CARING COMMUNITIES USING COMMUNITY MAKERS

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Tickbox, with a small number our charity partners, have been busy developing a new version of our successful Volunteer Makers platform in 2022. Community Makers extends the Volunteer Makers tech to provide care and wellbeing benefits in our communities, driven by our communities.

The main purpose of our Local Care for Local People plug-in – using Community Makers is:

  • Giving informed Care Seekers choice and control on how their support is delivered that is flexible, creative, and local!
  • Creating an inclusive community-driven environment, building networks and trusted relationships
  • Demonstrating value for money using Individual Service Funding
  • Grow micro-care givers and innovating new models of care
  • Support care programmes and brokerage

Community Makers tech (inspires a connected community, promotes participation and volunteering, events, actions and opportunities). This allows for:

  • Volunteer opportunities, micro, remote and regular
  • Impact reporting
  • Social capital value
  • Event management
  • Content Management System

If you want to find out more, contact us.

Take Part Oldham homepage on a laptop

OLDHAM SHOW HOW TO REACH PEOPLE – EVEN IN LOCKDOWN

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The coronavirus emergency has left us with all sorts of challenges, including how to remain connected with others and still benefit from being part of community. For heritage, arts and other charity organisations the question is how do we remain connected to volunteers and supporters? And how do these organisations continue to build their numbers in order to thrive during and after lockdown.

Take Part Oldham’s Volunteer Makers has launched during the most difficult time in our country’s post-war history, but it has hit the ground running and built engagement with local organisations, helped by Volunteer Makers.

Volunteer Makers embodies Tickbox’s “tech for good” ethos: Using tech creatively and strategically to connect communities, building engagement and allowing measurable benefits to flow.

The Arts, Heritage, Libraries and Music services in Oldham have got together to create Take Part Oldham, an online space using Volunteer Makers, that makes it easy to see what community activities local people can get involved in. What is significant is Take Part Oldham launched during lockdown. Take Part Oldham has 37 creative challenges running and has signed up more than 100 people (and rising) to take part remotely.

Music is an important part of the heritage, libraries and art grouping that makes up Take Part Oldham and one challenge asks people to stage an impromptu gig in their gardens at 4pm any day they choose.

The results are uploaded onto social media and as well as keeping up morale (and raising a few laughs) in these difficult times, the initiative links in the community with the arts in Oldham.

Another creative challenge gets people to post online book reviews: a great lockdown idea which not only encourages reading but builds engagement with Oldham libraries, who are tagged in by this virtual book club.

Keep fit meets the arts when Oldham Theatre Workshop’s Craig Harris holds a series of streamed daily warm-up exercises. The public can log on and warm up like a professional actor in a challenge that builds engagement with the theatre.

Lockdown means being inventive with challenges, but lots of people online with lots of time on their hands equals a great opportunity for reaching out and making connections with the public. Connections that should last even when the virus is vanquished. Connections that may last a lifetime.

Slide from presentation

Volunteer Makers showcased to the movers and shakers

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Tickbox were invited to join a number of museum and heritage organisations based in the South West and South East to share best practice and learning around managing volunteers.

The Museum Volunteer Co-ordinators Forum was held in Swindon on February 27th and the theme was “Tools and Tips for Better Working”. It was organised by South West Museum Development (SWMD) and their South East counterpart: South East Museum Development (SEmuseumDP).

Both SWMD and SEmuseumDP are ACE-funded museum development programmes that enable museums in their regions to evolve and thrive.

Around 50 + delegates joined the seminar to hear case studies, share ideas and best practice and network. It was also an opportunity to hear from companies like Tickbox about tech that can inspire. Volunteer Makers is an engagement model and technology product designed to help organisations establish/grow a supporter/volunteer community. It also provides useful tools to manage volunteers.

Volunteer Makers has been driven by collaborative working with heritage organisations, started around 6 years ago with Luton Culture and Museum Makers. It helps organisations think through and deliver their volunteer strategy.

Engage in Gloucester – Volunteer Makers has been working with Volunteer Makers for the past 2 years and the Engage in Gloucester platform was launched in October 2019. Since then it has gone on to have a significant impact for Gloucester Culture Trust and their 62 heritage partners.

“Engage in Gloucester has shifted the face of volunteering for Gloucester,” said Director of Gloucester Culture Hollie Smith-Charles at the event. “We have got better at thinking through accessible volunteer opportunities and thinking what’s in it for the volunteer. This has led us to effectively reach the people we need to, including younger people – who make up 40% of the population”.

Other speakers sharing their volunteer  management experience included:

Paola Palmer, Still Curious Project Coordinator and Hampshire Cultural Officer, The Red House Museum.

Hollie Foskett-Barnes, Membership Co-ordinator, Museum of East Asian Art, Bath.

Joy Todd, Head of Volunteering and Community Engagement, Gardens and Museums (GLAM), University of Oxford.

Tickbox MD and Programme Director for Volunteer Makers Claire Sully was asked to give a brief introduction to Volunteer Makers to further support the case study provided by Hollie Smith-Charles for Engage in Gloucester.

Claire said “Seeing Hollie demonstrating the positive impact of working with Volunteer Makers for Engage in Gloucester was very exciting. We know the tech is great, but the important thing is what the tech enables and for Gloucester this has been something quite extraordinary.”

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