of local animals and their impact as a team shines through with a whopping 3 months and 27 days of volunteering time being dedicated to the organisation in 2024.
RSPCA Chesterfield and North Derbyshire were able to roll out Volunteero over the course of four training sessions with the Volunteero team and see the benefits of Volunteero’s customizable feature set within days of going live.
Speaking of her experience of implementing Volunteero, Gracie shared “The team at Volunteero are the most helpful, friendly and generous group of people. They’re always happy to help with even the smallest query. They also provide some really valuable advice and host webinars to help us, as volunteer managers, gain knowledge and improve how we work.”
