Easy Volunteer Coordination

Easily Publish Volunteer Opportunities

Publish an online catalog of volunteer opportunities with ease. Volunteer coordinators can enter opportunities individually or in bulk providing dates, start and end times, descriptions, and the number of people required for that volunteering need. Volunteers can browse and search volunteer opportunities in list or calendar views to help find needs that match their interests.

Volunteer Self-Sign-up

Allowing volunteers to find and sign up for volunteer opportunities to best fit their interests and skills improves the volunteer’s experience and effectiveness. Volunteers can easily narrow the catalog of opportunities by category. With one click, they can see all detail on the volunteer opportunity including dates, times, location, and description. If so configured, they can even see the names of other volunteers who have already signed up for the job. They are presented with a clear “Sign-up” button to assign themselves to that volunteer opportunity. When signing up, a volunteer can be empowered to not only assign themselves to the opportunity but it can be configured to allow them to indicate they will be bringing along one or more friends.

If a volunteer has a scheduling conflict, they can always return to the opportunity to self—withdraw their assignment. Administrators can set rules on how close to an event date a contact can self-withdraw without communicating with a volunteer coordinator directly.

Administrators Match Volunteers with Opportunities

Some organizations choose to centrally manage all volunteer assignments through their coordinators. Others may want this capability in conjunction with the volunteer’s ability to self-sign-up. In either case, VolunteerMatters makes it very easy to centrally assign the best volunteers for the job. Coordinators may easily review all open and filled volunteer opportunities to see where there are openings and where volunteer needs have been met. When managing a volunteer opportunity a coordinator can see details on current assignees, remove assignments, and assign new volunteers from the contact database. When adding a new volunteer, a coordinator can search by any contact or biographical attribute to find the best match. For example, one could search for any active volunteer that lives in a specific area, has experience as a carpenter, and is available to work weekends.

Automated Email Notifications

Volunteers receive automated email confirmations whenever the sign up or withdraw from a shift. They also receive an automated email reminder three days prior to an assignment reminding them of their obligation.

Volunteer coordinators can opt to receive automated notifications whenever a volunteer signs up or withdraws from one of the opportunities they manage. A coordinator may also initiate attractive emails that can include text, images, links, and file attachments and send it to all assignees for a specific assignment.

Attendance Tracking

Volunteer coordinators can update volunteer assignment records to indicate when a volunteer is a “no-show”. This flags the assignment for reporting purposes and also prevents the volunteer from receiving “credit” for that assignment in on-screen and printed reports.

You may even scan barcoded sign-in sheets or ID cards to automatically track attendance to your events or facilities and record it against a contact’s record. The product currently uses Symbol handheld barcode scanners but will be migrating to mobile phone apps by early 2012. Also available in early 2012 will be web-based kiosk systems for volunteer sign-in that can be run on touch-screen systems including Apple’s iPad.

Report on Future Schedules and Volunteer History

VolunteerMatters provides a comprehensive suite of report templates surrounding volunteer assignments, schedules, and history. You may customize the settings on these templates to create nearly limitless reporting combinations. You may run, memorize, and download reports as often as you would like and as many times as you would like.

Centralize or Distribute Coordination

With VolunteerMatters you have complete control over how much you would like to centralize certain responsibilities or how much you would like to distribute them. You may specify exactly which individuals should have the right to configure the system setup, manage the contact database, run specific reports, send bulk emails, perform letter merges, manage volunteering, or receive alerts. You may also choose to allow volunteers to self-sign-up for opportunities and possibly sign their friends up as well. The system empowers your organization to distribute responsibilities when helpful and restrict access when necessary.

Improve Communication

VolunteerMatters sends automated emails to volunteers confirming and reminding them of their volunteer assignments. It can also send notifications to volunteer coordinators when a volunteer signs up for or withdraws from a volunteer opportunity. Administrators may manually initiate bulk emails to specific groups of contacts or to volunteers assigned to a particular volunteer opportunity. The bulk email tool can generate attractive emails that can include text, images, links, and file attachments. Lastly, administrators can generate letters in MS Word or PDF format, merging any contact or biographical information.