About us
Covid-19 Volunteer Support Group Sponsored by SMS Speedway
Together we can!
Helping friends, neighbours and our society affected by Coronavirus requires organisation and working together.
Setting up a volunteer group can be difficult. There are no manuals, very little information is available on how to do it. It can be confusing with so many different people taking different approaches. There are some great ideas out there, but finding them and knowing how to apply them can be tricky and time costs lives.
That’s why we set up this group. It’s a resource centre for people wanting to set a volunteer group to help in this COVID19 situation as well as for people already running volunteer groups to get helpful hints, tips and ideas and share your own best practice and advice.
Together we can win.
“Our Mission is to help you, your family, friends & businesses through Covid-19. That’s why we have created this ‘information hub’ full of vital links, tips from real people and innovative tools to help you move forward.”
Together we can and together we will make a difference.
Our website provides vital information to help the general public, volunteers and businesses through this difficult time.
You can find out how to:
Set up a Volunteer Group
How to Volunteer
Learn how to make Scrubs & Masks
You can also find useful tips:
Caring for someone with Covid-19
Caring for yourself
Business Support
And so much more…
Our website also includes up to date local council details as well as registered volunteer groups so you can find extra support along the way.
We are here to help you. We aim to update our website to include all the latest information that people need to know. We also welcome new tips and ways to help others during Covid-19.
Our Mission
We are on a mission to help volunteers and businesses through Covid-19. We are here to give valuable information that can help to save lives and businesses. We are a communication and development company and we believe that the correct communication is key to helping people, saving lives and businesses.
This page is open to the public and completely free to use. Please see our privacy policy for more details.
Our Vision
We are always looking one step ahead. What could be the next problem and what positive solutions can we put in place to help ease the pressure. With this in mind we are now thinking about the months ahead as ‘Winter is coming’ we are in the process of developing a ‘ticketing system’ so no one will be left out in the cold.
Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter to see our latest updates.
Our Story
Covid-19 Volunteer Support Group and SMS Speedway
How We Got Started
Brad Kieser is director of SMS-Speedway, a company in Cumbria that invented the world’s first commercial text messaging service.
As the pandemic took hold in the UK, he transformed his company to focus on supporting volunteer networks – a decision he says was due to his experience on Cumbria Forum, a business growth programme run by Lancaster University Management School.
These are his words below.
When all the news was coming out of Wuhan China that Coronavirus was actually quite serious I was sat at Heathrow airport thinking about it and there was someone walking around the very full transfer lounge at Terminal 5 coughing and I just saw the number of people walking through where he had been coughing and the number of places that he had gone to and it struck me that we could have something very serious coming our way here. So, I was sitting thinking about what the impact could be for me personally with my family and with my business and my clients and the more I thought about it the more I realised that this could very seriously effect all of us. Luckily I had just come of the Cumbria forum from the University of Lancaster where they had told us all about how to pivot businesses and innovation and business strategy which was very useful and then I thought right I am going to apply this and see if I could pivot our company to help what I suspected was coming our way, because we are all about communications and the more I looked into how it would effect all of us I realised that this was as much a communications problem as it was a medical problem.
So myself and my team at SMS Speedway put a lot of time and effort into researching how volunteers needed help and Cumbria was particularly well placed because of how we had responded to the floods. We set about creating this website to be an information hub to support volunteers and charities and it has now been used nationwide to help those in need.
Then one day out of the blue I got an invite as a subject matter expert to advice for the government to take part in research and input that they were looking for. Since then I have also had subsequent requests for input coming from the lords as well as other various groups.
We aim to always be one step ahead to help you. We created a page about face coverings before it was made mandatory in the UK to wear them in public spaces because we knew that it would be coming and people would need to access this information quickly.
We have since shifted our focus slightly to help small businesses recover from the effects of Covid-19. We have created a help page for businesses with the governments ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme as the feedback we received showed that it was creating quite a lot of confusion when the restaurants were calculating bills and we heard that some businesses weren’t doing it because it is to complicated for them and others are finding the calculations very difficult. So we have created an online calculator that is very simple to use and we are encouraging all restaurants out who are finding it a challenge to come to our website and use the resources we have and to take part.”
We have continued with our research as we get a lot of feedback coming to us so we update all the latest need to know information regularly.
So that’s a bit about us and why we feel this group is so important. Please do get in touch via our ‘contact us’ page if you have any questions or would like to get involved.
Thank you.
Where We Are Now
Right now we are thinking about the future and what our communication and development company can do to help businesses moving forward into this new world.
Winter is coming and at the moment everyone is stood outside the doors observing social distancing rules. We are doing a ‘take a ticket’ system so when the weather changes and people need to be in cover you can schedule all your visitors to your shops and still keep the Covid-19 compliance going with social distancing, we will arrange all the scheduling of your clients coming in a controlled manor to your property.
We are also working on other various projects to improve our service. Please do look out for regular updates on here and on our Social Media pages.
This group really helped me to take advantage of the governments ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme. We now have lots of customers booking. Thank you.
About SMS Speedway
Sponsor
of Covid-19 Volunteer Support Group
Who are we?
We are a British company, the world’s first, original commercial text messaging service. Using unproven suppliers is a business risk. No-one else has our deep, long history and experience.
Communication with clients is time-critical. Reminders, marketing messages and customer service messages all have a defined time period after which they are no longer useful. Excellent communication is the edge that one business has over its rivals in a very competitive market. Good SMS usage is preferred by the majority of the UK’s mobile phone carrying population because it’s discrete, convenient and won’t disturb you if you are in a meeting or otherwise engaged. It’s also cheaper than a phone call and text messages can be delivered in bulk whereas a phone call requires additional staff members and additional calling fees.
Please visit our website to find out more.
Our Services – WATCH NOW
Become a Volunteer Today
If you have any skills that can help Covid-19 Volunteer Support Group move forward please do get intouch.
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