Demelza Hospice Care for Children

BACKGROUND

Demelza provides specialised care and support for children and young people who have serious or terminal conditions. From diagnosis to end of life and bereavement, Demelza cares for young people and their families across Kent, South East London and East Sussex in the UK.

The organisation is named after Demelza Phillips, daughter of Derek and Jennifer Phillips, who tragically passed away from a brain tumour at the age of 24. Demelza was inspired by the work of the Acorns Children's Hospice in Birmingham, where she had previously worked. This inspiration was passed on to her parents who had the vision to establish a children’s hospice in the South-East of England and launched it in 1994. They opened Demelza Kent in 1998, followed by Demelza South East London in 2009. Demelza has over 1,000 volunteers helping across two hospices, a community team, fundraising and 28 shops.

Jade McManus, Voluntary Services Officer, has worked in the volunteering department at Demelza Hospice Care for Children since 2016. She manages and recruits volunteers who work directly with families.

Before consolidating systems by switching to a volunteer management software (VMS) solution, Demelza used a mix of systems: donor management software (used by their fundraising team), spreadsheets, paper/Google application forms, and MailChimp, to name a few. “We relied heavily on paper for communications with our volunteers and internally between departments,” explains Jade.

CHALLENGES

Having to rely on systems not designed for volunteer management, like the donor management solution being used and spreadsheets, Demelza was in dire need of a dedicated VMS that could empower its volunteer programme to take hold of the reigns.

Key Pain Points:

• Everything was done manually, which amply consumed staff time and required several workarounds to get the work done.
• Volunteer data could get lost or corrupted.
• Time was wasted because documents and information were all in different places.
• No control or access to edit the main database, so information would take longer to correct.

There was a clear disconnection between systems and where information was stored. This posed a challenge for Managers who could not perform their duties effectively. Jade recalls, “Managers in the shops could not see volunteer information as it was stored in individual computer drives. For example, volunteer contact details were stored in a donor management solution, training was monitored from different spreadsheets, and things such as health information was scanned to files on company computer drives which were only visible to the admin team and not accessible to Managers.”

When Jade used the ROI Calculator to determine how much time was being spent operating in this manner, it revealed that her team was going to save around 1,376 hours per year on tasks that could be automated via a volunteer management software solution.

Here’s a breakdown on how much time was spent in various tasks before using Better Impact:

ROI Calculator Data

JOURNEY

In 2016, the volunteer services team began talks about using a solution specifically designed for volunteer management – a VMS – and moving away from inefficient and disconnected systems. A budget was approved for a VMS and by early 2017, Jade and her team started on their journey to find a VMS.

A lot of research was conducted, which began by consulting other organisations (like theirs – hospices) to learn which tools they utilised and their perceived benefits and drawbacks.

From there, Jade explains, “we arranged for five VMS companies to provide demonstrations for the whole team so we could visually compare what would work best for us as an organisation.”

Given that Demelza had many departments and managers, it was critical for them to find a VMS that could restrict information access across the organisation. Jade's decision to go with Volunteer Impact was heavily influenced by the software’s ability to offer different security levels to different administrators.