Technology has changed the way we live our lives in many ways, including the way we donate to charity and volunteer. This change was accelerated by the Covid pandemic.
The Third Sector and Technology Adoption
The charity sector has been impacted hugely by the decline in the use of cash and they are having to adapt to ensure the sector remains sustainable. On the positive side, there are much more technology-enabled, effective ways to manage areas like fundraising or volunteer management, for example.
However, we talk to many charities that still rely on manual processes to manage their work, even though this is highly inefficient. The cost of this manual work is generally built into their existing resources, therefore difficult to ‘see’ or quantify. As a result, Technology adoption is deemed as an extra cost, instead of an investment.
Take vHelp as an example - the management of volunteer expenses is embedded into the volunteering and finance teams’ day jobs.
It’s difficult for charity bosses to step back and look at the big picture; if my team are spending less time on admin then they can focus more on what matters. Let alone the other benefits, such as quick volunteer reimbursement or accurate tracking and reporting of volunteer expenses.
How did vHelp evolve in 2022
At vHelp, as for most of our clients, 2022 has been a mixed year, with successes and challenges.
Our service evolved:
- We introduced web-based claims so volunteers/users can now submit claims on our web dashboard if they prefer (instead of downloading the app).
- We developed and launched vHelp Teams – a more scalable version of Expenses, where organisations can set up teams with their own volunteers and volunteer managers. This feature is great for larger organisations with geographically dispersed teams or with various projects, that need to be kept separate for reporting reasons. Teams also have two tier expense approval process.
With the cost of living crises impacting everyone, the vHelp team was very excited to onboard charities like the Felix Project who rely on an army of volunteers for their slick operation. The Felix team recognise the importance of reimbursing volunteers’ expenses on time to ensure the retention of those volunteers.
On the other hand, like everybody else, we had to be very considerate about our own expenditure. This meant we reduced the development of new features during the last few months of 2022 and focused on improving the current vHelp offer.
Cost of Living Challenge in 2022 and the impact on Volunteers
Inflation and the rising cost of living have been the biggest challenges for our volunteers and charities.
The soaring prices mean volunteers are claiming more expenses - this is a challenge for some charities as they didn’t budget for the increase in the number of claims.
Volunteers are also getting agitated if there is a slight delay in reimbursing their expenses. With vHelp the payment only gets processed after the volunteer manager has approved the claim. Now more than ever, we are getting chased by volunteers asking about their expenses. We explain that vHelp can only process the payment after the claim is approved, not claimed.
It’s worth mentioning that despite the inflation squeeze we are feeling at vHelp, we are conscious of the challenges our industry is facing and made an active decision not to increase our pricing for now.
Trends we are seeing within vHelp
There are some trends we noticed during the year which we thought you would find interesting:
- The average value of expenses we process
£12.22 All expenses - includes all categories with higher-value expenses as some of our clients use vHelp to reimburse volunteers and contractors for equipment purchases and long-distance train tickets
£8.63 Counting only travel and mileage expenses
- Most expenses are paid within 24 of approval (even though our SLA is 48 hours)
- Volunteers are asking to backdate expenses – we saw some volunteers going back to 2021 and claiming mileage for shifts they did 12 months ago.
- vHelp’s unique selling point has become the fact that the volunteer is reimbursed within 24 hours. This shows that charities are aware of the risk of losing volunteers if expenses are not paid on time!