Elizabeth Wigelsworth, head of volunteering at Chest, Heart, Stroke Scotland, explains how an app has transformed the charity's connection with volunteering.
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For any volunteer-involving organisation, it’s essential that volunteers have a great experience, feel welcomed, valued and part of a community. But this can be challenging when engaging thousands of volunteers across a variety of opportunities and a wide geographic area.

For this reason, charities look for innovative and accessible ways to connect volunteers with their organisation, vision and mission – whether they gift their time regularly or in small micro-actions.

Digital innovation

For Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland (CHSS), one of the main factors helping us achieve all of this has been through the introduction of an app that’s accessible to volunteers across the organisation. Via the app, volunteers can keep tabs on their rotas, tasks and charity news. The whole process is seamless.

The app also gives volunteer managers the ability to communicate more easily with their volunteers, as well as accessing data and analytics much quicker.

Instead of spending time completing laborious admin tasks, managers are now free to spend time having meaningful conversations with their volunteer teams, and focusing on building relationships.

Investing in the right technology has helped to enhance the entire volunteer experience, ensuring consistency and cohesion in the way volunteers are involved with the charity and how they interact with each other.

‘Transformed our approach’

Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland began working with Access Assemble last year and soon saw it strengthen our whole volunteering process. Volunteer managers could automate and streamline their recruitment process, spend less time on administration and amplify the engagement of volunteers.

Volunteers also felt they had a much more positive experience, were able to access news and updates, and communicate with other volunteers in their shop or service. It really helped strengthen the community feel of the organisation.

However, we knew there was a lot more we wanted to do within the app.

For our regular retail volunteers, we wanted to be able to record their hours, publish rotas and give them sight of their rotas in advance, to not only ensure all shop shifts were covered, but also give them greater accountability over their roles.

A two-month trial of the rota software with five of our charity shops gave us the opportunity to do just this.

The trial began in March this year, and volunteers were given access to the shop rotas enabling them to see where gaps needed filling and giving them the opportunity to cover shifts and support their colleagues. Managers could also see in advance when they had a gap in their rotas and were able to send a group message calling out for cover.

In a month we saw more shop volunteers engaging with the app and many said it was motivating to see the impact they were having on the organisation. Shop teams were able to record and share the numbers of hours volunteered across the store and celebrate these achievements together.

Sally May-Collins, a regional retail manager for the north, said: ‘Embracing the rota functionality has transformed our approach. It’s been hugely reassuring to know all shifts are covered, our shop managers are supported and ultimately, we are raising the income we need to support people with our conditions across Scotland’

The function transformed how we all work together and has now been rolled out across all our stores.

‘Part of something bigger’

We know that the volunteering landscape is always changing, and people have less time to commit to regular volunteer roles, which is where micro volunteering has been a gamechanger for us. We started the Community Connectors programme after seeing a demand for this. It helps us to give flexibility to people who wanted to volunteer but didn’t necessarily have the time to do it every week and wanted something that fitted around their busy lives.

Through the app, they can pick and choose tasks when they’re posted and still have a big impact on our mission. Whether that’s sharing social media posts, completing online surveys or signing campaigns and petitions, they all make a difference to the organisation.

Through this function we’ve seen a rise in people engaging with the charity on an ad hoc basis, and it’s made us more accessible, especially to a whole community of volunteers who may not have considered volunteering with us previously.

James Carberry, from Grangemouth, began volunteering as a community connector in August this year and has picked up micro volunteering tasks such as sharing social media posts for the charity.

He said: “Mostly I’m sharing posts on social media. I see lots of engagement on Facebook since I put a note on my posts to explain that I’m a volunteer with CHSS. People like to feel there’s a personal connection when they share something, and so many people are affected by chest, heart and stroke conditions.

“Volunteering has been so beneficial for me. It feels great to be part of something bigger.”

Hannatu Kachiro, from Edinburgh, who is also a community connector, shared: “When I saw the role advertised, I was very keen on volunteering because it aligned perfectly with what I wanted. The tasks are quite flexible, and it’s incredibly fulfilling. It helps me balance my studies while also making a significant impact on people’s lives.”

Interactive and engaged

As technology and demands of the digital world are changing all the time, so too is the way people want to volunteer. To reflect the changing motivations of volunteers we have had to adapt how we operate and continually think about how people are engaging with our charity too.

Having an interactive and easy to access app has helped us adapt. It has enabled us to embrace micro volunteering and streamline the processes for our retail volunteers. These are just two of the areas within our volunteer teams where it’s had a visible impact.

Most importantly, technology enables us to invest in our volunteers and it means we’re regularly having conversations with them about how we can make things simpler for them, ensuring volunteering with us is flexible and accessible. It keeps our teams fully interactive and engaged with each other and encourages them to stay with us for longer.

Something as simple as investing in an app has made it a much smoother digital experience for everyone involved, and we just wouldn’t look back.

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