Overview

The Brain Tumour Charity is the world’s leading brain tumour charity and the largest dedicated funder of research into brain tumours globally. Committed to saving and improving lives, the charity is relentless in its pursuit of better treatments, exceptional support, and driving urgent change. Volunteers play a vital role in their mission, especially the event volunteers who create an exciting atmosphere for fundraisers, motivating them to cross the finish line.

Beth, a Senior Event Officer at The Brain Tumour Charity, oversees the charity’s organised and third-party events. Her team’s reliance on volunteers makes effective management critical. In 2024, Beth’s team coordinated volunteers for over 20 events, each with unique shifts and roles. The adoption of Volunteero revolutionised how they engage, manage, and retain these invaluable supporters.

Pre-Volunteero Challenges

Before Volunteero, The Brain Tumour Charity used Salesforce as their primary Volunteer Management tool. Volunteers would apply via the website, which was connected to Salesforce and whilst somewhat automated required several checks before they could be passed onto a volunteer manager. 

The volunteering team at The Brain Tumour Charity faced several obstacles:

• Manual Processes: Created a disjointed journey that was unreliable for volunteer managers. 

• Ambiguity in Data: Salesforce displayed all entries in one format, making it difficult to distinguish volunteers from event participants.

• Communication Gaps: Relying on email for updates resulted in fewer responses and diminished engagement, as messages often went unnoticed.

• Limited Insights: The lack of streamlined tracking meant the team struggled to gather meaningful data on volunteer engagement and retention.

Apprehensions About Switching to Volunteero

As with any new system, there were initial apprehensions. “The main concern was moving people across and ensuring they’d adopt the new platform,” Beth shared. Encouraging volunteers to activate notifications and use the app required effort and persistence.

Beth also highlighted the need for features like integrated briefing document uploads and secure data sharing. However, she remained optimistic, noting, “We know Volunteero is constantly evolving, and every time we log in, there’s something new to explore.”

How Volunteero Has Benefitted The Events Team

Streamlined Onboarding and Communication

Volunteero’s automated sign-up process replaced manual data entry, saving time and reducing errors. Volunteers register via a user-friendly form and are instantly added to Volunteero, where they can explore tailored missions. “The volunteer experience is a lot slicker for staff and volunteers” Beth shared. Volunteero has allowed the team to have more bespoke volunteering opportunities published onto the app because the set-up and overview is much easier to manage than before. 

Instant messaging replaced email as the primary communication tool. Beth noted, “Nowadays, people are quicker to respond via instant messaging, which has been brilliant.” The team are able to leverage Volunteero’s instant messaging chat feature to create 1:1 and group chats with their volunteers. This shift has significantly enhanced volunteer engagement as volunteers can receive push and email notifications and staff are able to check read receipt engagement on chats.  

The Brain Tumour Charity spoke of the benefits they’ve seen from having everything in one place. 

“I know I can see how many volunteers I have signed up for various missions across all of the events of the charity. This has made volunteer co-ordination so much easier for our team”. With their previous system, The Brain Tumour Charity were unable to quickly determine whether a record was an event participant, supporter or volunteer. 

The events team can now oversee all volunteer missions in one place. “I can see how many volunteers are signed up, contact them collectively, and offer flexible shift options,” she shared. This comprehensive view empowers the team to manage events more effectively and cater to volunteers’ preferences.

Increased Volunteer Engagement 

Their previous system relied solely on emailing volunteers, which resulted in fewer responses from volunteers, less take up on activities and a lack of clarity across the team surrounding the state of volunteer engagement. By having all the missions and various shifts in one place, the team is able to be more flexible by offering extra options to volunteers which works well for events based volunteering. Beth told us “ What Volunteero enables us to do is empower our volunteers to engage with us how they'd like to”. 

An added benefit has been that volunteers are more likely to follow through on commitments. “Previously, we’d have higher sign-up numbers but fewer people showing up on the day. With Volunteero, the volunteers who sign up are the ones who turn up,” Beth observed that this has been an unexpected outcome of implementing Volunteero which she suspects is due to the Volunteero app’s flexibility and ease of use for volunteers. 

In 2024, the events team volunteers were able to rack up 275 hours of volunteering time across 21 events missions for the organisation. All of which contribute to fundraising and awareness-raising efforts for the cause. 

Retention and Data Insights 

Building a reliable volunteer base has become easier. “We’re slowly building a bank of dependable volunteers for third-party events, whereas before, it felt like starting from scratch every year,” The events team now have a bank of around 170 active volunteers who can self-serve from a selection of impactful missions within their app. 

Moreover, Volunteero provides actionable data, enabling the team to track engagement trends and make informed decisions. “ We’ve got to a place within Volunteero where we’re able to leverage insights from the data collected” The events team saw an engagement rate of 74% on the app across their volunteer teams and are able to make use of features such as badges to reward and recognise volunteer contributions. 

Event’s Favourite Feature

One standout feature for Beth is the ability to provide additional mission details post-sign-up. “We can include the practical information volunteers need without it getting lost in a chat. It’s a real time-saver,” This unsung functionality allows the team to add in extra mission detail that becomes available once a volunteer is approved onto the mission, this enhances clarity and reduces repetitive messaging for volunteers. 

Final Comments

The transition to Volunteero has been transformative for The Brain Tumour Charity’s events team. “It’s made things a lot easier for the whole team, we’re now communicating with volunteers in a consistent way, which wasn’t happening before.”

Beth remains optimistic about the platform’s future. “We know Volunteero is listening to our feedback, and we’re excited to see what’s next.”

By simplifying processes, enhancing communication, and fostering engagement, Volunteero has empowered The Brain Tumour Charity’s events team to focus on what truly matters—supporting fundraisers and saving lives.

If you’re interested in becoming a volunteer for The Brain Tumour Charity then you can view available roles on their website here.