Community car schemes provide transport for local people who are not able to make reasonable use of alternative transport options. These schemes provide a door-to-door service, accommodating any special requirements of the passenger where possible.
Many communities benefit from having a local volunteer car scheme. These schemes provide a vital, yet affordable, transport service for people that would otherwise struggle to live independently.
How these schemes operate varies. Generally they're made up of volunteer drivers and organisers. The drivers are responsible for picking up passengers and taking them to and from their destination. The organisers contribute by keeping the scheme running, finding new drivers, and performing administrative and finance tasks.
As cuts to public services deepen, people who don’t drive are increasingly struggling to reach essential services and even to do routine activities such as the weekly food shop. This is especially true if they are elderly, disabled, or one of the 12.7 million people living in rural areas in the UK, where bus services are often minimal or non-existent.
There is no 'single model' for how community car schemes operate in the UK and elsewhere. Many community car schemes have been created by individual groups of volunteers as part of a solution to tackle the lack of accessible transport within their communities. Many of these groups evolve their own way of managing the demands of a car scheme, with a few common themes:
Some groups are supported by local government schemes which may subsidise the fuel cost per mile, or offer similar financial incentives or assistance. If you run a car scheme, or are thinking of starting one it's a good idea to make sure you're aware of any such initiative.
There are many options available to you in raising money for your car scheme:
Managing community car scheme finances is one of the more difficult aspects to running a car scheme. You're likely engaged in running a car scheme to help local people. Spending more of your time focused on managing money is an unwelcome reality for many car scheme organisers.
Coronavirus has had a huge impact on car schemes across the UK. Many are now having to adapt to support new activities such as shopping for essentials, and reducing social isolation for those who are isolating.
Via now supports covid-19 activities such as volunteer trips to buy essential goods from shops, phone engagement for those isolated, and of course conventional passenger journeys. We are also actively working with volunteer groups to ensure they are equipped to continue supporting their communities at this difficult time.
Your car scheme can have a huge impact in your local area by adapting to this new crisis:
Via is a simple to use, secure web application for managing all aspects of Community and Volunteer Car Scheme operations. Via is used by community car schemes up and down the country and supports in helping to manage thousands of journey bookings every month.
Via has been built to be as intuitive and accessible as possible. To use Via all you need is a web browser and an internet connection.
Via has hundreds of features to automate the management of a community car scheme. You can learn more about specific features on our page dedicated to explaining how we help running your car scheme.
Key ways Via helps running car schemes:
You can see a full explanation of Via's pricing on our pricing page.
Currently you can pay for Via by bank transfer. However, this is subject to change and we will be looking to introduce more payment methods in future.
We use the (very modest) £120 a year to maintain the service, work on new features, and improve national access to volunteering schemes such as yours. Let us know if you have any thoughts on how you think we can make a difference!
Via is available to everyone for free for the first 3 months of use. After that point, Via is free for small schemes processing up to 100 journeys and other activities a year.
Many schemes will outgrow this quickly, and we're keen to work with you to make sure you can continue to access Via.
You can access Via at any time from any location. Once you have an account, all you need is a computer, a web browser, and an internet connection. You can log in to the app from: https://via.communityscheme.org
Once your car scheme is signed up you can have as many team members on Via as you like at no extra cost.
To add more team members to your organisation (and manage your existing members) Go to the 'People' page on the app and invite more members.
Community Sparx is a small community interest company based in Cambridge, UK. We're on a mission to apply new and exciting technologies to long term societal issues. Our founders have a long history in both community engagement, and the technology sector. Most importantly of all: we're volunteer car scheme drivers ourselves.
We're excited by the opportunity we have to promote profound social improvement, better people's lives, save the NHS money, and empower local volunteering.
To make sure that our business is sustainable, we aim to make a modest profit, but it's what we do with our profit that sets us apart from traditional companies with shareholders to satisfy. We re-invest any profit that we make into the business, or use it to create positive social change in the community.
A community interest company is a special kind of company. Unlike a conventional company, we're legally bound to ensure any and all profit we make is 100% reinvested in the community in one way or another. Whereas a conventional company is driven by maximising profit for private shareholders, we're driven by maximising community impact.
In order to be a CIC, we have to provide continued proof that our activities are providing social benefit.
This gives our customers confidence that they are paying a fair price and also the security of knowing that they are buying from a professionally run organisation with an eye on delivering long-term benefit to its customers and the community, rather than short-term profits.
