Dundee Volunteer and Voluntary Action (DVVA)

Organisation Profile

Dundee Volunteer and Voluntary Action (DVVA) is an independent charity that aims to ensure the third sector (charities, social enterprises, community, and voluntary groups) is robust, resilient and delivers high quality services for the people of Dundee.

They provide a wide range of support to third sector organisations and have expertise in a wide range of skills and topics including governance, funding, legislation, policy, planning and problem solving. They have a primary role in ensuring the continuation and development of a vibrant third sector in Dundee.

Challenges

DVVA faced quite a unique challenge as they have recently merged two local voluntary sector organisations into one. This presented quite a task in bringing together their existing communications infrastructure into one unified solution. The organisation was referred to GoodCall by another local third sector group who thought they could benefit from some support and advice. Alice Kirkwood, Finance Manager said:

“As we were in the process of merging two organisations together – mobile was an area that had kind of been neglected in the past. We had two different providers so it was more a process of figuring our how we could align them in a way that would be cost effective and beneficial to the organisation.”

Alice had found it quite difficult to ‘shop around’ for different options and found that her current provider was very focussed on retaining their business without really addressing their new needs.

“It’s quite hard as a bigger organisation to shop around – when we called our current provider, they were really trying to keep our business and pull us into a new contract right away. It made it quite hard to seek out and consider different options. As an individual consumer I think it’s a lot easier to compare with different tools online, but when you have multiple lines or are on a business contract, they make it quite difficult to work out if you are getting the best deal.”

The GoodCall Solution

GoodCall set up 38 lines for the organisation and managed to save DVVA around £6,395 on the lifetime cost of their contract. Their mobiles are used across a wide range of roles, from community outreach to managerial level. Alice said:

“We also asked for a quote from our existing network provider to make a comparison… It was over double what GoodCall offered us which was quite a shock. GoodCall really helped us to assess our actual needs and we felt we were getting a personalised deal, and not just being sold the most expensive product!

Our Community Hubs, which help manage local foodbanks, are supported by Community Engagement Workers. Many of these users are lone working in the community so the mobiles are really important for keeping them safe. Due to everything happening with COVID-19, it has also assisted us in the transition to homeworking and it’s been a vital communication tool to keep our staff and volunteers connected at this time.”

Impact

Not only are the organisation benefitting from a fairer and more transparent deal, but their mobiles are now being used to develop and establish a new mental health hotline for vulnerable people in the community. With the transition to homeworking, it has made this even easier for their growing mobile team and allowed them to stay connected. Alice said:

“Our Mental Health Engagement Team have also been using their phones to help set up a phone helpline for people experiencing difficulties or concerns during this hard time, so that’s been a really positive outcome for us.”

She also noted that GoodCall’s monthly reports, which clearly outline spending and usage for all DVVA’s mobile users has been a great asset. It has made usage information that was previously unavailable easy to understand and utilise:

“It is so helpful for us to understand actual usage, particularly data – as often you really have no idea how much data people are using. To sit and analyse that yourself, that can take so much time. We were able to identify issues of overspend including when individuals had gone way over on their inclusive minutes and have dealt with that as it arose. We have already recruited some new staff and needed to add on some new lines – it was very simple and quick.”

Recommendation

“I would definitely recommend GoodCall to other third sector organisations. We chose GoodCall not only because we feel it is important to support a social enterprise provider – we know that money is being returned to the third sector and we ended up with a better deal. It’s a great thing to know charities are getting value for money with their mobiles.”

Alice Kirkwood, Finance Manager, DVVA

You can read more about the fantastic work of DVVA on their website: https://dvva.scot/