NYAS (National Youth Advocacy Service) is a leading charity in England and Wales dedicated to supporting children, young people, and adults in vulnerable situations by providing advocacy, legal representation, and independent visiting services. With a large network of volunteers essential to their mission, NYAS faced the challenge of managing volunteer onboarding, activity coordination and reporting efficiently.
Challenges
As an organisation, NYAS places an enormous amount of value in the time and support from their amazing volunteers. The primary focus for the team was to find a means of improving the overall volunteer experience. It was felt that the current experience for volunteers was sometimes disjointed and did not provide suitable ease of access.
From an administrative perspective, before implementing Volunteero, NYAS relied on multiple systems and manual processes to manage volunteer onboarding and activities. This approach was time-consuming, error-prone, and required significant effort to track volunteer progress and generate reports. The lack of a streamlined system also made it difficult to monitor volunteer activities in real-time, leading to inefficiencies in matching volunteers with suitable tasks and ensuring that all necessary reports were submitted on time.
We spoke to Paula, the National Volunteer Service Manager at NYAS who said “Volunteero was an investment in developing our volunteer experience into a gold-standard service.”
Outcomes
● 1.6 years worth of volunteering time over 18 months
● 92% volunteer app engagement across 644 volunteers
● All volunteer-related information into one place
● Significantly reduced the need for multiple spreadsheets and manual tracking
● Faster communication
● Improved volunteer experience and engagement
● Better reporting
Since the primary outcome desired was an improved volunteer experience, let’s get started with some of the feedback from the NYAS volunteers:
“I think it’s great, so much easier than the fact reports and very intuitive. Handy having everything in one place on my phone and being able to upload pics of the receipts 😊”
“This is brilliant”
“So simple and easy to use”
“Thank you for listening to our concerns and making these changes happen 😊 “
“Best thing is the new app, it so much easier to do reports and stuff – really good, so easy”
How were these improvements achieved?
Volunteer Experience
The improved volunteer experience is a function of all of the Volunteero features working in harmony. Unlike any other volunteer management platform, volunteers primarily manage their volunteering through an easy-to-use mobile app. This means everything is in one place. They can check on their previous reports ahead of their next visit with their young person; they can submit a report after their visit whilst on the bus home; and they can send a message to their coordinator through chat. This immediacy and ease-of-access improves every aspect of the volunteer experience. These improvements are best demonstrated by the 92% engagement rate this year on the volunteer app.
Onboarding
NYAS has made productive use of the onboarding features. The team have a series of forms catering to applications and other data and documentation required. These forms make up part of missions which are visible to applicants at various stages of the journey. From a volunteer perspective, they are able to manage their onboarding primarily through the app and just tackle one task after another.
Paula says “Staff no longer need to chase multiple documents in many emails/forms of contact. Volunteers can now fill out forms directly on the system. Staff can then process it right on the same platform.”
NYAS also makes use of our features which increase automation of processes such as the automated reference collection feature which can handle the collection of references automatically and boasts an average response time of 3 days and saves on average 30 minutes per applicant.
Overall “Volunteero has streamlined our recruitment processes and made them more efficient.”
Communication
Now that volunteer applicants handle a great deal of their onboarding tasks directly in the app and automated push notifications are sent to complete tasks, the volume of email traffic throughout the onboarding has been greatly reduced for NYAS and applicants.
Whether in the midst of onboarding or whilst actually volunteering, NYAS can communicate with volunteers using the Volunteero chat feature. This not only enables one to many group chats which can foster a sense of community among volunteers but also leads to higher open rates and quicker response times.
“The instant notification feature means staff and volunteers are immediately notified, if not through push alerts then checking the app for waiting messages”
Volunteero chat feature is a standout feature as it further enables centralised volunteer engagement through one tool. It boosts security and ensures GDPR compliance, something which would be lacking among organisations who use Whatsapp or a similar public messaging tool.
“Having a safe and secure platform for communicating with volunteers has been very beneficial, especially on a local level.”
Reporting
Like many organisations, NYAS faced challenges with oversight and reporting. Paula stated that “The previous system had no built-in reporting function so all the data had to be manually entered onto a custom excel spreadsheet each month. Staff found this a long, frustrating and difficult process.” Using spreadsheets when operating at the scale of an organisation like NYAS (over 600 missions on Volunteero) can lead to far higher time spent across the staff team on administrative tasks.
Oversight has never been easier than with Volunteero, with key data points tracked and easily surfaced by organisations through the platform. Meaning the program can be given proper oversight and time is not wasted finding relevant information. All data can be filtered and sorted by a myriad of different methods including groups, tags, timeframes etc.
“Staff can also keep track of the last date volunteers accessed Volunteero. This helps identify volunteer engagement and identify when to get in contact.”
Volunteers complete short snappy feedback reports through the app after each volunteering engagement. The report questions and data collected can be easily customised by the organisation and can vary for different volunteering activities. Being able to do this quickly means more reports are completed and the accuracy is increased. Overall, this means more data and offers improved demonstration of impact which as any charity will know is the overall aim of their volunteering programs but also leads to improved acquisition of funding.
“The access to real-time information has had a positive impact on both our national and local data management”
Safeguarding
NYAS volunteers interact with individuals in vulnerable situations,so security and safeguarding are top priorities for the NYAS team. Volunteero supports these goals by offering a suite of features:
● Authentication - The app taps into their device settings and requires authentication each time to reopen the app (e.g. face ID or pin code). This means if the phone was lost., the information pertaining to their volunteering activities remains secure.
● MFA - Volunteero offers multi-factor authentication to protect against unauthorised sign-in attempts.
● Alerts - Organisations can set alerts on volunteer report responses, allowing staff to be notified of certain responses or issues being raised.
It is key that volunteers feel supported in sensitive volunteering roles such as NYAS’ independent visitor role.The combination of these feature helps foster that sense. As Paula mentioned “the inbuilt alert system for safeguarding in reports means concerns are dealt with promptly and decidedly”
Integration
Although Volunteero can offer a one-stop-shop for an organisation’s volunteering needs, it is not uncommon for larger organisations to have a suite of tools involved in the volunteering program. NYAS is no different. Volunteero offers fully functioning API and Webhooks which means organisations can build and operate any manner of realtime integration into any other system with API capabilities.
“Volunteero seamlessly integrates with our case management systems and the systems are compatible in producing valuable reports and monitoring”
Support
As we are often heard to say at Volunteero, technology is only as good as the support that comes with it. We hold ourselves to the highest possible standard in this regard and seek to build effective, long-term working relationships with our clients. That is what we have built with the wonderful team at NYAS.
“I want to express my gratitude to the Volunteero team for their dedication to NYAS and the assistance they have provided to ensure the smooth operation of the system, delivering the best volunteer experience possible.” - Paula
Conclusion
Volunteero has significantly improved NYAS’ volunteer management processes, leading to time savings, better coordination, and increased volunteer satisfaction. By adopting Volunteero, NYAS has been able to enhance its services and continue supporting vulnerable individuals more efficiently and effectively.
“Since using the platform for our recruitment processes, visibility and transparency of volunteers for various departments has improved”
But the NYAS team are not done, Paula says:“we have a lot of opportunities to expand and develop our volunteer experience and providing a gold-standard service”. We would be delighted to help support them in this endeavour.
