Improvements to our Brokerage Service from December 2010
How Vbase and do-it referrals work before December 2010:
At the moment the volunteering roles that we have registered for your organisation are advertised on the national do-it website. People have the option of applying online for this role, or to make an enquiry. Either way the contact details of the volunteer come to the Volunteer Centre and we transfer their contact details to our database.
If the potential volunteer has made an enquiry, we email the opportunity to them and ask them to contact you directly.
If they make an application, we forward this to you for you to make contact with the volunteer (having already added them to our database).
We are not able to ‘vet' this person, interview them or make decisions about how suitable they are.
At Volunteer Centre Camden, we received about 900 enquiries last year. We received a lot more applications, about 5000.
What will be different after December 2010:
We are proposing that rather than VCC receiving the applications and enquiries that these will come straight to you. Your contact details will be displayed on the opportunity on do-it rather than our contact details. This means that any applications submitted will come straight to you.
Why we think that this will help:
We know from our work with volunteers that people often start volunteering with the organisations that respond to them quickly. If the details are coming straight to you, this process is speeded up.
This means that the details displayed on do-it are your details, so people calling for more information get hold of you straight away. This allows them to ask questions about the role to help them decide if this is what they are looking for. Most people using do-it think that this is what happens anyway!
What you need to do next:
Over the next few weeks your organisation will be moved to the new system and will receive all do-it potential volunteer details directly. Please respond to potential volunteers as you would do normally. If you recruit someone as a volunteer via the do-it website, please let us know their name, and the role you have recruited them for.
I you are unable to find a place a volunteer in your organisation (for whatever reason) please ensure you ask them to get in touch with us, and we will then offer them support in finding a volunteer role. You could perhaps send a standard email explaining how Volunteer Centre Camden can help them find a role. We can provide some text if this helps.
So, you should contact us if:
- Someone starts volunteering, telling us who they are, and what they have been recruited to do.
- Someone doesn't start with you. We can then contact to offer our services.
- You no longer need volunteers for a role. We can deactivate immediately.
- You are receiving more enquiries than you can handle. We can then stop advertising on do-it, but continue to advertise via our face to face services. This will dramatically reduce the number of enquires you get.
- You are receiving enquires from lots of people who are unsuitable. We will look at why they are unsuitable and amend your advert to make clear what you are looking for.
Where there will be no changes:
We will continue to promote volunteering roles to people who contact us directly. This will include your volunteering opportunities. We can still offer you support regarding your volunteer project, our other services are not affected by this adjustment.
Questions/ feedback:
Please contact Sheila if you have any queries. We can help you to develop standard email responses to your enquiries if you think that this would help you, and can offer support about how to best deal with enquiries from prospective volunteers.
