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Customer story: RSPCA
Empowering volunteers at the UK’s oldest animal welfare charity
The RSPCA is well-known for being supported by a large and dedicated volunteer community. Before adopting Access Assemble, they relied on manual processes and disconnected systems to manage volunteer recruitment, onboarding and coordination — making it increasingly difficult to scale, communicate efficiently and track activity as volunteer numbers grew. Here's their story.
Access Assemble
Animal welfare
Challenges
- Manual, paper-based processes slowing coordination
- No central view of 17,000+ volunteers
- Hard to track, scale and communicate
Solution
- Centralised volunteer management with Assemble
- Digital recruitment, onboarding and communication
- Mobile tasks and real-time reporting enabled
Impact
- 224% growth in volunteer numbers
- Tasks completed in weeks, not months
- Clear insights driving smarter volunteer strategy
Assemble has had a huge impact on the RSPCA. I had to pick a must-have feature, I really couldn't do without the recruitment tools.
Wild manual admin
With more than 7,000 volunteers supporting its national operations and another 10,000 embedded across its network of branches, the RSPCA depends on a large, diverse, and highly active volunteer community.
“Volunteers are crucial to the RSPCA, we couldn't do what we do without them. They help us in many ways here at West Hatch, including animal care duties like dog walking and cat socialising - and in our wildlife centres too."
Before choosing Access Assemble, the charity relied heavily on offline processes, spreadsheets, and disconnected systems to coordinate essential activities - ranging from wildlife rescue to fundraising and public-affairs campaigning.
These manual processes limited visibility, slowed communication, and made it difficult to scale operations effectively. As volunteer numbers grew, it became increasingly challenging to track applications, manage compliance checks, assign tasks quickly, and understand volunteer engagement trends across the organisation.
All paws on deck
Managing that many volunteers is a big job, and they needed the best available tools. To transform how volunteers are recruited, onboarded and mobilised, the team turned to Assemble.
Now, the platform centralises all volunteer data and simplifies every stage of the volunteer lifecycle.
"As volunteers’ needs change, we’re able to pivot and adapt our offerings to reflect this – and Assemble has helped us to respond quickly, whilst continuing to grow our volunteer community."
Like many other charities, the RSPCA’s volunteer journey begins with online recruitment through their website, where all available roles are listed and applications are submitted. Assemble then manages the full screening process - from references and background checks to interview invitations - ensuring every step is consistent, compliant and easy to administer at both national and local levels.
Once a volunteer is accepted, they receive a thorough induction and any role-specific training they need to get started.
After onboarding, the dedicated team places strong emphasis on ongoing engagement, keeping volunteers connected to the organisation’s work and regularly demonstrating the impact their contributions make to animals and communities across the country.
"We work hard with our volunteers to ensure that they feel truly really integrated into the Society and with the help of Assemble, we can focus on providing the best possible experience from beginning to end with us.”
Transformational results
The impact has been significant. Since implementing Assemble, they've seen a 224% increase in volunteer numbers, dramatically increasing capacity across its services.
“Assemble has had a huge impact on the RSPCA as an organisation and this is largely down to us making use of the full breadth of the software. Our Volunteer Coordinators love it too."
For example, a major research project — originally forecast to take ten weeks of staff time — was completed in just two weeks thanks to efficient volunteer mobilisation. Coordinators now have real-time visibility of who is available, what tasks are completed and how volunteers are engaging across the organisation. The features they love the most? Easy, recruitment and tasks, making everyone's work lives easier.
“I really couldn't do without the recruitment tools, they're worth their weight in gold! It just makes recruitment so much easier and standardised. The overall simplicity, and comfort knowing that nothing will be missed during the application process, has been game changing."
Staying connected
The team are using the news channel, which brings volunteers into Assemble - and their very own place to catch up on what’s going on at the RSPCA.
“One of our biggest challenges is how we communicate and reach such a large number of volunteers, but Assemble has really helped us to do this effectively."
They're providing access to topic-drive articles, research papers, videos and other materials in the Document Hub, too. When they say they're using Assemble to the fullest, they mean it - and it's helping volunteers stay engaged.
Leveraging tasks
The RSPCA makes extensive use of Assemble’s Tasks feature to coordinate key volunteering activities. For wildlife rescues, the National Control Centre can quickly identify nearby volunteers, send instructions straight to their phones and receive updates once the animal has been collected and safely transported.
They also use Tasks across programmes such as Micro-volunteering and Wildlife Friends, giving people with limited time simple ways to contribute — from signing petitions to short research assignments. As they explain, “volunteers can help us sign petitions, share things on social media or help with research tasks,” enabling many small contributions to add up to significant impact.
"We also use Tasks for our Micro-volunteering and Wildlife Friends programmes. These are a great way in which volunteers that have a finite amount of time can engage with the RSPCA, but still play a really important part in our volunteering."
Leaning on volunteer data
"We're in a really great position building out both our quantitative and qualitative data points. Having access to data means we're not only tracking and measuring impact, but we can test things by gathering the mood and opinions of our volunteers."
This richer insight also reflects the vital role volunteers play beyond their day-to-day activities. They act as the charity’s voice within local communities - spreading messages, advocating for animals and raising awareness of issues the RSPCA could not address at scale without their support.
From a strategic perspective, Assemble’s reporting tools help the organisation understand the diversity of its volunteer base and identify where it can broaden representation. The data also highlights why volunteers choose to leave, enabling the RSPCA to continually refine and improve the volunteer experience.
The future of volunteering
Looking ahead, they recognise that today’s volunteers are seeking more flexible ways to give their time. Many people want to contribute but need opportunities that fit around their commitments and circumstances. To meet this shift, the charity is evolving its roles to offer greater flexibility and will continue using Assemble to manage, track and refine these opportunities.
"It’s up to us to adapt our volunteering roles and attract volunteers to the RSPCA with flexible opportunities and we will inevitably use Assemble to help us manage and track the success of this."
The organisation also plans to deepen its presence within local communities. With a strong and growing community offer, the RSPCA aims to build on this foundation and further strengthen the vital support it provides to its inspectorate and frontline teams.