What does your organisation do in one paragraph?
The Sub Rooms is an arts and community venue and registered charity situated in the heart of Stroud. We are committed to providing a diverse range of music, workshops, theatre, comedy, and plenty more to our community and to visitors further afield.
What were your challenges before approaching RotaCentral?
Having a ‘live’ interactive easy to use system whereby volunteers could see what volunteer shifts were available, sign-up, have a record of what they were down to do.
Enabling colleagues to easily see what volunteers they had, when Vol Co-ordinator not there.
Time spent putting together calendars of volunteer need, sending these out to volunteers, going through emails to see who could do what, contacting volunteers to say – “we have 5 people interested in this and only 1 interested in something else” and having to decide fairly who does what.
Keeping track of what volunteers had done, who had volunteered, how many hours etc without manually having to look through records.
What Rotas do you use RotaCentral for?
Our volunteers have signed up to support the Sub Rooms and also the Sub Rooms is trying to act as a community volunteer ‘hub’ whereby our volunteers also support our Stroud festivals and smaller arts venue, Lansdown Hall.
We have a Sub Rooms rota which is largely front-of-house shifts for the Sub Rooms, but which we can also add things to such as cleaning help, flyering help etc.
We have a Lansdown Rota which our Subs volunteers can also sign up to FOH, bar etc shifts at Lansdown Hall
We have a Festivals rota, which our Subs volunteers can also sign up to and anyone organising a festival who needs additional volunteers, sends me details of their festivals – e.g., Stroud Book Festival, Theatre Festival, Christmas Tree Festival and I can add their need to this rota. Generally, this is front-of-house or stewarding.
How many administrators use RotaCentral?
The Volunteer Coordinator is the main admin, and we have 4 additional admins who can access the appropriate rotas applicable to them.
How many volunteers do you have using the system?
We have approximately 60 volunteers using the system.
What difference has RotaCentral made to your organisation?
It has made it so much easier, quicker and slicker to promote need for volunteers and as a simpler system, it has vastly increased sign-up by volunteers – making it easier to fill volunteer roles. The ability to have more than one rota and enable other admins to keep track of volunteer sign-up for events also makes it easier for me – as a part time employee – to ensure people have the right info they need when I’m not around. It has also made it easier to keep track of volunteer hours and which volunteers have been most active for stats.
Our volunteers have been hugely positive about the system and often give me feedback about how easy and straightforward it is to sign up and keep track of their volunteering. It has contributed to volunteers feeling and expressing that their volunteer experience with us is a very positive one.
I think the main benefits come to me as Volunteer Coordinator and to the volunteers, but our organisation also benefits because I have more time to focus on other aspects of my role and because we get a greater sign-up of volunteers which means we have more help and support at our events.
Do you have any statistics/data on how using RotaCentral has impacted your organisation?
32 of our volunteers have given the Subs 430 hours of their time volunteering front-of-house and in the Box Office between Sept and December last year and an additional 80 hours to the Lansdown Hall and Stroud Festivals.
Would you recommend RotaCentral to other organisations?
Yes, I would recommend RotaCentral.
How has RotaCentral supported you in helping to achieve your goals?
Thank you for all your help in setting us up on RotaCentral, the system has made it so much easier to engage our volunteers and fill our volunteer shifts. It has been really positively received by our volunteers.
Case Study: RotaCentral has a positive impact on how The Sub Rooms manage and track their volunteers