How NUS Caretalyst Scaled their Volunteer Programs for Greater Impact
A case study on ‘Customer Champion’ NUS Caretalyst
About NUS Caretalyst
NUS Caretalyst Club was founded back in 2009 when nine students came together with a simple desire to touch lives. Since their humble beginnings, they have opened up an accessible platform for youths, especially NUS students to serve and reach out to the local community as well as initiate projects that would have far reaching long-term sustainable impact, all in the hopes of building a campus that cares.
NUS Caretalyst currently has several ongoing projects including, Catch+, their long term programme for volunteers to mentor children from low-income families games and team-building activities, as well as “While You Were Sleeping” which was an initiative to provide welfare for hardworking students to motivate them to study.
Challenges
Just like a ‘catalyst’ in Chemistry, NUS Caretalyst initiates and accelerates social changes, however much of the admin work that was previously done using the Google Docs and excel ecosystem meant long repetitive task had to be manually execute, thus hindering productivity. Over time as their volunteer numbers and projects running concurrently grew, so did their need for an efficient and effective solution to manage and track volunteer hours.
Kimberley Tay, President of NUS Caretalyst who helms all aspect of operations from planning of initiatives, recruitment and mobilisation of volunteers. Her senior who was running NUS Caretalyst previously, was searching for a process to streamline the administrative processes and establish a reliable channel of communication with the student volunteers.
This was where bantu was able to step in and help their fellow NUS acquaintance.
1. Inefficient System of Logging & Tracking Volunteers
Volunteer tracking was traditionally done on spreadsheet and document, meaning it had to regularly be updated and maintained. Information was exported from one platform and then uploaded onto another platform. Once attendance was taken on the site of the event and it then had to be transferred onto a master spreadsheet at the end of the day. This long winded process increased margin for error during the period when data was being transferred.
2. Repetitive & Intensive Admin Work
One labour intensive admin task that NUS Caretalyst faced was the writing and sending of emails to individuals. It was time consuming and cumbersome as each event meant a different list of volunteer email and contact information had to be pulled together. Volunteers would often have to fill in several different forms with their personal details which deterred some from signing up in the first place.
3. Lack of Quick & Functional Channel of Communication with Volunteers
If event details were changed last minute, volunteers need to be quickly updated with new information. But the NUS Caretalyst team relied on Whatsapp groups and emails to relay these important information. Volunteers sometimes missed out on these messages, hence a more instantaneous mode of communication had to be established.
4. No Centralised Platform For Recruitment
NUS does not have a dedicated platform where volunteers can sign up. The official OrgSync platform which was the university’s campus engagement network that connected student organisations, interest groups and registered societies to the wider student body, which did not really fit NUS Caretalyst’s needs.
As NUS Caretalyst was not on NUS’s official OrgSync platform, they were looking for a platform which would allow for the better engagement of volunteers, while also promoting a spirit of volunteerism.
Solutions
1. Easy Volunteer Tracking
The on-the-go mobile attendance taking using a phone was one of the features NUS Caretalyst found useful as it enabled them to easily mark attendance of the volunteers who showed up without the fear of misplacing or losing the information as attendance timings are recorded and updated to Workspace automatically. This then translated into a log for volunteer hours recording the duration of each individual has volunteered.
“I really like the mass approval of volunteer feature because you don’t need to type out all their emails again.” — Juliana Chong Vice-President (Projects), NUS Caretalyst
2. Simplified & Streamlined Communication Processes
NUS Caretalyst team saw immediate benefits after using bantu Workspace. The automation features of customisable emails greatly simplified the process and accelerated progression. Volunteers only need to sign up once via the bantu.life website and email contacts were automatically imported to a centralised data dashboard hence they could immediately mobilize and sent out with a press of a button using the Mail Launcher that had customisable templates.
“With bantu, we can just key in the volunteer information once and that is all you need.” — Juliana Chong, Vice-President (Projects), NUS Caretalyst
3. Fast and Effective Communication with Volunteers
bantu Workspace’s Smart Messaging reminders was extremely useful when it came to last-minute changes or updates and made for a more professional approach than the modes which were previously used. It allowed NUS Caretalyst team to communicate and manage the volunteers in real time through texting of important messages and thus bypassing the email inboxes which may or may not be checked, making coordination of volunteers much easier.
4. Encourage Volunteerism Beyond Campus
By shifting NUS Caretalyst’s recruitment over to bantu’s volunteer recruitment portal which allowed for greater flexibility as the integrated platform would automatically synchronise all volunteer information on to their organiser account on bantu Workspace. The recruitment portal also featured many other volunteer opportunities that were running concurrently in the region so more committed volunteers could discover and sign up for other projects. These empower NUS will be more inclined to contribute back in serving the community and thus, in the long term it promote volunteerism not just on campus, outside in the wider community.
This article was co-written with Crystal Chan
