How Three Rings helps University Nightlines

Since 2002, Three Rings has been helping University Nightlines to manage their rota and their volunteers. A lot has changed since those early days, but our core goal has remained the same - to streamline the administration of your helpline service.

Your volunteers are precious

Your volunteers are on the front-line, providing a critical service at a time when many sources of help are closed. All of the core developers at Three Rings have been Nightline volunteers, and we know that it's a difficult and a thankless job.

We want your volunteers to spend as little time doing the day-to-day administration that goes with running a Nightline, so Three Rings eases that burden and lets you get on with what you do best - supporting students in distress.

Using Three Rings

Three Rings is easy to use - so easy, in fact, that your volunteers probably won't need more than a few minutes of exploration time to completely familiarise themselves with it. We've said it before – "If you can use Facebook, you can use Three Rings!" – and it's true: for day-to-day use Three Rings is simpler than most websites that students make use of!

From your Nightline's office to study bedrooms, public workstation areas to mobile phones, Three Rings keeps Nightliners connected wherever they are. And because most Nightline volunteers' identities are a secret, we've made sure that Three Rings is discreet and that all traffic to and from the server is encrypted.

Key features

Three Rings has a powerful set of features, but here are some of the most important ones for our Nightline clients:

  • Check the rota from anywhere – signing up for duties doesn't have to involve dropping into the Nightline office or phoning the volunteers on duty; and Nightleaders, Weekleaders and Rota Secretaries can check that shifts are filled from the comfort of their own homes.
  • Volunteer information at your fingertips – get the contact details of any of your fellow Nightliners with no effort: great when you're "phoning around" to fill shifts, but also good for promoting a community spirit and keeping volunteers in touch with one another, both in and out of the service.
  • Bulk e-mail and texting tools – securely send messages to some or all of your organisation, simultaneously, right from Three Rings. You're sure to have the most up-to-date contact details for your volunteers, because they can update it themselves, and text messaging provides a quick way to get important announcements out (and it's a lot easier on a keyboard than a phone keypad).
  • Make sure everybody knows about upcoming events – training, socials, meetings... just pop them into the events list and they'll appear on the rota for your volunteers to see.
  • Role-based permissions – define your own "roles", such as Co-Ordinator, Director, Training Officer or Rota Secretary, each with their own permissions on the system, to streamline the security system. When a job changes hands, just re-assign the role, and all the associated permissions go with it.
  • Collaboration tools – help your team work better together using the filestore and wiki facilities in Three Rings: just upload documents or type together in a collaborative workspace to plan projects, develop strategies, or just keep to-do lists and volunteering tips.
  • Keep tabs on the work done by your volunteers – it's easy to generate statistics on the number of duties done and who's doing them: track commitment levels and find out who's pulling the most weight, or just look up volunteers who'd be best-suited to filling particular duty gaps.

Free to Nightlines affiliated with National Nightline

As a show of goodwill towards what we believe is a very worthwhile cause, we provide Three Rings free of charge to all Nightlines that are paid-up affiliates of National Nightline – sort-of an unofficial perk of affiliation.

For other pricing information, please see the price list or get in touch with us.

(the free service does not include text messaging, which must be paid for separately by subscribing to a supported third-party SMS provider; ask for further details)

Get online!

If you're interested in using Three Rings at your Nightline, just fill in our contact form and we'll get back to you very soon. We look forward to having you on board!