Throughout this year we’ve been letting you know about plans to launch Assemble, our new volunteer management system (VMS). The system will simplify processes, give you control of your personal data and provide a central source of information. It’ll also replace the Portal and volunteer website, both of which reach end of life this year.
We’ve pulled together a short video to introduce the system, giving you a sneak peek of what it’ll do.
Assemble support
We understand using a new system may be daunting, but we’ll have lots of support in place. And we’ will be there to assist you every step of the way.
We’ll be hosting drop-in sessions, have lots of ‘how to’ videos and guides, and our Volunteer Support Team will be on hand. We’ll be sharing more on the support available in due course.
Data freeze reminder
So we can In order to transfer over the necessary data and information for when Assemble launches, we’ll need to freeze some of the systems that volunteers currently use.
Earlier this month, we emailed Group Coordinators, Admin Volunteers, Health and Safety Volunteers, Activity Organisers and Communication Volunteers to let them know about this upcoming data freeze.
Here’s a reminder of the details for each system:
Portal: From Monday 16 September, the Portal will be read only. Therefore, please ensure you update or upload any new services or events to the Portal by this date. This will mean they’ll appear on your group's Near Me page on the website and will allow us to move them across to Assemble. If you don’t do this by 16 September, you’ll have to wait until Assemble has gone live at the end of October to promote them.
If you complete any paperwork which is usually saved on the Portal after 16 September, such as SLAs for provision of services or HSV/VERA forms for your social events, please email these to the Volunteer Support Team for sign off. They’ll save these in a secure folder and will support you to upload them onto Assemble once it’s gone live.
REACH: From Monday 16 September there will be an organisation-wide recruitment freeze. This means no new volunteer vacancies can be added to REACH. If you use REACH as a hiring manager, you'll have already been contacted by our Volunteer Recruitment Officer, Simon, with next steps.
Contact lists: In the coming weeks, we’ll need to freeze our organisation’s database called Raisers Edge. This means that no live data can be downloaded, so any contact lists downloaded during this time will be inaccurate. Therefore, we’ll be asking you to ensure any planned communications to your group members don’t fall within these dates. We'll follow up with you when we have these dates confirmed.
Thanks in advance for your help. If you have any questions, please contact the Volunteer Support Team by calling 0300 500 8084 (select option #3) or by emailing [email protected] .
