Introduction to Running a Mobile Benthyg Project

Introducing a mobile element to your Benthyg branch can be an excellent way to increase awareness of your project, by making borrowing more accessible to everyone in your community and increasing your borrow rates. It also increases the opportunities to collaborate with other local initiatives and participate in events.  

Even better, if you have a low or zero-emission vehicle, you could also help to reduce emissions in your community.

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This guide is designed to help you set up your mobile project and assumes that you are adding a mobile element to an existing static Library of Things base. However, each location and community is different so this is not designed to be a prescriptive or exhaustive list – please adapt your approach and tailor any templates and guides to your own project.

Activities covered in this guide include offering door-to-door collection and delivery of items, attending community events and hosting pop-ups in a range of locations.  

Please refer to ‘Introduction to Setting up a Library of Things’ for additional guidance.

Planning Deliveries and Collections

Timetabling

Establish how many staff or volunteers are willing and able to support delivery and collection,and how many hours per week they can commit to. This will help you decide what you can offer your community and be able to promote it clearly.

If your project covers a large geographical area, you may wish to draw up a timetable - such as every first Saturday of the month in one postcode, every second Saturday in another etc.  If you’re in a smaller area, consider offering a regular day or days of the week for delivery and collection, as this is easier to promote than ad-hoc services.

Talk to your staff and volunteers about offering a door-to-door delivery and collection, pop-up events, collaborating with other groups on events or a combination of all three in order to support mobile deliveries and collections.

Once you have decided how to structure your deliveries and collections, draw up a rota or schedule with your volunteers, to ensure you have the first few weeks covered before you start promoting your project.  Save the rota in a shareable location such as a google drive and agree a way for staff and volunteers on the rota to contact each other if they need to change anything at short notice e.g. a WhatsApp group.

Consider the logistics of getting the keys and/or vehicle from one volunteer or another and come up with a plan that makes it as easy as possible for everyone and that is written down and saved or printed somewhere that everyone can access.

You can add your vehicle onto your online borrowing platform and keep it hidden from the public to ensure it’s booked in for scheduled activity, or create a shared calendar for staff and volunteers.

Payments for Mobile Borrowing

Encouraging people to pay online and in advance for borrows will make deliveries much easier for your staff and volunteers. However, some people prefer not to make online payments so you should consider options for cash or card payments.

Card Payments: Using a contactless card payment machine such as ‘Sum-up’ or ‘iZettle’ is an easy solution that allows people to pay by card. It requires an app to be installed on your phone 4G device and is easy to use.

Ideally, you should set each user up with their own account on the app so you can accurately match payment records with online borrowing platform records. However, there will be an initial outlay for the machine and a small transaction charge every time you use it.

Cash Payments: If you are using cash as a method of payment, you will need to provide a small float to staff and volunteers when they go out on their rounds.  Set up a cash transaction log, keep track of the cash and ensure that money is not left in your Benthyg vehicle overnight.

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Mobile Internet Access

Staff and volunteers will need internet access while they’re carrying out deliveries and collections or attending events.

Having a 4G enabled device that travels with your vehicle is the simplest way to ensure that your staff and volunteers can access your online borrowing platform and any other online information they might need while they’re out and about.

Various devices can do this, such as mobile phones or 4 G-enabled tablets, on some form of data contract that allows the device to connect to the Internet.

Alternatively, to connect to the internet with your chosen device, you can use a variety of methods:

-       Connect to the venue’s Wi-Fi, if they allow access.

-       Purchase a pre-paid Wi-Fi dongle, which will set up your own local Wi-Fi network and allow you to connect to the dongle’s internet network.

-       ‘Tether’ your device (tablet, laptop, etc).  to a smartphone’s hotspot - which means a smartphone can provide its own local Wi-Fi network, and then the tablet,
          laptop, etc., can connect to that local Wi-Fi. However, this will use data from the person providing the ‘hotspot’ and may cost them money – for this reason, one of
          the above alternatives may be a better option.

 Whichever process you decide on for internet access, create a step-by-step written guide for your staff and volunteers to take out with them in the vehicle so they can always connect wherever they are.

As with any valuables, it’s advisable to remove devices while the vehicle is not in use. Consider keeping them in a bag together with the keys and any other important items to be collected by whoever is using the vehicle at any given time.

Charging a fee for delivery

Some of the benefits of having a delivery option such as encouraging people to borrow and making borrowing more accessible may be diminished by charging a fee for delivery. On the other hand, this additional service could also generate some much-needed revenue to cover associated costs.

Consider a flexible charging structure such as asking for a ‘suggested donation’ from those who can afford it, rather than a mandatory fee.  You could also consider a charge per mile for deliveries, although this would require calculating the distance of deliveries and also potentially exclude those who live further away from your base.

Another option could be to offer free deliveries until you become established and then consult your members about adding in a charge to support the project.

If you decide to charge for delivery, you can manage those fees through the ‘Postal Loan’ function via reservation settings if you are using the Lend Engine borrowing platform.

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Collecting donations

A Pop-Up donation drive is when you pop-up with your van/bike in pre-planned location, usually at an existing event and are a great way together in donations and stimulate some interest in your project.   You could also offer to collect donations while you deliver and collect borrows - by scheduling this around your other activity, you can reduce unnecessary car journeys in your community and continue to raise the profile of your project while growing your inventory.

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Emergency contacts and lone working

If staff or volunteers are delivering and collecting items alone, think about the processes you need to put in place if a member of the team comes into danger, breaks down or feels threatened.

Develop processes for ensuring that someone always knows where and when deliveries are taking place, what time the member or staff or volunteer should return and what they should do if they break down, have an accident or feel in danger.

Discuss safety measures with your volunteers and get their input on the risk assessment to ensure volunteers have the opportunity to flag any concerns they might have.   

Keep your risk assessment under review as volunteers gain more experience to ensure it reflects any emerging issues. 

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Monitoring activity

It’s helpful to keep track of all your mobile activity, not least to feed into your funder reports. You can use your vehicle journey tracker and Lend Engine reports to feed all your data relating to your Mobile Benthyg into a spreadsheet and track your progress against targets.

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Setting up your Online Borrowing Platform

Lend Engine functionality is not ideally suited to offering mobile collections and deliveries – we are working with developers to improve that.  

Currently, the easiest way to use it for door-to-door deliveries and collections using Lend Engine is to create a ‘site’ called ‘mobile delivery’  or similar with the delivery/collection times as the opening times and ask people to book deliveries through that ‘site’.  See Key Documents.  

Similarly, if you’re using collection and return points such as a community hub or an event, you can create a ‘site’ for them also. People can then reserve their items for the relevant time and date.

Lend Engine does not currently allow borrowers to specify time slots, so you may wish to contact borrowers in advance to confirm precise delivery times.

We recommend that you maintain regular contact with staff and volunteers in advance of their journey– make sure they have checked what is due to be delivered and collected via Lend Engine and are clear about where they need to go.

Lend Engine does not have a way to limit mobile deliveries to specific postcodes or stop taking reservations in advance of the start time.  Therefore, you’ll need ensure you communicate your terms and conditions clearly through your marketing and communications e.g. “deliveries available for Bangor postcodes only”. You will also need to have processes in place to manually check reservations as they come in, so you are able to contact borrowers in plenty of time if their reservation cannot be fulfilled due to logistical constraints.

to ensure you communicate your terms and conditions clearly through your marketing and communications,

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 Talk to your existing insurer or insurance broker for advice specific to your circumstances, including the types of events and activities you want to run, the roles that volunteers will be carrying out, and the vehicle/s you’ll be using.

 If you want multiple drivers to be able to use your vehicle, make sure your insurance policy allows for that. The type and size of vehicle may affect its classification, for example a vehicle with 7 seats and above will class as a minibus, which may be easier and cheaper to insure in comparison to a van. Having secure, off-road parking for a van or a lockable space for a bike may bring your premium down.

It’s generally a good idea to share your risk assessments and processes with your insurer and give them the opportunity to highlight any areas for improvement.

Vehicles

Van

A van (or e-van!) is a great way to facilitate deliveries and gives you the additional ability to offer bulkier items or multiple items to members where they otherwise might not be able to borrow.

Van Contents

Keep your van stocked with things you may need for deliveries, collections, events and pop-ups, along with a printed checklist for staff and volunteers to refer to every time they prepare to take it out.  

It's also a good idea to keep a printed copy of emergency instructions in the van at all times and regularly review this with staff and volunteers.

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Driving License Checks

 If you plan to have a pool of staff and volunteers available to drive the van, make sure you have an appropriate insurance policy in place and check any exclusions – for example your insurer might specify drivers must be over a specific age with a clean, full driving licence.  

In order to keep track of who is permitted to drive your van, create a shareable form such as a google form to collect the details of anyone who plans to drive, including the last 8 digits of their licence number and a code they can generate from the Government website.  With these details you will be able to check their licence on the Government website and then visually check their driver’s licence before handing over the keys. If you are unsure about the details on someone’s licence, speak to your insurance company to check they are covered under your policy. https://www.gov.uk/view-driving-licence

Put together some guides or checklists about your vehicle to ensure drivers are confident and safe on the road.  If possible, take them for a test-drive in a quiet area before they go out on their own.

Driving and charging an electric van may be new to some of your staff and volunteers, so ensure they are familiar with those processes.

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Cargo Bike

A cargo bike (or an e-cargo bike!) can provide an excellent incentive for volunteers to get involved and learn new skills while being active, and is likely to be a huge talking point around your community. 

Safety

Riding a cargo bike is very different from a normal bike, so even the most experienced cyclists will need some training and practice before going on the road. There isn’t a standard training course for e-cargo bikes, but local bike training services can often support training. 

Create a risk assessment for bike deliveries and collections and ask local bike experts, your training provider and your volunteers to feed into it.

Talk to your training provider about what safety measures to implement to ensure your bike and volunteers are visible. For example, you may want to provide HI-VIS vests.

Keep a printed copy of your processes either in the cargo box or with the keys (depending on your storage arrangement) so that volunteers will always have a reference copy if they need it when they’re out and about.

Security

Ensure the measures you put in place following discussion with your insurers are clearly explained to your volunteers using visual guides and checklists, ideally printed out and kept together with the keys. Hence, your volunteers have a quick reference guide each time they collect and return the bike. 

Branding

Branding your bike is a great way to raise the profile of your project around the community. Making the branding as bright and colourful as possible will also help ensure the bike and volunteers are highly visible when out and about.  Consider adding a QR code to the branding so people can quickly navigate to your website when their interest is piqued by the bike! 

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Ongoing maintenance of your vehicle

 Make sure you factor in your vehicle's ongoing costs, including tax, MOT, and servicing, when considering your overall budget to avoid any nasty surprises. Also, ensure you stay current with any relevant variations in MOT/tax requirements for e-vehicles if relevant.

Volunteers

Volunteers for your Mobile Benthyg should receive the same induction and training as any other volunteers in order to embed an understanding of risk mitigating processes and ensure they are able to use your online borrowing platform in the same way that they would at a static site.

For a Mobile Benthyg you will need some extra people to help out on specific tasks such as driving/cycling and hosting events.  Having a mobile element to your Benthyg branch will mean extra promotional requirements for events, pop-ups and deliveries, so it’s also a good idea to try and recruit a creative volunteer who enjoys designing posters and doing social media so you can keep your community informed about all of your activities!

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Please review the volunteer resources and downloads.

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 Events and pop-ups

Events and pop-ups are a great way to engage people and tell them about your Benthyg branch, and having a vehicle makes it much easier to plan and attend events.

Planning an Event

If an external partner asks you to attend an event they are organising, ask them to complete an Event Request form to confirm the details and requirements.  This will ensure that everyone knows what is happening and it is clear what has been agreed, so you can book the vehicle for that date and ensure that staff and volunteers book it in their diaries. It is also recommended that you agree on communication channels including social media groups and tags, to make sure the event is publicised effectively.

You will be asked to send a copy of your Public Liability Insurance and risk assessment for most external events. Your insurance broker will be able to provide you with a digital copy of your Public Liability certificate to share with partners.

Digital Forms and QR codes

Creating digital forms and QR codes can make it much easier for people to access your forms and digital assets using their smartphones during events or while you’re carrying out collections and deliveries. In addition, they save paper, don’t blow away in the wind, and make it much easier to protect personal data while you’re out an about.

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Check List

Any event requires extensive planning. We recommend that you write a checklist that includes everything you need to do before, during, and after the event.  

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Collaborating with Other Organisations

Collaborating with other organisations in your area can be a great way to add some extra activities at your events and introduce new groups in your community to your project. As well as collaborating on events, you could also offer to let them use your vehicle to collect donations for their project if your insurance permits – if not perhaps your volunteers could transport things for other projects while they’re on their Benthyg rounds.

Teaming up with Repair Café Wales will also give people the opportunity to bring along items for repair and find out how to borrow.

If your mobile project is linked to Repair Café Wales, ensure your staff and volunteers attend an induction with Repair Café Wales to understand their processes. Not only will you gain a valuable understanding of how Repair Cafes are organised, but you will also be given access to their online toolkit.

This contains all the information and resources you need to host a Repair Café event. 

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