Volunteer Add On - Overview

The Volunteer Add-on has three components:

• Volunteer Types

• Volunteer Facts

• Volunteer & Staff Tasks List

Volunteer Types

Volunteer Types are checkboxes in volunteers' contact records. In the contact record, on the Basic tab, you'll see the Volunteer Types.

Volunteer Types allow you to classify your volunteers into the different areas they work. Perhaps this volunteer helps out with fundraising, or often volunteers at special events. This area is completely customizable, so you can add all the Volunteer Types that are appropriate for your volunteer needs. Using Volunteer Types is very useful for classifying your volunteers to make it easy for you to search for this information later on.

For example, perhaps you have a big event coming up, and you want to find all the volunteers in your database that like to help out at special events. In your Contact list, search by Volunteer Type to look for all the special event volunteers. Click Search, and Sumac finds all the volunteers who like to help at special events! Now you could send them all an email to ask if they'd like to help out.

Volunteer Facts

Volunteer Facts are another supporting component of the Volunteer add-on. They reside on the Facts tab of your volunteers' contact records. Click New, and at the bottom of the list of Facts, you'll see an area for Volunteer Facts.

This allows you to record quite a variety of facts about your volunteers, like their Preferred Tasks, which are the kinds of jobs your volunteers want to do for you.

You can also record any skills or qualifications for your volunteers to specify what they are able to do. Some typical examples of Skills recorded for volunteers are having a valid police background check, having completed any necessary volunteer training programs you might have, or the ability to speak different languages. Skills are completely customizable, so you can track whatever kinds of skills are important for your volunteers to have.

You can also record the days and times that your volunteers are available, as well as any recognition they may have received for completing tasks for you, like a recognition letter or token of appreciation. You can even record your volunteers' time commitments to specify how many hours they are committed to volunteering with you. For example, you can specify that a volunteer is willing to work up to six hours each month. Recording these Volunteer Facts is very important to volunteer management because Sumac uses all this information when it helps you figure out which volunteer is the most appropriate candidate for a task that needs doing.

Volunteer & Staff Tasks List

The final component of the Volunteer Add-on is the Volunteer & Staff Tasks List, found under Time & Scheduling in your Sumac Console.

The Tasks list allows you to define a list of jobs you need your volunteers to complete. It also helps you figure out which volunteer is most appropriate for each job. You'll notice that along the right of this window, there is a list of Workers. Sumac calls volunteers “Workers,” and it produces this list of workers by finding every contact in your database who has one or more Volunteer Types chosen in his or her contact record.

Either create a new task, or search for tasks that need to be completed. When you select the task, you'll notice that a bunch of coloured boxes appear to help you match the most appropriate volunteer to the selected task.

Green means the volunteer has what is required, Yellow means the volunteer might have what is required, and Red means that the volunteer does not have what is required. Once you've found a volunteer who is appropriate for the job, select his or her name in the list of workers. Select an appropriate volunteer, and under Special Editing, click to assign this worker to this task.

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