Access Assemble
Community feedback: A guide to managing volunteers effectively
Once you’ve attracted and onboarded your volunteers, the next challenge is to coordinate them. With your Volunteer Manager(s) working with limited time, managing volunteers effectively is essential to ensuring that they are able to work smarter, not harder.
In the second of our ‘Nonprofit Sector Feedback’ trilogy, we’ll be focusing on the day-to-day management of your volunteers and how volunteer management software (VMS) can support your Volunteer Manager(s) to do this effectively. We will cover:
- How volunteer management software can support managing volunteers effectively
- The specific areas that the software can improve
- Feedback from sector professionals
How to support managing volunteers effectively with a VMS
Volunteer management has evolved – and continues to do so. With Volunteer Managers looking to make more of an impact with less resources, taking a digital approach to enhance their volunteer management processes can be supported with a suitable VMS. Freeing up valuable time for your Volunteer Manager(s), a VMS facilitates smarter volunteer coordination by offering niche features including:
- An interactive rota where volunteers can manage their own shifts
- A powerful reports dashboard that shows impact and enables informed decisions
- A central hub where volunteers can access a library of key resources
- A message centre that ensures a close Volunteer Manager-volunteer rapport
- An event management feature that reduces stress and increases participants
In the market for a VMS? Gain sign-off with a strong business case!
Community feedback: how Access Assemble supports managing volunteers effectively
In this section, we highlight 5 ways a VMS can improve your organisation’s volunteer coordination. Wondering how it would work for you? A good VMS delivers measurable results, which is why we’ve asked our customers to share their insights and experiences of using Access Assemble.
Empower your volunteers with self-serve management
Creating an environment of accountability can empower your volunteers to – a certain extent – manage themselves. This is especially the case with our rota management feature, where volunteers can actively see where volunteer participation is required and book themselves into the allocated time slot. Self-serve management therefore:
- Takes pressure off Volunteer Managers and frees up valuable time
- Provides volunteers with a sense of accountability
- Ensures tasks and processes are completed swiftly
What our customers are saying
Volunteers are at the core of the National Autistic Society. Prior to investing in a VMS, their volunteers were unable to manage their day-to-day activities via an app, significantly slowing down the volunteer management process.
“Finally, it appealed to the needs of our volunteers in the features and functionality it offered. We liked how straight forward and user friendly it seemed and how our volunteers could use the app to keep up to date and manage their volunteering.”
Laura Clark, Volunteering Manager - National Autistic Society
Hear more from National Autistic Society
Track volunteer impact
Getting a clear idea of your volunteers’ impact is paramount to making informed decisions regarding how best to manage them. With a suitable VMS, you will be able to find out key information regarding your volunteers, such as the number of hours each volunteer has provided. This mean you can:
- Decide what tasks are best ascribed to certain volunteers
- Decide whether a volunteer has provided the average number of hours
- Make informed decisions around how to get more of an impact from your volunteers
What our customers are saying
Dorothy House Hospice chose Access Assemble for its user-friendly tools, and it delivered. Thanks to Access Assemble, the team now has a complete overview of their volunteer workforce, and can make decisions accordingly.
“We had 637 volunteers last month who completed 2,908 activities. The app allows volunteers to report hours and activities quickly, enhancing our ability to capture vital data and see the true impact our volunteers make each month."
Rachel Stewart, Head of Volunteering - Dorothy House Hospice Care
Hear more from Dorothy House Hospice
Assign organisational tasks
Completing tasks that benefit your organisation and its service users is an essential part of volunteering. With a VMS, you can assign tasks to volunteers wherever you see fit to ensure these tasks are completed to the required standard. Our task management feature ensures that:
- Suitable tasks are assigned to the right volunteer(s)
- Valuable feedback is collected from volunteers
- Informed task-related decisions are supported going forward
What our customers are saying
The RSPCA wanted to introduce a piece of software that would not only assign tasks, but also gain valuable feedback from their volunteers in order to improve any future activities.
“We also really love the Task feature as this gives us the opportunity to ask volunteers to assist us in completing important operational activities. Assemble enables us to collect feedback associated with these tasks, which then helps us to develop the program further and provides really crucial information that helps us in all of our other activities.”
John Wilkins, Head of Volunteering & Apprenticeships - RSPCA
Organise successful events
With events, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This can be avoided with a suitable VMS, as it allows you to plan and execute your events to perfection – supporting you to work towards full attendance. Our event management feature supports you to:
- Develop desirable events
- Recruit suitable volunteers
- Keep everyone updated at all times
- Access event success
- Make informed event-related decisions
What our customers are saying
Event management is a crucial part of St Luke’s Hospice. Since using Access Assemble, they’ve took the stress out of organising events, while seeing an encouraging increase in participation.
“I organised the ‘Volunteer Thank You’ event during Volunteers’ Week in June and Assemble made it so easy to manage RSVPs and track attendance. It’s made event management a breeze and allowed us to increase participation at appreciation events.”
Chris Bartell, Volunteer Coordinator - St Luke’s Hospice
Hear more from St Luke’s Hospice
Adopt a scalable volunteer management system
As a nonprofit organisation grows, it’s important to adopt a VMS that can scale to your size. A suitable software provider will be able to provide a VMS that not only suits your organisation’s current size, but has the flexibility to meet your requirements and grow with you. With Access Assemble, we offer 3 packages that consist of:
- Starter package – suitable for up to 250 volunteers & 3 managers
- Standard package – suitable for up to 2,000 volunteers & 200 managers
- Enterprise package – Suitable for 2000+ volunteers & 200+ managers
Find out more about our pricing packages
What our customers are saying
Save the Children were in the market for a flexible VMS that would support the management of their volunteers at scale. With our Enterprise package option, they were able to do this while customising their user permissions.
“Assemble Enterprise really gives us peace of mind. It provides us with the flexibility we need to manage our volunteers at scale. Having several management layers within the organisation, the ability to customise user permissions was crucial for us.”
Rachel Bayley, Head of Volunteering - Save the Children
Hear more from Save the Children
Speak to our experts about managing volunteers effectively
Providing your Volunteer Manager(s) with the tools to successfully managing volunteers effectively is crucial. And with a suitable volunteer management system, you can ensure to do this while saving valuable time and resources. To learn how Access Assemble can further support your organisation, visit our product page.
Want to speak to a human? Get in touch with our team today.
