Hear straight from our Do-it members about how they have benefitted from using V-Base.

Anne-Marie Zaritsky - Voluntary Services Manager, Trinity Hospice

Trinity Hospice provides care for people with advanced illnesses within their homes or at the hospice. It also runs bereavement counselling for people close to patients, and an education and training programme for health and social care professionals.

Founded in 1891, the hospice is the oldest in the UK and serves a population of 750,000 people in central and southwest London. More than 400 volunteers are involved in a wide variety of roles.

How long have you been using V-Base?

We started using it over a year ago. We wanted to have more direct contact with volunteers applying for roles and V-Base has enabled us to do that. We cover quite a large area and get a lot of enquiries but using V-Base we're able to reply to people within a day or two.

How many enquiries do you receive each week?

We get about 20 a week overall, and probably half of those come via Do-it.

And you offer quite a range of different roles?

Yes, not just directly with patients but in IT, fundraising, gardening and retail. Being able to update the opportunities so easily is another great thing about the V-Base. We can switch them on or off depending on the roles we're looking to recruit to.

Did you find it easy to get started?

It was very straightforward, although I was already familiar with V-Base so that helped. I did have to call technical support about exporting files and they talked me through it. Being in control of all my data is something else I find useful. Everything is in the same place and I can access the data about volunteers and opportunities at the press of a button.

What advice would you give to anyone considering using V-Base?

It's definitely a good idea to give it a go. It's certainly worked for us and has increased the range of people we're in contact with. Hospices tend to have quite a traditional image and people normally only think of volunteering directly with patients – but that is, in fact, only a small proportion of what's available. Being able to advertise other roles online has brought us people from a different background and a broader geographic area who might not have thought of volunteering with us in the past.

Heather Allen - Manager, Volunteer Centre Dacorum

What do you like most about using V-Base?

V-Base was devised by someone who really understood what we do. It covers our day-to-day work in a straightforward and logical way.

Which functions do you use most often?

We use everything: daily recording of volunteers; opportunities and organisations; the activity log; the reporting function (particularly good for reports to funders); and, most importantly, the calendar function.

Has V-Base changed the way your organisation works?

Definitely! The calendar function enables efficient management of information. We have a different staff/volunteer combination in the office every day, so it enables messages to be carried forward and for us to field phone calls, enquiries etc. in a businesslike manner with all the previous information to hand. Pre-booking follow-ups is a great function too. It enables any of our volunteers to walk in and immediately have a job to do.

How many people in your organisation use V-Base?

Four members of staff and six volunteers. It's quite intuitive to learn. Most of us have taken V-Base training days with Do-it and picked up new tricks each time. We now feel confident enough to share our knowledge with any newcomers. We have found that a non-networked laptop is useful for training purposes and to let learners play without fear of messing up the master records. We back up onto memory sticks daily – a different colour for each day of the week!

Cath Bavage - Manager, Volunteer Centre Tower Hamlets

How long have you been using V-Base?

We've been using it fully since April 2006. It took us about a year to load up all of our organisations and opportunities, which we needed to do before we could start entering volunteers and using V-Base as a matching tool.

What do you like most about V-Base?

The best thing is having opportunities and volunteers stored electronically in the same place. The matching facility is great. It's also good to be able to have linked access databases to do standard access queries. It is helpful to be able to print out or email PDFs to organisations so that they can check them and send us updates.  

What difference has it made to the way your organisation works?

We can now keep tabs on organisations and volunteers, and follow things up better. 

How many people in your organisation make use of V-Base?

All five of the staff team here use V-Base.

How important is online volunteer recruitment to you?

It's become very important to us. Over half of the enquiries we receive about volunteering come from Do-it. In particular, it has helped us to reach communities who we weren't previously reaching, especially people who are not confident speaking English on the telephone and prefer to communicate in writing.

How to apply for a V-Base account:

If you would like to apply for a V-Base account please contact the Partnerships Team. Please also get in touch if you would like to receive more information about how V-Base works. We can also send your organisation a demo disc, enabling you to try V-Base for yourself.