Becollective - A new opportunity to connect and volunteer

A project led by the Rotary Club of Central Melbourne and developed through Swinburne University.

What is Be Collective?

Be Collective is a digital gateway to maximise promotion and volunteers for your Club projects. It has practical tools to help you manage groups of people as well as run events and projects it also is easy to find opportunities to volunteer. It is an integrated, networked hub for exchanging people's time, skills, knowledge, resources and financial support to channel it to where it matters most.

How do you join Be Collective?

Joining is easy. Head over to becollective.com and click the join button. The process is self-explanatory from there. To get the most out of the platform it's best to fill in each of the fields with as much detail as possible and upload a picture of yourself. You will need to create a profile as an individual before you can create your group page don't worry you can assign ownership and admin rights to other people in your team at a later date. If you still have questions you can view the Be Collective guide.

How secure is the data of our organisation and our volunteers?

Be Collective has been built with data privacy and security at the forefront of the priorities. They use SSL secure data in transit, which means that the data is encrypted at every stage. Additionally, the data is hosted by Amazon Web Services, one of the most trusted and secure data facilities in existence.

Users are also able to determine whether their profile is able to be viewed by others.

How do I invite people to join my group?

Be Collecive have built a tool into the platform that allows you to upload a CSV file with a series of email addresses. Each person will receive an email notifying them that they've been invited to join your group on Be Collective. The invite tool is located on the group management screen. You can access this by clicking 'Groups' on the right hand side and a CSV file can be created
in excel by nominating 'CSV' as the file type when you're saving the document. The extension will then change to '.csv'.

How do I create a profile, group or event?

There is a handy suite of guides to help you out with these tasks!

Can I control the privacy of an event or volunteering opportunity I create?

Yes, whenever you create either of these there is a toggle that will allow you to create the opportunity as private. This means only people that are members of your group will be able to see this event and the opportunities attached to it.

What kind of volunteering opportunities can I create?

Event volunteering: You can create volunteer opportunities that sit under a broader event. An event can house multiple opportunities and shifts that fulfil a variety of roles that will ensure the success of that event.

One off volunteering: A one-off volunteering opportunity can be created under your group if you need someone to come in and help out on a specific day or time. This type of volunteering isn't a regular commitment from either you or the volunteer.

Task based volunteering: Task based volunteering allows you to create a volunteer role under your group or event that may not need to be performed during a specific time period.

Part time/recurring volunteering: If you require a volunteer (or a group of volunteers) to do a job for you regularly (for example; each Wednesday afternoon) you can create a part time opportunity. These opportunities are best for volunteers committing regularly over an extended period of time.

Expression of Interest: An expression of interest can be used when you're wanting to obtain a group of interested people before defining the exact type and frequency of a volunteer opportunity. This could be useful for Rotary Clubs in the early stages of getting a project up and running.

What's the cost?

The basic platform is free. There is also a premium version which provides a layer of management information that organisations using the platform intensively would likely use. It costs $5/member/yr.

Wouldn't it be fantastic to maximise the numbers of volunteers for your Club projects, both Rotarians and community.

Also to have a platform to allow your members with a passion for particular projects, you don't have in your Club, to fulfil that need by assisting another Club with their projects.

Clubs often miss out on attracting and keeping members when their expectations on volunteering cannot be met. Use Be Collective to meet those needs.

Want to know more? contact: Marjorie Gerlinger, marbern@bigpond.net.au, 0419 302 109