What is the best volunteer management software for your nonprofit?

When acknowledging what the best solution is for your organisation, it’s crucial to understand the challenges that face the not for profit sector surrounding volunteering.

With nonprofits working with limited resources, Volunteer Managers are required to achieve more with less. The best volunteer management system is therefore one that frees up your Volunteer Managers’ time by empowering volunteers to take on the responsibility of – to a certain extent – managing themselves with self-serve functionality. This relieves your Volunteer Manager(s) of additional pressure, while freeing up valuable time that can be used to focus on priority areas.

With a market-leading VMS such as Access Assemble, your Volunteer Manager(s) can coordinate the entire volunteer journey by working smarter, not harder.

The best volunteer management system for your organisation should allow your Volunteer Manager(s) to develop an effective volunteer journey that successfully recruits, manages, and retains your volunteers. A suitable VMS should therefore enhance these key areas, while having the flexibility to scale in accordance with your requirements.

The benefits that a suitable VMS provides should cover the following areas:

Swift and safe recruitment

Future-proofing your volunteer recruitment strategy with a VMS enables the swift and safe recruitment of prospective volunteers. Taking a digital approach allows you to streamline your recruitment processes to ensure your Volunteer Manager(s) have a complete view of the onboarding process.

Recruitment-specific features include:

• A recruitment microsite: Which acts as a designated recruitment page to showcase your available roles and provide all the essential information and a link to begin the onboarding process.
• Automated emails and reminders:  Ensuring that Volunteer Managers keep the recruitment process on track.
• Risk management: Ensuring compliance with safeguarding requirements, giving peace of mind.
• A centralised message centre: Promoting applicant-Volunteer Manager collaboration, while ensuring that the former is clear what is expected of them throughout the onboarding process.

Find out more about our volunteer recruitment software

Seamless volunteer management

Embracing technology to manage your volunteers with a VMS provides enhanced communication and collaboration between the volunteer and their respective Volunteer Manager. This helps to support a smooth and simplified volunteer coordination process that ensures volunteers are a fundamental part of your organisation.

Coordination-specific features include:

• Self-serve functionality: That allows volunteers to propose their own shifts, leaving a simple sign-off for their respective Volunteer Manager.
• Task management: Assign relevant tasks to specific volunteers or leave open for your team to choose in the future.
• Reporting & analytics: Measure the impact your volunteers are having and make informed decisions regarding their skillset.
• Central resource hub: A central space where everyone can find valuable resources such as documents, images and videos.

Find out more about our volunteer coordination software

Enhanced volunteer retention

Taking a smarter approach to volunteer retention with the support of volunteer management software can assist you in motivating your volunteers, while recognising their hard work and impact. By taking this approach, it increases the likelihood that your volunteers feel valued, encouraging them to support you over the long term.

Retention-specific features include:

• Direct communication: Use emails, SMS, internal messaging, and forums to share appreciation to volunteers, while encouraging peer-to-peer learning and networking.
• Media content sharing: Share relevant organisation and sector news through integrated news articles and social media content.
• Interactive map: An engaging visual overview of volunteer activity that your volunteers can get involved with.

Find out more about our volunteer retention software

The best volunteer management system for your organisation should offer a set of specialist features that support positive experiences for both your Volunteer Manager(s) and prospective volunteers. By providing a streamlined approach that is simple to use, it ensures everyone is consistently kept in the loop, saving valuable time and maintaining efficiency across the board.

Access Assemble provides key features that include the following:

User-friendly interface

A user-friendly interface is essential to hitting the ground running from the outset. For example, Access Assemble is an out-the-box piece of software that includes everything you require including:

• A visually appealing design
• Simple data entry
• Intuitive navigation

And with minimal training, you’ll be able to manage the system without the support of an external web developer!

Book your product tour of Access Assemble

Empowering self-serve functionality

Self-serve functionality is a game changer for both your Volunteer Manager(s) and volunteers. This is especially the case where rota management is concerned. By empowering the latter to submit their own shift patterns, it not only provides them with a sense of responsibility, but also frees up valuable time for your Volunteer Managers.

More importantly, self-serve functionality encourages collaboration. With both parties gaining a clear view of how many volunteers are attending each shift, informed decisions can be made regarding where a volunteer’s time is best spent.

Time-saving automation

Automation is at the core of Access Assemble. With our automated functionality, it ensures that both Volunteer Managers and volunteers complete crucial tasks, while saving valuable time in the process.

Our automated emails and reminders can be sent out to support:

• Volunteer recruitment and onboarding
• Scheduling and shift management
• Communication and engagement
• Event attendance and time tracking
• Volunteer recognition and retention
• Reporting and compliance
• And much more!

Robust reporting and analytics

Understanding your volunteers is paramount when making informed decisions that impact your organisation. Reporting and analytics functionality allows you to track key metrics and analyse volunteer impact, while also being able to generate insightful reports based on this data.

What’s more, Access Assemble was built with diversity at its core. With our flexible solution, you can retrieve the desired diversity and inclusion information, including setting up additional custom questions to suit your organisation’s needs. Most importantly, you can manage and report on this data with multiple statistical reports built in that can drill into information dating back to 2016.

Find out more about our diversity and inclusion feature

Comprehensive communication tools

With Access Assemble, you can regularly communicate with your volunteers to ensure they are informed and enthusiastic about your organisation. Rather than building time-consuming, outdated email newsletters, we allow you to share news articles that provide up-to-the-minute news that is available for all volunteers or specific role holders.

Encourage your Volunteer Manager(s) to reach out to your volunteers to ensure they feel supported at all times via:

• Internal message centre
• Direct emails
• Engaging news articles

Find out more about our communication feature

Flexible integrations

Are you looking to integrate with other third party platforms? No problem! Access Assemble is built on an API-first integration webhook, allowing it to exchange data and align with your chosen platforms more closely.
Our approach means that the software can technically integrate with any third-party platform, with the most common types including:

• Charity CRMs
• E-learning
• Customer service solution

Find out more about Access Assemble’s integration capability

The best volunteer management software for your organisation should offer the flexibility of scaling to your requirements. For this reason, the software provider should offer you several pricing packages, enabling you to choose the option that is most suitable for you.

With Access Assemble, our pricing packages are dependent on how many volunteers and Volunteer Managers will be required to use the system. Each package consists of their own niche features to support organisations of their respective size.

These consist of the following: 

A piece of software that could be considered as being the best volunteer management system should support a tangible improvement on an organisation. For example, since our customers have invested in Access Assemble, they have been able to experience a significant return on investment (ROI). The metrics that are especially prevalent are increased profit, increased number of volunteers recruited, and valuable time saved.

"I would absolutely recommend Access Assemble, our applications have increased, and onboarding is much quicker and more efficient. It also gives you a great overview of your volunteering programme.”

Stephanie Robey, Volunteering and Employability Manager - Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust

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“The biggest improvement is easily the streamlining of our volunteer recruitment. Being able to follow some simple steps to create and publish a recruitment advert, with the peace of mind that this will take applicants all the way through the recruitment journey, is revolutionary.”

Laura Clark, Head of Volunteering - National Autistic Society

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“Assemble has had a huge impact on the RSPCA as an organisation and this is largely down to us making use of the full breadth of the software, but if I had to pick a must-have feature, I really couldn't do without the recruitment tools - they are worth their weight in gold! It just makes recruitment so much easier and with a standardised approach across the Society, our Volunteer Coordinators love it too. The simplicity of being able to generate opportunities independently, but with full access to our role profiles and the comfort that nothing will get missed throughout the application process, has been game changing.”

Brian Reeves, Head of Volunteer Experience - RSPCA

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Built with the support of your Volunteer Manager(s) firmly in mind, Access Assemble is the best volunteer management software as it provides an impressive number of great features and benefits to take your volunteer management processes to the next level.

Are you ready to enquire about our market-leading volunteer management software? Speak to a member of our team today.