News

Introducing a New Volunteer Management Platform!

About the platform

We are very excited to introduce our new Volunteer Management Platform, through Team Kinetic, supported by Central Swindon North Parish Council and South Swindon Parish Council! We have been working on this for a while, and it is finally time to show you all of our hard work.

This platform was created through Team Kinetic, which is a software to help mobilise, manage, measure and motivate. The aim for this platform is to be used as the place to look for volunteering in Swindon, but in a more streamlined way for both providers and volunteers.

Volunteers can find specific roles for them using the filters through the sites, and providers can manage their volunteers and opportunities as much or as little as they would like.

We are open to feedback on the system as this is brand new, so please contact us if there is anything you would like to mention.

Providers

To be a provider, this means that you are a charity/not-for-profit/voluntary organisation/group that has, or is looking for volunteers. Whether you have 1 volunteer or 100, this platform can help you manage them whilst also looking for more. It also means you have volunteer opportunities for individuals to apply for.

Registration

To register, you will need to visit Voluntary Action Swindon promoting and developing volunteering in your area. A TeamKinetic powered website and click on ‘Register to join our volunteer community’. Once having clicked on this, you will need to find the button which states ‘Register as a provider’. From here, you will be asked a series of questions to create your account.

You will receive an email once your account is created, containing important information regarding the platform and your account, so please keep this safe. From here, you are now registered and ready to start uploading your opportunities!

Creating an opportunity

Creating an opportunity through our platform is very easy, and once logged in can be found under the opportunities heading on the home page. There will be a drop down box when you hover over this, and the option you will need is ‘create opportunity’.

From here, you will be asked to give us a bit of information about the opportunity, which will be seen by volunteers on the platform, so please make sure you add in everything necessary, and pictures too to help identify your organisation!

Pro tip: Add search tags onto your opportunity, especially if it is an opportunity that could be phrased in a few ways, to ensure volunteers find you easily. For example, a litter picking opportunity can have tags such as ‘rubbish’, ‘trash’.

Opportunity badges are great to add to an opportunity also, as these highlight any special features for your opportunity. We currently have 6 different badges, but please get in contact with us if you would like anymore added.

Managing volunteers

Managing volunteers is an amazing feature of this platform, as it helps you track your volunteers hours, engage with them through a chat, and even send them rewards/achievements!

To invite volunteers to the platform, which may be useful if you already have volunteers that you would like added to the system, you will need to find the ‘manage volunteers’ heading on the home page. There will be a drop down box when hovering over this called ‘invite volunteers’.

Here, you will be able to either create an email list, or upload a spreadsheet of emails, whichever is easiest for you. This will send out an email to these volunteers, asking them to register to the platform, which is a very similar process to the provider registration.

To create a volunteer, for example for somebody who struggles with IT, or may not have access to the internet, you can do this also through the ‘manage volunteers’ heading, under ‘create volunteer’.

This will just ask for their email and which group you would like to add them to.

You can also reward your volunteers with achievement badges!

General

For all other features on the platform, we recommend that you have a play around with the system and see what you can do/find. If you have any queries about how to do something, please email volunteeringswindon@vas-swindon.org, or call 01793 538398 and ask for Lily.