Name: Visualising First Class Volunteer data within Blackbaud solutions with the Rosterfy integrated partnership
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T14:00:44.605Z
Duration: 29 min 36 s
Description: Visualising First Class Volunteer data within Blackbaud solutions with the Rosterfy integrated partnership

Transcript for "Visualising First Class Volunteer data within Blackbaud solutions with the Rosterfy integrated partnership": Hello, everyone, and good afternoon. Welcome to our latest in our Single Source of truth webinar series about how you can bring your data from multiple sources of information into Raiser's Edge NXT. This is the sixth session in our series, and, hopefully, you've been able to join us for some of the other sessions so far, including integrations with, other solutions such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, email marketing solutions, and more. This series is all about showcasing how you can connect your data in more visible and actionable ways and seeing the incredible powerful integrations available through Blackbaud extensive partner network. Now today, we're very excited to spotlight one of our solutions for Rosterfy. As over 3,000,000 volunteers and staff around the world already on the platform, Rosterfy brings about some first class volunteer engagements with intuitive access and deeper volunteer detail, giving you the opportunity to capture a truly first rate volunteer engagement pathway and experience for all of your volunteers in bringing that data seamlessly into races edge NXT. Now before we cross over to our lovely partners at Rosterfy, I'm gonna share a few very quick housekeeping tips. If you joined us before on Goldcast, this will all be far too familiar for you. But if you haven't yet joined us on Goldcast, then please do take a moment to join me on this. So, security announcements, eyes, front, and read the safety card in the seat in front of you. Audio for today's webinar is going to be broadcast through your computer speaker system, so you should have had the opportunity to test that when you first came in. That will go to a speaker, in your laptop or your Bluetooth connection plugged in headphones, whatever you might have. You can adjust that with the cogwheel down the bottom if you need to. You can refresh your browser for any audio or technical issues that you see today. If you have any challenges at all, please do, jump into there. Refreshing your audio, refreshing your browser, as I say, sorry, will allow you to kind of fix any glitches in your audio tech, but you can also, again, in the cogwheel in the bottom, launch our light mode, which will also improve your bandwidth if you have any challenges. You can also click on the CC button at the bottom. If you hover over hover over the video, you can click CC to engage our closed captions if you need that for any accessibility challenges. You can use the q and a, on the right hand side as you look at it to ask any questions of me today and see how I can help. So please do utilize the q and a for any of your questions, and say hello in chat. Whilst I can't answer too many questions in the chat because I can't pull the report afterwards on what's been done. Please let me know where you're from. It's always nice to know, but use the q and a for any questions that you have today. In the documents tab, we've also got a few little links for you. So a datasheet on what it's like to bring Rosterify and Raiser's Edge NXT together and what that starts to look like and a few additional resources available to you, including links off to Rosterify themselves and, their marketplace integration. And lastly, but not least, we do have a little survey that I'll fire at the end of today's session. It'd be lovely to know what your thoughts of today and, hopefully, how we can make things better for you. So without further ado, we're gonna get started with introducing our partners today. I'm very pleased to say that the lovely Sam has joined us from Rosterfy. He's gonna show a few, highlights of Rosterfy in action, and then we'll pass over to Tim, one of our solutions engineers here at Blackbaud, to look at the integration with Raiser's Edge NXT in detail. So over to you, Sam. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the single source of truth webinar series for Blackbaud. My name is Sam Bennett. I work for a company called Rosterfy. We've been Blackbaud partners now for the last two or three years, and we specialize purely in volunteer management and supporter experience. So I'll give you a bit of an introduction today as to who Rosterfy are and some of the work that we've done, and also how that connects with your Blackbaud database to make the best value of the data to hand, create a really engaging, supporter experience for everyone that wants to come and help with your charity and what that could mean as well for your schemes that you support, your initiatives, and also for your fundraising efforts as well, as we can see some some great difference being made and some some great customer stories to tell in this space as well. I'll try and keep it fairly short and sweet. So we'll do about twenty minutes of of content here for today. And then what I'll do is I'll leave my details at the end. So feel free to get in touch with us directly or with your Blackboard account manager if you have any questions at all about Rosterfy. So Rosterfy have been in the market now for the past eleven years. As I said, we are specialists in volunteer management. So our mission statement as an organization is to connect communities to events and courses courses that they are passionate about through volunteering. So we've worked in a whole range of different volunteer programs from large mass scale events organizations, citywide volunteer programs, a huge mix of different charities and music and arts festivals as well. So real wide span of of different opportunities that you can volunteer with through the Rosterfy platform. We've operated volunteer programs now in 35 countries, around about thirteen, fourteen different languages for the volunteers, and we're very proud last year to have surpassed a 100,000,000 volunteering hours powered through our Rosterfy platform. So, we knew what know what good looks like when it comes to volunteering, have lots and lots of expertise in this sector with a team of passionate volunteers themselves as well who help to engage customers around how they can better create that supporter experience. So just a quick, spread of some of the different charities that we support. As I say, we do operate across the globe. I'm actually speaking to you today from our London Bridge office, where the majority of our customers sit. That's our UK based team. But we also have teams down in Australia, in The Middle East, and across The US as well. So across all different time zones and a real wide mix of different programs that we support in different countries, lots of different causes, and all kinds of shapes and sizes for organizations as well. Many of the customers that we work with are also Blackbaud customers, so they do benefit from the two way integration that we have with Razer's Edge NXT, which provides that joined up support supporter experience and joined up data across the organization, which can make a really powerful difference. Just to call out a couple of examples on this on this slide in front of us, we've seen the likes of British Heart Foundation who have more than quadrupled their volunteer conversion rate, which means that four times as many of their applicants who apply to volunteer with the charity actually go on to volunteer, and that's because we've created a quicker, easier, more engaging volunteer experience. We also have some great stories like the likes of WaterAid where their volunteers will go out, and spread the mission of WaterAid and have to absolutely go and fundraise and and be a brand ambassador for the charity. And in 2024, WaterAid volunteers donated £25,000, to the charity themselves just as the volunteer network. So we see lots and lots of crossover between fundraising and volunteering, but it's all about joining up that supporter experience and creating that really welcoming, inclusive environment for volunteers to come into, feel connected, have a good time, and be educated about the work that the charity is then doing. So a little bit about the background of how people engage with charities in The UK. We call them supporters because they can support an organization in many different ways. So they might come and volunteer their time this year. Next year, their life circumstances might change. They might have a job. They might have different family situations or have to move, for locations for work or something like that, but they could still be connected to your charity. So it's all about joining up that supporter experience, making sure people feel welcome, making sure they feel appreciated, and showing volunteers how they can support the organization. And as I say, that might be through volunteering. But if they're not able to volunteer at the moment, can they come and fundraise for you? Can they donate some money? Can they share a petition? You know, what could they do that would be a useful, support or experience for you as an organization and what could give them some value? When you look on the right hand side there at the graph, this is actually from The UK giving report. How do, volunteer you know, how do people find out about the volunteers sorry, the charities that they donate to? A lot of the time, it's either through personal experience or friends and family. So actually, around 60% of volunteer sorry, 60% of donors will find a charity through some kind of personal experience or from a personal connection. So it's all about making sure that when someone comes to help your charity, they generally have a reason for wanting to come and do so. So when they're coming to your website and looking to engage with the charity and help in some way, you've gotta find a way to make them feel appreciated, find a way to talk their language and make them feel really comfortable and included and and find ways for them to help. And what you'll see on the top right hand side there is the number of people in The UK who did a charitable act last year. So you can see there's a mix of people giving goods, so that might be people donating clothes to a charity store. It might be sponsoring someone. It might be donating money. It might be fundraising for the charity or volunteering, or they could be doing a mix of some of those things. So seventy five percent of people in The UK population in 2024 did something charitable in that year, and it's all about just making sure that we're engaging with our donors, we're engaging with our supporters and our database in a way that means they can support the charity this year in some way, shape, or form. The other thing that we see really commonly is that volunteers, 79% of them will donate to the organization that they volunteer with. So that makes a lot of sense. Right? If someone's coming to volunteer with you, as we've established, they probably have a personal experience or or some kind of reason for coming to volunteer on the date. They also get to see, firsthand what the charity is doing and how the charity can benefit people in their local community. So those are the sorts of people, those are the sorts of supporters that when they come to donate money, they generally will donate it to that charity they volunteer with. Volunteers also generally donate more money, so 56% more than those who don't volunteer, And most volunteers will only donate with one organ sorry, only volunteer with one organization. So the idea is that if a volunteer decides they want to come and help with charity, they might engage with two or three that's that feel connected to them. But, ultimately, they're gonna go with the one that was the most welcoming, the quickest to respond, and gave them that great experience. And the likelihood is they're not then going to engage with some of the other charities they might have reached out to. So it's all about how do you create that great experience and create advocates where volunteers can enjoy their experience, donate in many ways, and connect with their friends as well. In terms of supply, what you'll hear from charities across the board, and this will impact fundraising teams greatly as well, is that volunteering people volunteering regularly is falling. So across the, The UK over the last yes. There's an established trend now over the last decade or so. Volunteering year by year is falling in terms of those that are are are regularly volunteering. And as we know, that could be a mix of different factors that, you know, the cost of living crisis, people having to go back to the office and work jobs, lots and lots of different, obstacles that could be in the way of someone being able to volunteer regularly, lots of barriers as well that that could be in their way and that stop them from putting their hand up to volunteer. On a slightly more positive note, though, we are seeing more, a bit more of a drive in in demand. So, actually, when you look at Google searches, when you look at AI searches and trends at the moment, we are seeing more and more people are looking for and searching for ways that they can come and get involved with charities and volunteer. So at the same time as that drop off in volunteer rates, we're actually seeing more and more people searching for opportunities. So, again, leads us to believe that we need to create that great experience so we can actually unlock some of this demand and get more people in front and and volunteering. The other thing we are seeing is that 69% of young volunteers, that's 18 to 24 year olds, have expressed an intention to volunteer. We're also seeing more and more people volunteer for the first time, including in the NHS, which has seen, 1,300,000 volunteers volunteer for the first time recently. So we are seeing people looking to get involved, and we are seeing that that demand in the population. But as I say, it has to be a great experience for volunteers to come through. So what we do at Rosterfy is we create a really modern solution for volunteer management. So we have a volunteer mobile application where people can log in to see opportunities and apply to opportunities from their mobile app. When someone comes to volunteer, typically, the mix of different roles and events that they can help with will have different sign up steps. So some of those, charities that we support have really, really sensitive volunteer roles where they're offering, very personable support or they're working with young people, vulnerable people. And a lot of the time that means the steps have to be done. Training, forms, reference checks, background checks, all of those sorts of things might have to be done prior to someone coming to give their time for free. And as you can imagine, that can be a really disjointed and slow, clunky experience, lots and lots of admin for the charity, but also high high levels of dropout rate for the volunteer because they can't see what's happening. You know, they can't see where they're at in the application process. They can't see what else they have to do in that process, and they also find it quite hard, slow, and clunky to actually get through and navigate that that recruitment journey. So what we do at Rosterfy, we have a really integrated solution and a really up to date modern interface where volunteers can look into their mobile application or log on to an online portal, and we can streamline and automate steps such as training. Background checks are integrated with background check providers. We can schedule interviews through the platform. We can automate reference checks, and it's all geared around making that volunteer experience quicker, easier, clearer for them to understand where they're at. And for the charity, it's giving them the data to be able to track and see, volunteers that are through their different application funnels. So we cater for the end to end volunteer journey from putting adverts out there on TikTok, on Instagram, at fairs, at university fairs, and so on. You might have, QR codes now on sign up screens or job posting, screens out out there on your website. And we really track how many people are engaging with those screens, how do we, use the right wording and tailor the messaging to get more and more audiences signed up from different demographics, maybe from universities or from corporates, and then how do we create a really, really fast and easy experience recruiting the volunteers, training them, and then ultimately scheduling them. Once the volunteers come to help, there's also the ongoing engagement as well. So how do we suggest opportunities to them that are a great fit? How do we reward and thank them for the work that they've done and recognize the contribution that they've made? And also clearly elaborate to the volunteers the difference that their volunteering hours make. So a lot of that can come into the reward and recognition aspects of the system, but also in the insights and impact reports that we can run. We can really show volunteers the difference that they're making, but also go and apply for more grants, more funding on the base of the impact that we're able to demonstrate through the platform. So just thinking a bit more holistically, one of the things that we will will work with you on whilst we're a expert kind of software company, we also have a team of experts who are really, really, ingrained in the volunteering space and know know what good looks like when it comes to volunteering. So we can work with you and consult you on who are your volunteers, what motivates people to sign up in the first place, which demographics are we looking to engage with, and where can we reach those demographics. So that means that we can collect feedback from your volunteers from surveys in the platform. It means we can have different registration forms and role postings out there in the market with different messaging. So for example, you might have different sets of volunteer role postings at a university fair compared to what you might have, for example, at a local, elderly center or something like that. So different demographics of volunteers need different messaging to engage, and we can track every touch point with the volunteers and really track and see where volunteers are dropping out in the process, how do we make it faster and easier for them to actively, get through to volunteering, and we can make sure that we're removing any bottlenecks from that process as well. We've got live dashboards, live reports, and you're able to tweak and edit your volunteer experience to make it quicker and easier for volunteers to come to help with your pro your program. The other thing that we can do, because we have the mobile applications and the portals, we can tell a story. So you can be very deliberate about, what your volunteers see when they first sign up, what kind of content your supporters see. So if you wanted to have, videos in your portal, if you wanted to have articles and letters and things that go out to volunteers explaining what's happening with the charity and ways that they can help, You can very much create your own design and portal in in in our Rosterfy platform. What essentially happens is the volunteers have a portal and a mobile app that they can engage with, surface information that they need to see. And on a live basis, that data can then pull back into, Raiser's Edge. So if you're managing volunteers in Raiser's Edge at the moment, yes, of course, you can store the volunteer records and the data in Raiser's Edge, but there tends to be a lot of steps that happen outside of the system. So scheduling volunteers might be outside of Blackbaud. You might have reference checks and background checks happening elsewhere, training that's happening elsewhere, and ways of communicating with volunteers elsewhere as well. What we can create here is a really engaging journey, lots and lots of guided communications, and engaging portals where we share the right level of information whilst having a connected and joined up database in the back end too. So in summary, this offers a live two way integration between Blackbaud and Rosterfy. So no need to rekey data. You're not having to collect in volunteer forms. You're not having to track, what's going on with the volunteers. You can see on a live basis if one of your existing donors, one of your existing supporters has come to volunteer or if one of your volunteers has gone on to run a marathon or come to donate for you. So the idea is you've got one clear and accurate picture of every single supporter, and there's no need to keep rekey data between Blackbaud and some of your other systems that patch patchwork around Blackbaud. So you've got one joined up way of managing supporters of all kinds, whether that's fund funders, donors, volunteers, or people that come and help in in various different ways. So you get, more up to date data that can aid powerful, insights and connect your strategy when it comes to supporting with your, engagement with your supporters. You can also unlock the value of increased conversions. So as I said, we have customers in our database who have gone you know, been able to quadruple, triple, the volunteer conversion rates. So it means that when someone's signing up to volunteer, they're actively going on to support the charity, and that's because we're reducing the dropout and making it more engaging. So by creating that more engaged experience when they come through your website, we then have a more engaged database of supporters there for the long term that may support your volunteer program for many years and even decades to come. As I said, I wanted to keep that quite short and snappy, and I haven't shown any of the actual screens. We've got some great demonstrations, so I've got some demo links that I can send. I know the Blackbaud team also have some videos that they can share as well, which gives some short oversights of different features in the platform as well as how the integration works. We're very happy to support. So if you have any questions about volunteering or you're thinking about better ways to engage your volunteer and support the database, please do get in touch with either Rosterify directly. I've left my email address there at the bottom, sam.bennett@rostify.com. Or feel free to reach out to your Blackbaud account managers, customer success managers. They will all be, well too happy to to get get in touch with us, and, we can work with them on creating that joined up experience. So thanks very much for listening. We seem to have lost Sam a little bit short there. Sorry about that. But next up, I just wanted to give a very brief overview then of what that starts to look like in Raizen's Edge NXT, how we bring that data through. So here is Tim Bowden, one of our solutions engineers, talking through the integration with Rosterfy. This is a short overview video showing the setup and options available with the Rosterfy Raiser's Edge NXT integration. The first step is to connect to the Rosterfy integration using the manage applications option in the Blackbaud marketplace. Once this has been completed, then in the settings advanced integrations area of Rosterfy, it's possible to authorize the connection between your Razer Edge NXT database and Rosterfy. In the screen, you can see other integrations to Rosterfy can also be activated here such as Twilio for SMS or DocuSign connections. The authorization takes place via the authorized area under the actions button. This database has already been authorized, but if this was the first time, it will show the NXT database connected via the manage applications in the earlier part of the video. The actions area also allows syncing of data to be triggered manually if a media updates are required rather than waiting for the automatic updates to take place. All data can be triggered or specific areas such as constituent codes or consent channels. In the general tab of the integration screen, the address, phone and email types to be used with the Rosterify data written to Raised Edge NXT can be defined. Under these Raised Edge NXT custom fields can be defined to store the total number of hours, total number of shifts and total number of events volunteer data that will be synced to the volunteer records in the constituent custom fields tile in Raise Air Gen XT. These will automatically created by the integration with the data type of number when it is saved and activated. In the webhooks enabled section, it is possible to configure Rosterfy to listen for changes in data in Razer Gen XT and update the relevant Rastafari user profiles. The web hooks available are constituent added, updated, or deleted and solicit code added or changed. In the section below, a series of tabs are available to choose additional options to syncing data between Rosterfy and Rosterfy NXT with the first tab allowing different types of volunteers in Rosterfy to be mapped to constituent codes in Raizer's Edge NXT. With it possible to choose directly from the table in NXT on the right hand side of the screen. In the customer fields tab, it is possible to define options around IDs, whether to sync address and actions around consent data and preferences, and also around email opt ins and outs between the systems. The notes section allows a user to see the note types from Raiser's Edge NXT and match them to text fields in Rastafy to sync the data between these areas. In the actions tab, the same thing can be done with actions showing action types from NXT on the left hand side of the screen and matching them to key events in Rastafy. In this example, when a volunteer in Rastafy has agreed to the volunteering terms and conditions, as well as showing against their profile in Rastafy, this will be written as an action to their record in NXT. The consent screen lets the user see the current consent configurations from their Raiser's Edge NXT system and match these to the consent options available in Rastafy. As mentioned earlier, in the custom fields tab, there is an option Finally, in the relationships tab, data from Rosterify such as next of kin details can be mapped to specific NXT relationship types and this will bring the Rosterify data across to the volunteers relationship tile in NXT. With these configurations saved, the data will start to automatically flow between the two systems. Let's take a look at a volunteer record in Raiser's Edge NXT and see some of the key data points. The constituent code can be seen to help quickly identify records that are on both systems. In this case, we have the Rosterfy volunteer value. There is a Rosterfy custom tile that shows the three key metrics of total number of hours, shifts, and events. This data also writes to the custom fields defined through the integration setup and allows data to be used for selections whether via query or the list functions. Additional data such as the settings we saw in the actions and relationship tabs will also be brought across automatically. In Rosterfy, under a volunteer's profile, it is possible to see their Raiser's Edge NXT constituent ID. Okeydoke, folks. So there we go. So a bit of an overview for you then on our partners at Rosterfy and what it's like to see that volunteer information directly in Raiser's Edge NXT. Now, hopefully, it's given you a bit of food for thought and given you an opportunity to have a think about how you want to best manage your volunteer fundraising and engagement. And, yeah, if you'd like to know any more, then I've just launched a survey over the chat box, which I would love for you to continue to, to pop your feedback into, to tell me what you'd like to see in our future sessions. Are there other solutions that you would like to have a look at in the future? Now, a last note that today's session will have been recorded. You'll be able to, review that and come come back and have a look at this again at your leisure, both through the sign up form, that was, that was how you got to today's session, but also through the link that you used to access today. We'll also bring you back to watch it on demand. So a big thank you to our partners at Rosterfy for the in-depth view on how the integration works as well as Tim from our solutions team for his help as well. We're gonna bring us to the end of today's session. So thank you very much for joining us for the latest installment in our single source of tree series. Hopefully, you found today's session valuable in some way, shape, or form, and do keep an eye out for the rest of the series where we run every Wednesday at 2PM in UK, British summertime at the moment. We'll continue to highlight integrations with partners, such as Redarc, SmartThings, Zidna, and Almerbase, and all covering anything from donor engagement to marketing and case management, which we'll be looking at next week. So a big thank you again for being here with me today. I hope you captured some sort of, inspiration on how to be more engaging with your volunteers over the next, few months, particularly as we hit The UK summer season. I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunities there for that. So thank you so much for coming, and hopefully see you again at another of our single source of truth webinars. Take care. Bye bye.