Why Volunteer Tech Matters: A Conversation with Vome’s Ron Segev


Introduction

It’s my pleasure to spend time with one of our new NALTCV sponsors, Ron Segev, Co-Founder and Vice President for Marketing at Vome. Ron brings a wealth of experience in technology, branding, and innovation to the table — and now, through Vome, he’s helping reshape how volunteers and older adults connect through thoughtful digital solutions. In our conversation, Ron shares not only his professional insights but also his personal connection to long-term care and the values that guide his work. It’s a powerful reminder that when mission meets momentum, real change can happen.


Interview


A Strategic Response to a Community Need


Paul Falkowski: Ron, welcome. I really appreciate you taking time to talk with us today…

Ron Segev: Thank you, Paul. It’s great to be here…

Paul: First of all, I’m just really happy to learn about Vome and what you’ve done
with the app and what you’re doing with it. In my opinion, it’s something that’s very much needed everywhere as we are in the world of volunteerism, trying to track activity and gather data. But before we get into all that, I want to know, how did you get mixed up in all of this? What inspired you to found Vome? What’s some of the backstory?

Ron: Yeah, so the backstory is that actually, I’m not the initial founder, I’m one of the co-founders. The idea, and its inception, was not my idea. But the way we evolved definitely had to do with my input. The initial idea was founded by one of my longtime best friends, Sammy Fagen, who’s the Co-Founder and CEO.

So, this has all to do with the fact that in high school, we had mandatory volunteer hours as high school students that we had to complete to get our graduation accreditation. And then leading up into college, when you start applying for jobs in a very competitive environment, volunteer experiences tend to be something important to put on a resume.

We felt like we weren’t really educated enough on the importance of volunteer experiences, especially for resume building, just on that front, aside, obviously, from the benevolent aspect of volunteering.  On that front, the initial inception was to create a platform. I call it a three tier system, a three party platform. A high school student volunteer is a user, so is an administrator at a high school, an organization, or a long term care home is a user.

So in a triangular ecosystem, a student would be able to find a volunteer opportunity, you know, at an organization, and do the opportunity and digitally track their hours, where at the end of their shift, an e-signature would go to the organization and to the school administrator and to the parent of the student to sign off because that’s what we needed as high school students to get these hours approved.

So that was the initial inception. Call it a marketplace for high school students for volunteering and eventually college students, but then also a verifiable hour tracking system with a reporting mechanism.

From Student Tracking to Full Volunteer Management

Paul: Well, really any organization could use this though, right? I mean, it wouldn’t have to be high school, necessarily.

Ron: That was the initial inception. And then we said, okay, we will eventually be able to expand this into university campuses, into corporations where employees have a volunteer mandate. There was definitely an expansion plan there. So now we have built a great portion of our product. We had a contract with a school, I was already involved in Vome at this point, by the way, we had a contract with a big school board in Canada to get this off the ground. And then COVID hit.

And when COVID hit, we were no longer able to serve the market, like high schools, like any school district we were speaking to was shutting down the conversation, saying we’re not even administering volunteer hours anymore indefinitely.

So, we had funding, we had a product and we’re like, what are we going to do with our business? Are we shutting it down? Or are we going to move it forward? So that was our approach, and this is where I started to get really heavily involved in the evolution of Vome.

And it was to start surveying any of the nonprofits in our ecosystem, through the high schools and whoever we had recruited thus far. We knew that they were continuing to operate in the pandemic, and some to a lesser capacity, but some to a maximal capacity, like food banks, for example, and things of that nature.

We asked them, we said, “Okay, what kind of tools do you need to navigate the pandemic?”

That was the general question we asked. And we heard this, and we heard that, and we said, it’s tougher to communicate now and it’s tougher to track because no one’s coming in person.

So then we started chipping away and said, okay, well, we can build a feature for that and build a feature for that and make it something that you can actually use throughout the pandemic. That’s where we went deep into our tracking features.

So, we really fumbled into this space, I guess, is the overall conclusion. And we didn’t expect to be a quote unquote, just like general volunteer management software for the end client being the nonprofit.

But that is what we eventually evolved into as one feature led to the next into the next. And today we find ourselves being a one stop shop volunteer management solution. So, the initial idea was not mine, but the evolution of where we got to, I took the lead.

One other thing I’ll mention is that my first role at Vome was actually being a graphic designer. And I never really had much experience in graphic design. I was young, but I did have I always had this artistic creative mind in general.

So I was able to jump into graphic design and literally design the first iterations of our mobile app and our web browser platform and so forth. Of course, like over time, we hired developers and people to do this, and I didn’t have to be the graphic designer.

But that also really made me entrenched with the product from the early stages, which really helped propel me into my role today as VP of partnerships, you know, head of sales essentially, because I’m also a product expert. So that’s the long answer to your question.

Creating a Seamless Volunteer Experience

Paul: No, that’s a great answer. And so how does Vome help organizations improve volunteer engagement and program infrastructure?

Ron: So I would say engagement starts quite literally with the first touch point with a volunteer from the recruitment process, right? So when they submit that first application form, it’s really important for that to be a good experience for them because there’s actually statistics on applicant drop off rates before they even get to submit it.

They don’t want to submit this really extensive form or maybe it’s too difficult, it asks too many questions or right afterwards because they submit an application form and it goes into a black box and they’re like, oh, I’m going to submit this application form. And they’re not aware of what the next steps are and what’s going on.

So, the first piece of engagement is making sure that the recruitment process is transparent and Vome does a really, really good job at that where, you know, they submit a form. They’re now brought into an onboarding sequence. They get a notification for that. They’re seeing their onboarding journey in real time.

Every, every step along the way has a status, so they know exactly where they fall. And that is a really important thing to know. Now they have an easy access point to continuously engage with the organization, whether it’s through the convenience of a mobile app or a mobile browser interface.

That’s a really, really big plus of our offering, that is the accessibility aspect. And when you use a mobile app, I say accessibility is a big part of volunteer engagement. Volunteers are staying in the loop because of the nature of push notifications.

For example, there’s a new volunteer opportunity. There’s a new shift coming up that you’re eligible to reserve. There’s a new message from the administrative user. You now all of a sudden have one place to coordinate everything you want with the organization as opposed to the decentralized methods prior, like a mixture of text messages, phone calls, emails, and we all know that that’s cluttered with everything else that we do in our life.

So, there’s more to say on that, but those are some of the main points. If the volunteer can see the impact they’re doing literally through metrics and through what we call the certificate of involvement that each volunteer can generate in a split second, it’s like a resume of their volunteer history.

And the reason why we offer that feature is because we came from that high school background. If you remember, volunteers being able to access their data or their volunteer footprint was really important from the beginning.

Paul: So that does help boost volunteer engagement.

Ron: It makes them want to come back, makes them want to do more. We have out of the box recognition features, like a badging system where they earn points for hours that they log. So, engagement really leads to the long term goal of retention. If a volunteer engages once, that’s great. We appreciate it. But it’s continuous engagement in a perpetual way that leads us to the word retention, retaining that person.

And Vome is really focused on bridging that relationship, making sure that the engagement leads to retention, which is the most important metric in my opinion.


Chat Features that Foster Belonging


Paul: Well, you know, coming from the standpoint, our paradigm, I think about the operations of a long term care community and just how a day goes. It can be just unpredictable. And so that person managing the volunteers might be able to put a message out and say, “Hi” to all the volunteers or say, “Hey, there’s something going on you need to know.” Maybe you shouldn’t come today. Or we have some openings here. Or is there someone that’s supposed to come to visit Mrs. Smith, and now they’re not coming. Is there anybody available today at two o’clock?

And so, you have this wonderful connection. And then also, what’s important to me is that the volunteers are in community and they feel like they’re part of something more, instead, they meet like-minded people. So, this community is formed as a result.

Ron: Absolutely. If I could jump on that wagon for a second. One of the unique features we offer in our space is a chatting feature within the platform where an administrator can put volunteers into group chats. Now, we didn’t reinvent the wheel. Chatting features have been existing for the last 20 years on Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram and et cetera.

But we are the first ones to do it, to bake it in, I should say, to a volunteer management software to create, to foster, to make it a community. So we offer that sense of community, of connectedness amongst volunteers. You are booked for a shift for today with a few peers.

You can chat with each other. You could share some photos afterwards. You can share knowledge. You are sharing a role with volunteers, not just a particular shift. You can be in a group chat for that. Share knowledge, share experiences, feedback, so on and so forth. So really, I think a chatting feature, instead of a large email chain, which is not so realistic, is a good way to keep that interactivity, so to speak.

Automation, Accessibility, and Efficiency


Paul: That’s great. So, what makes VOME different from the other volunteer management systems?

Ron: Yeah, so there’s a few highlight points here. There’s a lot of, you know, it’s all in the details sometimes as well. But I would say user-friendly and modern interface. You know, most of our competitors are more like legacy systems in the way that they look and feel.

Where we stand out is our extensive automation features, especially for the recruitment process. When someone submits an application form, based on the answer of their form, do X, do Y, do Z in the system, it automatically adds them to this onboarding process.

When they finish this onboarding process, it automatically approves them for this job, etc., etc. Automation is just streamlining the entire volunteer journey, and maybe the administrator doesn’t even need to lift a finger to that extent.

Paul: That’s great!

Ron: I would say just in and of itself, the onboarding sequence module, just the way we built our onboarding management system is unique for two reasons. It’s the sequential component, like laying it out in a step-by-step journey, and the volunteer being able to interact with it.

So, it’s not like an administrator needs to email you about step three of the journey. You already see it; you interact with it. When you do something, the administrator gets notified. So that really helps eliminate a ton of back and forth communication, and almost all of it at times.

And one of our case studies with a healthcare client made it so that after they switched from another system onto Vome, they managed to expedite their average volunteer onboarding speed by a factor of three. So, it was six to eight weeks to onboard a volunteer, down to one to two weeks when they started using Vome’s sequences module.

Balancing Connection and Compliance


Paul: Wow! Wow, that’s amazing. So, one of the things that’s kind of rattling around in my head, and it’s not in the list here, I don’t want to throw you a curve ball, but I’m going to ask it anyway. What about privacy?

And, you know, when the volunteers are chatting back and forth, one of the things here in the States is that they’re really hot on what people are texting back and forth concerning a patient’s condition. The privacy laws are pretty strict. So, is that considered at all?

Ron: You’re right. It is considered because our system is compliant, Paul, with the way that data is stored in the system, you know, like PII information is protected. We are HIPAA compliant, so on and so forth. Now, just to be clear, when a volunteer is interacting with another volunteer through a chat, for example, it’s never a private interaction.

There’s always an administrator overseeing the chat. And the administrator has the capability to delete messages. So that’s actually something more of a safeguard in place. If there was something inappropriately transferred, which, by the way, I’ve never heard of an example of that happening, actually, the administrator could delete messages.

Paul: Right.

Ron: Yeah, and you’re right. I think most people are careful about that.

Paul: But, you know, it only takes one incident, you know.

Ron: And also, an organization could ask a volunteer to sign a waiver and say, hey, if you do go past this line, we have the right to terminate your volunteer employment or something like that, right? They can make their own internal policy for what happens.

Paul: Okay. That satisfied me.


Balancing Connection and Compliance


Ron: I want to mention if you don’t mind the one question you asked about the differentiators, another one is the ability to take a ton of bulk actions in the system. It’s sometimes overlooked how important this is, but it’s a lot of different things that you can do to make sure that you’re not going to have to do that. In terms of the ability to take a ton of bulk actions in the system.

It’s sometimes overlooked how important this is, but like from any area of the system, being able to select multiple records and do multiple things all in one workflow, as opposed to more what we see in other competitor systems.

So, that’s something that we, that we took from other companies and like large CRM systems that are really doing data management and workflow management in a really massive way, so to speak.

Lastly, I’ll say it’s this component that we offer integrations. This is really important just to mention that on our premium plan called “Ultimate,’ you can integrate Vome with over thousands of applications because of the different integration methods that we offer.

And we’re also one of just a few volunteer software apps in the market that have a native integration with Salesforce. And that is a big need when it comes to stakeholder management and donor management. You want to synchronize your volunteer profiles with all of that. Vome offers you the tools to do that.


Shared Values, Shared Vision

Paul: Well, that’s amazing. Okay, so what, what drew you to partner with us within NALTCV?

Ron: Yeah, good question. I initially connected with Meridian,  (NALTCV board member), I found her on LinkedIn. I wanted to pick her brain about her experience using volunteer management solutions, just because I identified that she’s been in the space for 30 years, you know, in the long term care space, which is one of our niches, you know, and health care in general.

And I quickly found out from her that there weren’t adequate tools at her disposal throughout her time being in that space. That was her first thing. And so, she said long term care homes are a little bit behind technologically as well when it comes to volunteer software.

So that obviously that lit little light bulb in my head. And so, when I thought how Vome is well built for the health care industry as a whole, like some of our largest clients, our health care systems that have their own long term care homes and so on and so forth.

For me, the opportunity was clear, Paul, that NALTCV can be a voice for your own message. But to say, how do we get results for our message? What’s the means to the end, right? We need to incorporate technology. And I really thought that NALTCV could be a good voice for that.

Empower organizations with good tools and resources, help them operate more effectively. The nonprofits with limited budgets, they do need to invest a little bit in software to make themselves more efficient make a down payment, make a small investment for the eventual positive return on the investment. And if NALTCV can be a good voice for that, that’s the perfect partner for us.

Paul: And we’re happy to do that as well, because I think that and again, the reason NALTCV was created was to come alongside that person that’s managing volunteers, who often is also wearing several other hats as well, and do what we can to support them in whatever way we can.

And certainly, volunteer management software is one of the tools that they really need. And I’ve seen that there’s still people using spreadsheets, and you know, the telephone and it’s just, it’s just too bad.

Ron: Those are my favorite conversations. When I get onto a call and someone’s like, “I’m still using the spreadsheet,” I was like, “Oh boy, you’re in for one, like I’m excited.”



Understanding the Needs of Volunteer Managers

Paul:  What challenges do you think organizations face when they’re trying to manage volunteers well, especially in aging services?

Ron: So in my notes here, I just wrote down six different points. I can elaborate on some more or less, but you know, I think what was important to identify was the ability to conveniently or easily match volunteer skills with client needs, right?

Like, aging services often need volunteers who can support sometimes special situations, so to speak, mobility assistance, dementia care, companionship, sometimes you need a certain type of person to be able to handle all that, right?

You know, a lot of platforms don’t necessarily offer you the right reporting tools or just data aggregation tools to make those inferences, those matching, right, those matching algorithms, so to speak.

So, volunteer recruitment and retention, I would say, is another one, right? So the ability to transparently convey to the volunteer the type of commitment that they’re getting themselves into, okay? Is it ongoing? Is it episodic? Is it seasonal? You know, just filtering out like mismatched applicants upfront is really important, I would say

Paul: Right.

Ron: So, you know, Vome is enabling all these different workflows for the administrator to make sure that the process is clear, and that will make it easier for the applicant, to again be on top of exactly what they need to do and what their commitment is, so that’s really important. Another thing I think these types of organizations face is just technology gaps, so I spoke about this earlier, right?

Paul: Right.

Ron: Aid service providers, sometimes they’re bogged down by fragmented systems, phone tag, Excel spreadsheets, manual coordination, you know, many like have low tech adoption because of budget and resource constraints, but the advantages that Vome is also coming in at a cost-effective rate, given that we also have a unique pricing model in our space that we don’t charge per volunteer, we only charge per administrative user, right?

So, you could scale your operation, like get more and more and more volunteers without paying an extra cent over time, which most of our competitors are not doing things that way.

Paul: Yeah, that’s great.

Ron: You actually asked me a question earlier about one of my other points here was about compliance, privacy, and safety, you know, just making sure that you have the right software that is compliant with HIPAA in the US, with PIPEDA in Canada, PII information, so on and so forth, and Vome takes that very seriously, and it’s very transparently documented.

Paul: Something else?

Ron: Yeah, I was just going to, I think I had like two other points, but I think that covers it for the most part. It’s the idea that providing a tool where the volunteers can really feel their impact, but sometimes outdated systems don’t give the volunteers that type of feedback loop, because there’s not features built in, and I did mention earlier why Vome is really good with that.

And I would say the last thing is just understanding, you know, the culture of an aging service organization.

So aging populations are diverse, and you do need to be able to train volunteers for those situations, even if it’s language, cultural knowledge, and living experience.

Analytics and Executive Dashboards

Paul: Right. And this is another question that just sort of popped into my head. I do a whole webinar on KPIs and putting the CEO dashboards together, instead of sending a six page report, but putting that data right in front of the CEO, because I think one of the big challenges is convincing that CEO that there’s an ROI on the volunteer activity that goes beyond that everybody was smiling and had a nice time, and we need those stories.

We need the stories, we need the pictures, but I think the leader in the front office that’s responsible for the budget and everything else wants to know what the return on the investment is. So, is there any capacity, maybe you already touched on this, for, let’s say, the activities professional who’s managing the volunteers that could generate something for her executive director in the front office?

Ron: Absolutely. We are not only offering the raw data reports which can be filtered and sorted to present in a fancy Excel spreadsheet, so to speak. But a few of our core reports and generally speaking on our administrative portal, you have an analytics component.

So really summarizing raw data and displaying it in a digestible and insightful format. And that’s, by the way, something that we’re continuously working on, because that’s one of the core pillars of our system.

It’s the data you can get out that proves that return on investment. So, we take that very seriously.

We have a ton of great tools today, but we haven’t stopped developing. We plan to keep going further and further and provide better graphics, pie charts, bar charts, which we already have but keep going further and further into that.

Paul: And just to digress one more time, since we’re kind of in this area. One of the areas of research that we’re working on is connecting the volunteer activities with our quality measures.

So here in the States, we have like 14 or 15 quality measures, for example, the use of anti-psychotics or hypnotics to manage people. Incident rate for falls and incident rate for severe pain and those kinds of things. And we did a small study in Nebraska, where we made those connections that where there were strong volunteer programs, then there was less use of medications to manage people.

There were fewer reports of severe pain and when you talk to the nurses, they know this anecdotally, you know, if somebody is getting regular visits, they don’t fall as often, you know, because they’re being stimulated. So, I’m just throwing that out there for you to, if you haven’t already thought about that.

Ron: I think what you’re alluding to is something that we discussed internally with the product team, which is something along the lines of outcomes, outcomes tracking, right? Meaning the volunteers are doing these are making these inputs, which is their time their effort, right? Like their physical presence, so to speak. What are the outcomes of that? Right? And what do we need to measure that against?

So I think that like that’s something that we’re very aware of Paul, I will say just transparently, we don’t have dedicated features for outcome tracking. But there are there are clients of ours that are using some backdoor solutions to achieve something similar.

A simple example is when they have a volunteer shift baked into the platform in the description of the volunteer shift, they’ll add a link to a survey form, right? So at least at the beginning, middle or end of a shift, someone does have that access point to fill out a survey form.

Now, once they want to get a report, all the data is there, right? Because Vome has a strong form reporting system, for example. So, there are ways to do it. But it’s a dedicated module in our system today and we plan on going deeper into that.

Paul: Because I’m always because I don’t have to convince the activity director that they need volunteers. It’s the person in the front office.

Ron: Absolutely. Because obviously, administering a volunteer program has its costs. Sometimes you have to hire someone, you have to provide some infrastructure for them, sometimes tools, sometimes right, all these kinds of things. So, you do need to make it a positive ROI. And it’s really a technology that can make you reduce the cost of administering volunteers.

Paul: Exactly.

Ron: You know, you make a small investment to get something greater in return.



From Missed Appointments to Meaningful Connections

Paul: Right. Okay, well, let’s move on. So do you have a story or an example that captures the kind of impact Vome hopes to make?

Ron: I do, actually. And I actually wrote it out in a story format. So I’m going to kind of go through my little story here.

Paul: Okay.

Ron: So it’s kind of a little bit for the imagination, but these are true stories, ultimately. Let’s just say before adopting Vome, some sort of aging service organization, maybe mid-sized, was facing a challenge. And every week, seniors missed critical appointments because no volunteers could be coordinated in time. So let’s just say volunteers were frustrated.

They had this organized schedule, scattered communication, unclear expectations, essentially. And staff were overwhelmed trying to manage hundreds of volunteers with spreadsheets and phone calls. So, let’s say a volunteer signed up to provide a ride for homebound seniors every now and then. And despite good intentions, they disengaged after multiple scheduling mix-ups.

Meanwhile, a senior client, ageing all alone, missed three medical appointments in a row due to a last minute cancellation, right? And eventually declined further help, which is the worst part. “I don’t want to bother anyone anymore,” right? “No one’s showing up for me” or something along those lines. So now imagine organizations in that state. I know it sounds like despair, but that’s what I’m putting out there.

Then let’s just say they adopted Vome. So, they built their volunteer opportunities in Vome using clear commitment types, role expectations, descriptions, so on and so forth. Recurring transportation shifts were published with automated reminders and safety requirements built in. Everything that a volunteer needs to know for that shift.

And volunteers were matched based on skills, certifications, availability, and completing onboarding in a quick way. So they’re able to always meet the supply, so to speak, or the demand, right? So, n the long run that volunteer keeps returning. They were matched to a senior client who, like, you know, everything’s aligning perfectly.

And with the scheduling reminders, waivers, streamlined processes, so on and so forth, everything seems to be smooth and meaningful from there on out. So that’s, again, the rough draft story that I kind of wanted to paint for you.

Paul: But that is true.

Ron: You know, I don’t have an actual anecdote from a client to validate this, but I’ve been in discussions with clients. I’ve heard of these stories and, wow, after the system happened, we saw a lot more consistency. We saw a lot more, you know, just everyone’s on the same page, so to speak. So that is the answer to that question.


Product Growth and Future Innovations

Paul: What’s coming up for Vome? What’s in the hopper?

Ron: Yeah, so I would say there’s like, when it comes to like, what’s next for Vome? Obviously, it’s growth, first of all, you know, we’re looking to grow into different markets always. You know, we have, we have specific target organizations such as healthcare, municipalities, large events, and certain organizations of that caliber. But we also want to keep micro tuning the system to better fit other operations, so to speak.

So, I just say growth and listening to customer feedback, like, we are not satisfied with where we are. We do want to keep growing. We’re not near our plateau. Secondly, I would say on that topic is enhancing workflows for group reservations and
group management. All of that might be less relevant to your audience.

It is relevant to a lot of our customers, corporate volunteering, you know, just group-based volunteering and just having better systems for that, better workflows, so to speak. And the last one I would say is related to something I mentioned earlier about our integrations, which is really like bridging the gap between the donor to volunteer relationship or vice versa, volunteer to donor relationship.

Providing more insights, more integrations with donor management systems to eventually unlock more funding dollars for the organization, better email campaigns, and so on and so forth. So now we offer the ability, but we would like to be a bit more of a knowledge hub for how to use best practices, what to do, how to set this up.



Paul: Well, that’s great. Well, listen, thank you so much for agreeing to do the interview and we’re thrilled to have you as one of our sponsors and look forward to a long and great relationship as we continue.

And, you know, for us, just from our standpoint, what’s happening in the nursing homes, volunteers are not “a nice to have.” They’re an essential part of the delivery of care. And having the right tools and resources is key to making that happen.

And so, I think that you and the work that you are doing really brings that capacity to the nursing homes that we’re reaching out to as well.

Ron: Thank you so much, Paul. It means a lot for us to hear that. You know, being in our space, naturally, you know, it feels good to wake up every day, knowing what the outcome of what I’m selling is.

I’m not, you know, I’m not selling socks or tables. I’m selling volunteer management software to help mobilize volunteers, which is has the greatest impact on any community. So that is nice to hear that, Paul. And again, I’m also looking forward to everything that we’re going to do together.

Paul: I’m really excited about this. Thank you, Ron.

Ron: You’re welcome!


Take Action: Empower Volunteers, Strengthen Communities


If you’re ready to elevate your volunteer program with modern tools that truly support connection, learn more about Vome and explore how their innovative volunteer management platform can make a difference in your organization.
👉 Visit Vome’s Website

And if you’re passionate about combatting loneliness and building authentic relationships in long-term care communities, join us at the National Association of Long-Term Care Volunteers. Whether you manage volunteers or want to become one, NALTCV is here to support you with training, resources, and a growing national network.
👉 Explore NALTCV at www.naltcv.org

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