Helping volunteers get to know Age Concern

Naturally, all charities feel a responsibility to their supporters to keep their administration costs to a minimum. Age Concern is committed to making sure that for each pound donated, 98% goes directly where it matters - to the people who need help most - and they are lucky to have a team of highly motivated volunteers working with them.

However, with over 200 new volunteers every month, all of whom need to be made familiar with Age Concern’s policies and practices, they could be facing a huge training bill. This is compounded by the fact that many volunteers work occasional, irregular or part-time hours and are rarely in the same place at the same time, making classroom-based training a logistical nightmare.

Using online training to keep costs down

Age Concern felt that an e-learning solution was the answer and decided to create an online training programme that covered volunteering, health and safety, equal opportunities and confidentiality.

It was essential that the programme was specifically suited to Age Concern’s volunteers, resources and culture. With a good track-record in the collaborative development of high-quality e-learning courseware, Brightwave was chosen to manage the project and ensure that it was both intuitive to use and quick to access over low bandwidth connections.

A close working relationship between Age Concern’s subject matter experts and Brightwave’s development team helped translate learning points into interactive ideas sorted into easily learnable slices. By using BILD* Brightwave’s proprietary development tool, costs were kept to a minimum. Brightwave Managing Director, Charles Gould explained, “We have demonstrated that the programme can be delivered at a cost that makes it a realistic and affordable option for a charitable organisation.”

Creating value across the organisation

Age Concern Training and Development Manager, Paul Devlin, said that the new programme is of enormous value. “Brightwave has produced a programme that has an excellent look and feel and covers a good breadth of content. They have come up with something that will, I'm sure, benefit others in the federation.”

(* formerly WavePool)