Volunteer Management

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Charitylog is mainly used to record details of interactions with Clients (people who receive services from AUKC) but there's no reason that it can't be used in just the same way to record interactions with volunteers.

Once volunteers are officially "registered", their involvement in things is handled mainly with Clubs & Clinics (for groups) or Rostering (for services like Befriending, Escorting and so on). We'll leave that to one side. This guide is about recording what happens with people while they are in the process of becoming volunteers.


When should volunteers be put on the system?[edit | edit source]

Straight away.

With Filemaker, volunteers weren't put on the system until they had become "registered" volunteers. This means that all the activity done with the ones who didn't make it was missed, and not counted. With Charitylog, we're trying to capture more of the whole picture - how many people apply to be volunteers, as well as how many "make it".

So, when someone wants to be a volunteer, you should follow the Recording Contacts process first of all, except with volunteers rather than members;

  • search the system for the volunteer, and create them if they aren't on the system
  • if they are on the system, check their Contact History to see if there's an appropriate Referral there already
  • if there is, consider what to do. Assuming there isn't, create one.

The Referral will contain all of the Contacts that the organisation has had with the volunteer. The "volunteering management" staff (currently Teresa and Val) will have most input, but there's no reason that others can't chip in as well. For example, if another service manager has a meeting with the volunteer to see if they are interested in their service, it would be appropriate to put this on a Contact in the Volunteer Management referral.

The process for this would be:

Click the "New Referral" button for the volunteer, then use the "Create Referral" button under the Volunteer Management project.

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Then fill in the details - this is just the same as doing a Referral for a Member. There is a space to put in the Referrer (how the volunteer came to us), time spent on the work done, and so on.

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Activity with clients - delivering services[edit | edit source]

Most volunteers will end up delivering services to Members. Of course this needs to be captured and reported on. However, this will usually be done with either the Roster module or the Clubs and Clinics module, so you won't need to add Contacts (as above) for this activity. The volunteer's involvement here will be counted in one of two ways:

  • Clubs and Clinics: the staff member who runs the group/trip will book the volunteer on, in the same way that the Members are booked on. They will be able to mark that the volunteer is attending as a volunteer rather than as a Member. When reports are produced, volunteer attendances can be separated out from Member attendances.
  • Rostering: the coordinator of the service will book the volunteer to do a job or carry out a visit, and will then complete the job once it is done.


Volunteer Application Timeline[edit | edit source]

Each Referral for the Volunteer Management project has a linked Extension Database called "Volunteer Application Timeline". It is displayed in the top right hand corner of each Referral.

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If you click on the button, you can see the key dates for the Volunteer.

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These key dates can be filled in at any time.


Status[edit | edit source]

There is a Status field on the volunteer's record, to show where they are up to with their application (and also whether they are "in service" or not).

This field is not linked to the Volunteer Application Timeline, it needs to be manually altered as appropriate.

Select vol status.gif


Corporate Volunteers - linking to their employer[edit | edit source]

It may be useful to link corporate volunteers to their employer. This can be done with the Relationships feature. The employer will need to exist in the Organisations list first, so run a search for the Organisation in question and create them if they aren't already on the system.

Next, click the "View All Relationships" button on the volunteer's record.

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Then make a new relationship using the "New Lookup" section in the bottom right hand corner.

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Type the first three letters of the organisation and a drop-down list will appear.

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Click the "New Relationship" button and you will be taken to a window to enter the details of the relationship.

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  • Enter both sides of the Main Relationship
  • In this case, you can ignore the Carer Relationship
  • Select the "major relationship link" option - this creates a clickable link between the two records
  • Click "Save Relationship" button

The employer will now be displayed as a clickable link on the volunteer's record, and vice versa.

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Clicking the name of the employer will take you to their record; clicking the name of the relationship ("Employer" in this case) will let you edit the relationship itself.