Additional example of requirements from Liz R:

One of the needs is to have a place to organize volunteers for an event and to track hours worked. Here is a list of what the high level needs are:

1. Ability to set up events (such as a regatta) where we need to organize volunteers to staff a number positions (Meals, computers, start line, finish line, parking, lodging, transportation, etc.)

2. Ability to set up shifts for each position with ability to specify how many volunteers needed per shift,

4. Ability to send email notification of opening of sign ups

5. Self-service sign up for members

6. Ability to review sign ups and to print or save sign up list

7. Ability for members or administrator to modify sign ups

6. Ability to report out on the number of hours worked by each member

As we are tracking volunteers my organization has a need to also track the TIME they spent in their volunteer duties. Because time spent translates into money we take this piece very seriously. At present each volunteer member is required to spend a minimum of 50 hours sorting books, must spend at least 2 hours picking up books from a drop box (of which there are 16 sites), must spend at least 2 hours picking up books from a home or office. These hours are translated into Points Earned so it would be nice if we could do some type of conversion from minutes to points. Then we would also need the ability to add those totals up and report them into different categories every quarter. I know it's is asking a lot but the hours are the basis of service in our organization.

Thanks to everyone for ideas. I feel that we are much closer to figuring out a proper solution for this.

One thing to keep in mind is that volunteers are separate from event registrations. Not all volunteers are attendees.

My previous post had a typo which made things a little confusing. I have edited to fix. To elaborate, we added a multiple choice "I will help" field on our Event registration form with the help that we need for the event -- e.g., "Bring refreshments" and "Photography". This has worked wonderfully in at least getting us a field of volunteers. As the event date approaches, we export the attendees to Excel and scan the "I will help" field and choose who will bring refreshments and who will do photography. (No way for us to see the field in Wild Apricot directly.) In some cases, we assign more than one person to a job.

We keep track of who is assigned to do what outside of WA. Ideally ability to create fields at the Event level -- e.g., "Refreshment Volunteer" and "Photography Volunteer" -- would let us keep track of this inside of WA with the event. (I just realized that I could update the text of the event to include the information. It wouldn't help much for coordination or reports though.)

Here's a pie in the sky idea: The field on the registration updates the event level field automatically (if the event level field is blank.) Auto assignment!

My previous post had a typo which made things a little confusing. I have edited to fix. To elaborate, we added a multiple choice "I will help" field on our Event registration form with the help that we need for the event -- e.g., "Bring refreshments" and "Photography". This has worked wonderfully in at least getting us a field of volunteers. As the event date approaches, we export the attendees to Excel and scan the "I will help" field and choose who will bring refreshments and who will do photography. (No way for us to see the field in Wild Apricot directly.) In some cases, we assign more than one person to a job.

We keep track of who is assigned to do what outside of WA. Ideally ability to create fields at the Event level -- e.g., "Refreshment Volunteer" and "Photography Volunteer" -- would let us keep track of this inside of WA with the event. (I just realized that I could update the text of the event to include the information. It wouldn't help much for coordination or reports though.)

Here's a pie in the sky: The field on the registration updates the event level field automatically (if the event level field is blank.) Auto assignment!

@kbroders - can you elaborate on your idea? You already can add custom fields to event registration forms but I suspect you mean something else.

Like kbroders suggests, can't you set up a free registration "type" for each of your volunteer categories and then set up your registration form to itemize out what they will do to help. The registration form has the ability to add multiple choice options which they can review and click off each of the items you need help with.

I guess you could do this are part of your event registration process or set up an "Event" just to collect vounteers that could be separate from your actual event. Seems like you could get WA to help you out with this.

Our organization uses volunteers for all of this too. What we do is add a Volunteer field on the registration form. After a certain amount of time, we review the attendees and assign volunteers.

It would be great if we could add custom database fields to the EVENT. Then we could assign volunteers at the event level. Ideally we would also get some email options on the Volunteers. But what we currently do is assign and coordinate them outside of WA. At least WA helps us to find volunteers without calling them. That's been fantastic for improving our volunteerism.

You are right, Wild Apricot is used by many people for volunteer management through various workarounds but current version does not have any specialized volunteer management functionality.

I moved this entry over to the Wishlist because I don't think this is something WA can do right now.

Like most non-profits, a huge part of our activities involve not only sponsoring events and managing event registrations, but also (just as importantly if not moreso) signing up volunteers to help with these events. There are a few different types of volunteers typically.

(1) General volunteers who sign up to help plan the event. There may be different subsets in this category. For example, our annual Spring Fair is a major event that recruits volunteers for the Food Committee, Decorating Committee, Entertainment Committee, PR Committee, etc.

(2) Event Day Volunteers are people who sign up in advance to work specific jobs and/or time slots on the day of the event. Using the Spring Fair example, we might have someone who can work a Game table from 1:00 - 3:00. Another person can work the food booth from 11:30 - 1:00. The committee chairperson needs to make sure she has at least 2 people to cover the food booth for the duration of the event.

(3) Multi-Day Events volunteers. Some events go for an entire week and we need to make sure we have enough staffing for each day of the week. This is similar to #2 above but allows people to specify a specific day as well as a specific time.

It would be really nice to have the ability to post volunteer openings, allow people to sign up for spots and send email reminders to them.

As a cooperative nonprofit, we rely on and require our members to complete volunteer duties (and charge them at the end of the year if they do not volunteer). So tracking volunteer jobs, enabling online sign-up, and then crediting them with completion is a critical function that WA today does not easily support. This requires us to use Google spreadsheets and other outside-WA solutions and it's a significant manual effort.

In our case, most volunteer jobs are associated with events (e.g., parties where volunteers work in shifts, or are responsible for bringing certain items; or a swim meet where you need parents to work as timers, runners, judges, etc.). So I'm proposing the following new functionality:
* Ability to define jobs to go with a particular event - probably best managed from inside the event
* Job definition would include: name of job, description of job, duration/hours, number of people required for each job to create the right number of sign-up slots (e.g., 5 jobs for setup, 2 for during and 6 for cleanup)
* Ability for members to sign up for jobs
* Ability for an event or job administrator to add/remove signups, and most importantly, mark the job as complete
* Ability to lookup a member and see what jobs they have completed
* Ability for an administrator to see what jobs are filled and open within an event

This is common functionality for swim team software such as TeamUnify. I'll try to attach some screen shots.

Thanks!

One of the recurring tasks for our homeowners association is volunteer management. Everything we do involves volunteers. Filling board seats, forming ad-hoc committees, organizing work details, and planning events generate similar demands to find, engage, and manage volunteers.

A widget to solicit, sign-up, and manage volunteers would be very helpful. If you would like to see a good volunteer management system, take a look at http://www.volunteerspot.com . This is working very well for managing parent volunteers at our childrens' high school.

I can't believe I couldn't find this on the list already!

I tried to find way to use the exisiting donation form as a 'donation of in-kind' but that didn't work cause the form fields weren't custom to a page. It would have shown on the general donation form.

I looked at complimenting applications that would have just required an html form, but way too much info, I just want a way for members to log and historically view on the members profile, project, hours, date

I am a newbie, but I am very impressed with the application!

Charri