Cyclone Gabrielle turned many things upside down, literally.

It showed us there was a need to better mobilise people in their communities, and to know and value the skills each brings; not just in an emergency but day-to-day.

To shine a light into this space we have designed Torch.

Torch is a way to showcase online the openings community organisations have, and make it quicker & simpler for volunteer centre coordinators to do what they do best.

It’s not ‘just a website’ or ‘only a piece of software’ but a system of products and services connected together, and continuously expanding and evolving.

Torch is designed by Kiwis for Kiwis, and the way we do things around here.

There are a variety of Volunteer Management Systems on the market. 

Most are from the United States. 

Many have so many features they overwhelm.

We realise that no two Volunteer Centres (VC) are identical but sense there is a fair amount of similarity in the processes that each need to do, and therefore there are core components that can be developed to help support them.

While we have embarked on the journey to develop a software package on a strong foundation, that is functioning essentially for the VC it was created to help out, we realise that we have only seen one scope, and have an opportunity now to collect and consolidate other ideas to carry the TORCH forward into other communities.

TORCH is a New Zealand-based project tailored to our country, our regions, and our language!

Here's a fairly plain English list of the current features in TORCH.  If you have a geek or nerd amongst you, feel free to get in contact for the technical version.

  • Each organisation needing volunteers can have its own webpage listing their openings.
  • Organisations can also be added that want to volunteer.
  • Organisations can be charities, businesses, governmental, or educational institutes.
  • Volunteers can search and register themselves for any opening.
  • Organisation coordinators can log in and add & edit their openings and check applications.
  • There are dashboards for coordinators, volunteers, volunteer centre managers, and volunteer centre team members where all the key features or information is presented in one place for ease of management.  There is an online manual with lots of screenshots personalised to the dashboard.
  • People are allowed or disallowed access to a specific feature or piece of information depending on their roles (volunteers, coordinators, volunteer centre managers, and volunteer centre team members); and extra roles can be created
  • Emails sent to new people who register on the website can be customised via a template, for each volunteer centre when the website is first set-up
  • Words throughout the site are linked to lists of results – so you can click on a sector/skill and find all the openings related to that, or click on the age suitability and find openings for secondary school-aged for example.
  • There is a contact form that emails you when someone has filled it in.
  • There is a membership form that does the same.
  • People can subscribe and unsubscribe to your newsletters.
  • There are forms that we can set up for trainings / workshops that allow a person to register themselves, receive confirmation and email you the results too.
  • Openings can be searched by availability (time), skills / sectors, city / town, & area / suburb, organisation name, or keywords.
  • Permanent pages like About us can be added when your website is first created.
  • Temporal pages like FAQs, and News can be added to by your volunteer centre manager when they are needed; and can also be scheduled to go on the website.
  • Your team members and managers can:
    • Add a new organisation
    • Add a new organisation coordinator
    • Add an opening (for an individual or a group)
    • Add a new volunteer
    • Manage applications
    • Search for an organisation by assigned to, contact name or email, name, status, sectors.
    • Search for volunteers (and emergency volunteers)
    • Have organisations assigned to them
  • Your managers can also:
    • Add FAQs
    • Add a new team member
    • Add a board member
    • Add an Insight (Resource, News, Events, etc)
    • Add a newsletter link
    • Export spreadsheets of volunteers, organisation coordinators, organisations etc
    • Assign organisations to a team member
  • Word-processing in WYSIWYG editor
  • Fonts are researched that support internationalisation (including macrons)

Some of the other party and middleware services we have researched and use are:

  • Send Grid (with static IP) for newsletters and all emails from your website
  • Plausible for WWW analytics 

There is of course room for improvement and consolidation of core features in response to need.  

  • Like automatically bringing in information about a charity from the Charities Register.
  • Implementing geo-location search-ability.
  • Facilitating membership payments and donations.

Torch has been built from flint and steel sparks to where it is now a campfire with burning embers. 

It is still being actively developed.  This means Torch isn't a finished product that you might buy off the shelf with more bells and whistles than you'd ever imagine needing. 

It is instead a work-in-progress, in collaboration with organisations who are keen to work with us, to understand which are the most valuable core components - the 'must haves' and the things that drive them nuts - their 'pain points'.  These functions will then be added for all other Volunteer Centres to benefit from.

Sometimes conversely this means that there may be unexpected 'features' that are found by the people who are using Torch, that need to be fixed, which helps everyone if you let us know about those too.  

Together we can improve the whole package for all users now and the future, which is one other way to invest into our volunteer community.

Are you a volunteer centre who would like to have a look at whether this will work for you? 

Contact us for access to the sandbox, or sandpit in the Kiwi vernacular, and get your manager(s) to have a play around.  

Submit your ideas for what could be developed for your centre and community.

If you think Torch could work for your Volunteer Centre - great!

There are quite a few parts to what happens next and questions that need to be asked and answered, but we hope to be able to make it as stress-free as possible.

As we see it there are 3 main pieces: the look and layout of the website, the way you need to do things behind the scenes, and how all that is supported and coordinated online.

A brief list of what might be needed is:

Website

  • Logo
  • Colours
  • Theme
  • Images
  • Content for each of the permanent pages and discussion on what these are for your Volunteer Centre
  • Social media links
  • Contact details
  • What do you want your website to do?

Behind the Scenes

  • Data from your current system or spreadsheet
  • Discussions about who does what and sees what

Online

  • Where is your website currently?
  • URL
  • What third-party services are you using?

How long does all this take?  Well, that does depend on what you already have in place, who needs to make the decisions in your Volunteer Centre, how much time you have to give to the process, etc. 

A guideline though might be that a basic off-the-shelf website design can take 6-8 weeks.  A custom website design around 3 months.  Tweaks to how Torch already works may require a few weeks; but totally new features a few months.  The length of time to integrate third party services is hard to quantify as it means researching the products and services and coming up with a solution.

The process is often more complex than many realise, but that's where we hope that we can help you, so that you can concentrate on on what you do best - Volunteering.

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.

Mother Teresa

Ideally we'd like to ensure our communities are supported on a long-term and reliable basis through the offer of Torch free to any volunteer centre (VC) in the country that wants to work with us.

This would remove one of the burdens from the VC having to source their own funding (which so often is not allowed to be used for operational costs), and frees them up to get on with the great work they are doing with real people.

However that means we need to find a few Herculean supporters that can underwrite the costs involved in offering the service into the future (because trying to operate on an oily rag only goes so far when there are external infrastructure needs, as well as putting food on the proverbial table).

What are these tangible components, you ask?

  • A place to host each volunteer centre's instance of Torch
  • The domain name for each website
  • Secure Socket Layers (SSL) certificate
  • Design of each website to reflect the VC's brand and community
  • Subscriptions to Send Grid for email delivery
  • Subscription to Plausible for statistic feedback and monitoring of each website
  • Website administration (alongside each VC)
  • Ongoing software development
  • Future feature service fees (ie SMS)

If you are a person or business whose heart is also for strengthening our communities, and who operates with integrity; we'd appreciate your financial support.

What might we be able to offer in return?

Every person who applies to volunteer, coordinates an organisation, or manages applications of both has an online dashboard they can log in to.  In the instance of the VC that this project started for, that is 3800 people.   So your logo could get exposure in the footer of every dashboard page.  We can also provide you with digital graphics so you can add your support of Torch to your website and social media channels.

Or perhaps you know of someone just waiting for an opportunity like this, and could pass the invitation along to them?

We would also value a mentor that could guide us on how to decide on a bona fide structure whether that is a registered business or charity, or something else so that those who donate are not disadvantaged for their contribution.  As well as someone to bounce ideas off as we set to scale from one to many.

Thank you,

The Torch Bearers